What’s So Perfect About Jesus?

David Orendorff · Mark 7:24-37 · September 10, 2006

We say Jesus is perfect.  What does that mean?  The way Mark tells the story of the healing of the Syrophonecian woman’s daughter, Jesus looks pretty imperfect.  He appears, at the beginning of the story to be too tired to be compassionate.  And when confronted by her he responds as a racist, sexist and religious bigot.

Some commentators insist that Jesus was just testing her faith.  But when you’re the mother of a little girl who is being destroyed by a demon this kind of testing is its own cruelty.

Jesus’ imperfection is pretty much summed up in the fact that he is fully human. Jesus is tired.  He has had a long day and just wants to be by himself. Jesus, the master of compassion, is hiding from the suffering of the ill, the broken, and the lost.  And in very human fashion he gets irritated when yet one more person makes demands upon him. 

We don’t get to see this very human side of Jesus often and we don’t really expect a Jesus, or a Mother Teresa, a Saint Francis, or Mahatma Gandhi, to ever get tired of doing good.  Yet they obviously do get tired just as we all do.

Other and more serious imperfections appear in his sexist, racist and bigoted responses.  The mother and her daughter are females.  And they are gentiles, Greeks, foreigners and not of the Palestine.  And further, they are not members of Judaism, the one true faith of the chosen people.  And Jesus is not even polite about this, but is crude and cruel responding to her cry for help by saying the healing you seek from God "is not for the dogs."

None of us would think of not helping a child because it was a woman, who asked us.  Nor would we refuse aid because she was from another nation or another religion.  And certainly none of us would be so rude as to not only refuse to give what ever healing we have to offer, but insult this mother who suffers for the sake of her demon possessed daughter and only wants what God would give the Jews, the Hebrews.  Or would we?

More than once I have been confronted by my human imperfections.  I share one story with you.  I once attended a class taught by the Tierra Nueva staff in Burlington.  Tierra Nueva is a Christian ministry to primarily the Mexican migrant population of Skagit County.  The class was for gringos like me to learn about the life of “the undocumented worker.” We also met farmers for whom they worked and law enforcement from whom they hid.

It turns out there are some 10,000 Mexican migrants in Skagit County.  They try to be mostly invisible because to call attention to themselves is to invite scrutiny.  And scrutiny often means the police, and this contact can mean deportation, stranding their families in this country without a means of support.

Most of those without legal documents walked for days at night through the desert.  They carried food, water and children on their backs for a hundred miles; bloodied their legs in cactus, were bitten by rattlesnakes. They were the victims of robbers and unscrupulous coyotes (the guides across the border) who charge huge fees and sometimes deserted, robbed or murdered their desperate charges.

The migrants make this horrible journey, often more than once, because to stay in Mexico is to starve, is to condemn their children to a life of suffering poverty, is to give up hope and then die.

I confess to you that until my trip to Mexico followed by the training at Tierra Nueva I was somewhat indifferent to the suffering of the Mexican families among us as the demon poverty possessed their children.  I didn’t call these folks dogs and flat refuse help, I did something perhaps crueler, I ignored them.  They were easy to ignore because like Jesus I was working hard with the folks near to me and I was tired and simply wanted to hide.  I did not help those I could help.

So Jesus, like me, is fully human.  But with the long standing tradition of the church, I also believe Jesus is fully divine, that is perfect in the love of God.  These two natures of Jesus are pretty tough to reconcile.

Though Mark shows us an imperfect Jesus and so reminds us of our own imperfections in love, he also reminds us of how Jesus perfectly responds to the Syrophonecian woman’s plea for the salvation of her daughter.  His encounter with the Syrophonecian woman and his openness to God changes him and he becomes compassionate as God is compassionate.  It is the end of the story that counts when Jesus gives healing salvation even when he is tired, prejudiced and has to reverse himself.

Jesus is divinely perfect because beyond his imperfections he knows this Gentile woman speaks the truth when she says "even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs."  This woman sees clearly that God’s love is universal and unconditional; it is even meant for her and her daughter.  May I be open to the transforming love of those I might become compassionate as God in Jesus is compassionate.

Knowing the truth of her plea, Jesus responds perfectly with a change of heart and mind, with repentance.  I know some folks will have trouble with Jesus as repentant since if one is perfect, in our usual understanding, they are never wrong.  But such repentance is a characteristic of not only Jesus, but of the God of the Hebrew Scriptures.  The example of God’s mind being changed that most immediately comes to me is in the book of Jonah.

Poor Jonah is told by God to go to the great and powerful city of Nineveh and let the people there know that God is going to destroy them because of their wicked ways.  Jonah doesn’t want to go.  Would you?

Jonah takes the first boat away from Nineveh to Tarshish fleeing God’s assignment.  But God is determined that Jonah will warn the Ninevites before destroying them and chases after Jonah, causing a great storm, causing Jonah to be swallowed by a great fish, and then after three days causing the fish to spit Jonah onto land.  When God a second time asks Jonah to go to Nineveh and tell of the coming destruction Jonah, with no real alternative, goes to Nineveh.  However, when God sees "how (the Ninevites) turned from their evil ways,” and I quote scripture, “God repented (changed his mind) about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and did not do it."1 Jonah 3:10

God explains (with a bush and worm) to Jonah (who as you might guess is pretty upset with God for the mind change) how he, God, loves the Ninevites and how love changed God’s mind from destruction to salvation.

What is so perfect about Jesus is that he, like God, is willing to move from condemnation to salvation when confronted with a loving desire for healing.  May I also repent and so be perfected!

And finally, Jesus is perfect in that he reverses his actions.  Jesus began his encounter with the Syrophonecian woman by hiding from her and when found, by refusing to help her.  But Jesus, when he sees that God’s truth is in this woman, repents, corrects himself and extends salvation beyond the Jews to a Greek little girl, and thus expands salvation to include all God’s children.  This story is one that ignites much of the Jewish Christian church to include women, children and gentiles in God’s full grace.  It is a story that legitimizes Paul and his Gentile mission.

It is the end of the story that counts because Jesus gives healing salvation to all God’s children even when he is tired, prejudiced and has to reverse himself. Jesus is fully divine in that he is fully open to the transforming love of God in his encounter with the Syrophonecian Woman.  May I be so perfected!

We are, of course, fully human and therefore imperfect.  This I take to be self evident.  But we can also have moments of full divinity.  We are capable, as was Jesus, of being perfected in love.  God’s universal, forgiving and healing love can and does also cause us to stop, listen, repent and act in compassion even when tired and our prejudices are offended.  When we, like Jesus, respond to a suffering mother and her children with compassion and action, in spite of our imperfections, we are in that moment perfect like Jesus.

It is our desire at Bear Creek to give opportunities through worship, prayer, study and service to assist us in the process of being perfected in love.  With this in mind, I invite you to stay for the Homecoming Fair to learn ways that we will assist you in being made more truly in the image of God that all of us might become more like Jesus.

Shalom and Amen.