It always hurts to be excluded. The workplace where you’ll never fit in because you didn’t go to the right school and you don’t know the subtle rules of speech and dress. The shop you feel like an outsider in, because you’re too old, or too frumpy. The sporting club that will never feel like home because you’re too black, or too Asian, or have the wrong accent, or not a bloke. It always hurts to be excluded.
The inverse is equally true: it feels great to be included. To be on the inside, part of the in-crowd. You know the rules of engagement, you feel confident, you feel liked. You feel comfortable, and moving through the world is easy. When you live your life as part of the in-group, the world is set up for you to simply glide through.
Even Jesus had an in-group. He was always challenging it, ruffling feathers, disrupting the rules, but still, it was home. In his own ethnic and religious group, he was on the inside.
And like all of us who belong to an in-group, Jesus had his prejudices. A woman comes along who is not of his religion, not of his culture. And he calls her a dog. But it’s what comes next that is most interesting: the woman talks back. She says that she is entitled to something as well.
And Jesus agrees. From then on, Jesus’s work and mission shifts: from mainly focusing on his own people, to broadening out to include all people. The people who were once excluded were drawn in, and offered access to God’s great wellspring of healing and nourishment.
How might we be encouraged by the sassy woman, who talks back when excluded? And how might we be inspired by the example of Jesus, who accepts the challenge, chooses to break out of the comfort of his in-group, and embraces others also?
Rev Andreana
Photo by Ketut Subiyanto, Pexels
PS you can find the story of Jesus and the sassy woman in Mark 7
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