Jesus and the Gentiles
This is the second of my reflections on racism as found in the Bible. In this blog I look at episodes in the life of Jesus as recorded in Mark’s gospel. These passages of teaching lay the foundations for the people of God to include Jews and Gentiles together as the people of God. Together they break the perception that Jews only were God’s chosen people. They form the basis on which we should seek to break down any and every ethnic barrier within the people of God. I start with Mark 7.
The chapter starts with reflections on what makes people unclean, in other words unacceptable to God, what excludes people from the community. Mark 7v1-23. Jesus insists it is conduct, not things, that defile and exclude. The implication of this for those who have ears to hear was that Gentiles could be included in the people of God. This is developed in the next paragraph, 7v24-30. Jesus is confronted by a Gentile woman whose daughter has an “unclean” spirit. The woman, nameless and identified only by her ethnic group, asks Jesus to cast out the unclean demon, but he declares that his ministry is to “the children” (Jews) and not “the dogs” (Gentiles). That is, for all his instruction about defilement, it appears Jesus remains committed to the notion that his work is with Jews, that is, with the chosen, well-beloved people of God. I, and others, suspect that he was testing her by saying he gave priority in his ministry to Jews. Whatever the motivation, he makes a radical statement of the priority of ministry to Jews. The woman, however, persists and instructs Jesus in a way that calls out the uncritical assumption about the privilege and preference of his people. It is a dramatic moment where old assumptions are broken by a voice of insistence from outside of Jewish privilege and superiority. That is a voice that persists whenever we claim a certain people, a particular ethnicity, have special privileges before God. Jesus was provoking the women and was very happy to endorse her.
This is clear when we look at chapter 7 in the context it is found within the Gospel as a whole. It is remarkable and significant that just before this encounter, Jesus has performed a “feeding miracle” in Galilee, that is, for Jews, 6:30–44. And just after this encounter he performs a “feeding miracle” in the Decapolis, that is, for Gentiles, 8:1–10. This dramatic encounter with the Gentile woman is a pivot in the gospel. His next action demonstrates that he totally agrees with the point being made and promptly acts on it. He moves out of the safe cocoon of working with the perceived chosen people and in a concrete way includes others into his ministry, into the chosen people of God.
We see here in the middle of Marks’ gospel the inclusive nature of the ministry of Jesus, which became the basis of the work of the church drawing Jews and Gentiles together into the community of faith. It started with Jesus, not with the early church. However, it was picked up by the early church.
Peter in Acts 10 is confronted by a vision of foods that would, if eaten, make someone unclean. Would exclude them from the people of God. Yet he is told to take and eat. He sees this as undermining the purity code he had relied on that separated Jews from Gentiles. This is equivalent to the discussion at the beginning of Mark 7. The word from God is insistent: “What God has made clean, you must not call profane” (v. 15). After a reiteration of this exchange three times, it is not easy for Peter, but he gets it. The drama was only about unclean food. Peter, however, is quite able to extrapolate from the drama of food to broader social practice. He explains to his visitors from Joppa what the drama of his trance means: “You yourself know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean” (v. 28). He first acknowledges the traditional teaching of his people that was based on exclusion. What God has shown him is that the old purity distinctions are gone. What God has taught him is that purity codes and the separation that goes with them no longer pertain.
The examples of Jesus, Peter and the early church teach us that the Gospel is not exclusive, it embraces every ethnicity. But of course, history tells otherwise. The church has continually to be summoned out of its sense of being exclusively chosen, so that it embraces all “peoples, tongues, and races,” because, as Peter attests, “God shows no partiality” (v. 34).
We should therefore continually follow the example of Jesus and declare and enact the truth that we are all one in Christ Jesus. We do that by creating multicultural churches that value ethnic diversity.
Tony Thompson
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