Episode 11: Mark 7:24–30, the Syro-Phoenician woman, and the politics of sass

Due to technical difficulties, this episode was recorded in two sittings. Unfortunately, guest co-host Margaret Amher was unable to join us for the second half. Thanks to both Margaret and Mitzi. Hi everyone and welcome to Wamanis Bible Talk, a podcast for Wamanish Bible Readers and Friends, where we engage stories about women in scripture from the perspectives of contemporary women of color from different walks of life and various socioeconomic backgrounds. I'm Vanessa Lovelace, an old testament scholar, and I am joined today by new testament scholar and guest co-host, the Reverend Dr. Margaret Amher. Dr. Amher is vice president for academic affairs, and dean of faculty, and the first Presbyterian Church, Shreveport, D. Thomasan Professor of New Testament Studies at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Austin, Texas. She is an ordained minister of word and sacrament in the Presbyterian Church USA. She earned a BA from Harvard University and the MDiv and PhD from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Dr. Amher has published four books, James, Diaspa Redericks of a Friend of God, Fortress Commentary on the Bible New Testament, First Peer than Peaceable, Frederick Douglass reads James, and Islanders Islands and the Bible, Rumanations. Welcome Margaret. Thank you Vanessa. Margaret, it is a pleasure to have you. If you are joining us for the first time, the Womanist Bible Talk podcast is intended to broaden our listeners' knowledge of stories of women in scripture beyond what's usually heard from pulpits. The guests interviewed redeem the reputations of women such as Jezebel, Delilah, and Mary Magdalene who are often represented as "bad girls" of the Bible and introduce other women who have either been nameless or hidden behind the men in the biblical stories. Thank you for joining us. [Music] We are excited to have the Reverend Dr. Mithsey Smith as our guest today. Dr. Smith is the first African-American female to earn a PhD in New Testament from Harvard University. She is the Jay Davidson Phillips Professor of New Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. She is a preacher and author of many essays and several books including, "I found God in me a Womanist Biblical Harmonidics Reader, Womanist Sass and Talkback, Social Injustice, Intersectionality, and Biblical Interpretation, and Insights from African-American Biblical Interpretation." Mithsey is also the host of Beyond the Womanist Classroom Podcast, where she discusses all things womanism, biblical interpretation, religion, and justice. Mithsey is here to discuss her article in Womanist Interpretations of the Bible, "Race, Gender, and the Politics of Sass," reading Mark 7, 24-30, through a womanist lens of intersectionality and intercontextuality. Welcome, Mithsey. Yes, thank you, Margaret and Vanessa. It's good to be here. Mithsey, I'm so glad you're here. So let's talk about Sass. What is Sass and what led you to write about Sass and the Sire Phoenician Woman in Mark 7, versus 24-30? The death of the encounter, the place encounter between Sandra Bland and July of 2015, and her death while in custody really kind of shook me, changed me in ways as difficult to explain. It just really, I think, was in a sense the beginning of my need to think about my work in terms of activism and justice and so forth. So, womanist Sass also can be called a talkback, but it's even more than talkback. It can be an attitude, right? You know, we were little and our parents told us to do something and we wrote our eyes. That was considered as talking back and we didn't get away with that. And so, womanist Sass refers to black women's talkback, attitudes, sometimes that talkback, it may be all that we have in certain situations, kind of like just like Sandra Bland when she encountered Officer Insignia in Waller County, Texas. And she just wondered, no, why am I being stopped? She was wanting her rights to be expected, be expected and so forth. But normally when women or young girls say Sass they are seen as threats to authority as disrespectful and so forth. But Sass can be both a moment of curiosity, a moment of creativity as well as an expression of anger over injustice and mistreatment. So, yes, so it's enough, Shale. Also, what do we say this too? Sass could also be considered in a sense a contextual mother term. And primarily I am using it in regards to black women, right? It may not be that all only black women use the term, but in terms of the context of black communities and black women's experience. People were saying it responds to her arrest that she should have kept a mouth shut. She said nothing. Well, silence has never saved black women and black people, right? And our talkback, our insistence on having our rights respected, on knowing our rights, on being treated justly should not be a capital offense, should not result in a death sentence. Nancy, you explored Jesus encounter with this solitary woman. For our listeners who are not familiar with the Saurifanesan woman story, could you please read Mark 724 through 30? And would you tell us what version you are reading from? Yes, I am reading from the contemporary English version at verse 24 through 30. Jesus left and went to the region near the city of Tyre, where he stayed in someone's home. He did not want people to know he was there, but they found out anyway. A woman whose daughter had an evil spirit in her, in her heard where Jesus was. And right away, she came and knelt down at his feet. The woman was Greek and had been born in the part of Syria known as Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to