9 February 2024 Mark 7:31-37
Jesus went to gentile territory, the region of Tyre (modern Lebanon), with the intention of not being recognized, being left alone. “Yet he could not escape notice” (Mark 7:24). First a woman, whose daughter had a demon, approached him and asked him to heal her girl. He told her, “It isn’t right to take the children’s food and feed it to the dogs” – the children being Jews, the dogs being, well, her. Unfazed, she replied a little cheekily, “Yeah, about that. The children appear to be throwing their food on the floor where us dogs can get it. That why you’re here on the down low? So how about it? Heal my girl?” Jesus couldn’t resist her cheeky faith, and the girl was healed on the spot. He didn’t even have to see her (7:24-30).
How did the Syrophoenician Woman know who he was?
Jesus went from there to the Decapolis, where they immediately recognized him and brought him a deaf man with a speech impediment. After one of the most elaborate healings in the New Testament (seven steps!) the man was healed (7:31-37).
How did the people of the Decapolis know who he was?
Maybe it is because of the person Jesus had met there before.
The Decapolis, gentile territory, is where Jesus met the Gerasene Demoniac (5:1-20). After Jesus healed him, Jesus sent him back to his own people to tell them about God’s mercy – the first missionary to the gentiles. He appears to have done just that. He told them so many times about the man who had cast out the legion of devils, told them so many times how he had cast the devils into the local pigs, who subsequently cast themselves into the sea. He told them so many times about this Jewish stranger, and how much he owed Him, that the people of the Decapolis began to find themselves in his story, began to wish they were a part of it, began to hope to see such a dramatic sign of divine power in their own lives, began to look at strangers a little differently, listening to them to see if he could be the mysterious stranger of the Demoniac’s story. The Demoniac’s story had made them so alert to the mercy of God that when the Mysterious Stranger finally did show up, they didn’t have to listen long before they knew that it had to be Him.
They knew it was Him because they had heard the stories. Heard them over and over again. Heard them so many times that they began to look for them, and then find them, when they needed them most.
They knew it was Him because they had heard the stories.
Children never grow tired of the really good stories. They like to hear them over and over again, even though they know exactly what’s coming next, even though they will correct the reader if he gets even a single word wrong. The stories become the arms that hold them close, hold them up, hold them tight, even when they don’t have much of a grip on themselves. And later in life, when regrets have piled up, and children have moved on, and friends have passed on, they can close their eyes and hear the words of the really good stories, and the voices of the ones who told them, and they know in their really deep places, below where even words come from, they know they would recognize their hero again, yearn to recognize their hero again.
They knew it was Him because of the stories.
Telling our Jesus stories is what we are commanded to do. Hearing our Jesus stories is what more and more people are hoping to do. They want a hero to yearn for. They need one.
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