force the demon out of her daughter. But Jesus said the children must be fed first. It isn't right to take away their food and feed it to dogs. The woman replied, quote, "Lord, even the dogs eat the crumbs that the children drop from the table." Jesus answered, "That's true. You may go now. The demon has left your daughter." When the woman got back home, she found her child lying on the bed, the demon had gone. How would you describe the dynamics between Jesus and this woman? Yes, so obviously, according to the story, Jesus is tired. It doesn't want to be bothered. And I think it shows in this encounter not only perhaps an irritability, but also a disrespect. for this woman in her circumstance. So she comes, she is desperate, according to verses chapter earlier in Mark, chapter three, people from her area have already been healed by Jesus. And so that's probably how she found out about his ability to heal. And obviously it seems healing for no charge at all. And so she finds him and Jesus often goes into people's homes and to escape the crowds. And sometimes he is successful here. He is not. She finds him. She's desperate. Her child has been tormented, excuse me. And it could be on a verge of death. So she is desperate to find help for her child. So she approaches, she goes to wherever he is to the home and she is able to speak to Jesus, confront him, ask him to heal her daughter. And Jesus responds with a statement whether people want to see this statement as metaphorical or not, it is harmful. So Jesus responds to her that we will not give the children's bread to the dogs. And in his response, it's interesting that the Greek word for child here is tecnon, which often in Mark refers to children of Israel. And she responds, but even the children, dogs eat the crumbs and drop from the table. And she uses the word pideon for children. Which says to me that perhaps they're speaking also the diverse, they're different cultural contexts, but yet instilled to refer to her even in a metaphor that is pointing to a cultural, I think, a cultural reality, a cultural priority is very problematic to say the least, disrespectful. And to do so knowing that this woman is desperate is even more problematic. So she is not backing down, she speaks back to him, letting him know that she's no matter his position, she still expects to be helped in some way. And Jesus responds to her in our SV, in an agreed you get the word logos that because of your logos, because of your word, because of your speech, right? Your daughter is okay, right? And the narrator tells us that when she goes home, the demon has left. And I argue that it is, it is in fact her word, something that comes out of her, her talk back, her says, her resistance, right? And her insistence on getting help for her daughter and being help, that is how her daughter is healed. That Jesus is, I wish people that Jesus be human and he is very human here, no less human than she is. And I think that's why we need to pay attention to the words that are being used, that is because of her speech that her daughter is made home, right? A lot of times we think that we have no power in and of ourselves, that God has not given us power, but God has given not only Jesus, that mortal Jesus power, but also this woman. So Mitsu, you describe the woman as triply oppressed because she is a Gentile, a woman, and mother of a daughter with an unclean spirit. How do her simultaneously intersecting forms of oppression impact Jesus' treatment of the woman? - Yes, I think it does. I think the fact that she is, well, first of all, in this encounter, even though Jesus has crossed a border, he is in the area where she lives, right? That we are still talking about a largely patriarchy society where men dominate over women, women, she is a woman. She is a woman who is desperate with a child who is sick. She is not Jewish like he is, I don't know whose house he's staying in, but there are a lot of Jewish people who lived in the diaspora. And so she is also different in terms of nationality or ethnicity. And so all these things, I contribute, I believe, to the way that Jesus reacts in response to her. - Mitsu, you address another form of discrimination by Jesus against the woman that we might describe as cultural hegemony in the way that Jesus responds to her request for help. By calling her a quote unquote dog, and I'm citing you on pages 103 and 104. - How do you interpret the meaning or Jesus interpretation in referring to her this way? - So obviously, according to the story, Jesus is tired, it doesn't wanna be bothered. And I think it shows in this encounter, not only perhaps an ear to ability, but also a disrespect for this woman in her circumstance. And so she finds him, and Jesus often goes into people's homes and to escape the crowds. And sometimes he is successful here, he is not. She finds him, she's desperate. - Mitsu, in the text, the woman first responds to Jesus with deference. In your words, perhaps in desperation, the woman changes her approach and adopts an attitude of sass. She talks back to Jesus, and it works. Could you read what you wrote on page 106, beginning with the second full paragraph about the effect of the woman's sass on Jesus? - The Sartre Phoenician woman sass mattered, tugging at tapping into Jesus' humanity and compassion. She was an advocate and an activist for her child, and for other mothers and their children who could be denied justice and wholeness based on biased traditions and rabbis who have been socialized to value those traditions. The Sartre Phoenician mother challenged what Jesus labeled as good or fair. That is what sass does. It challenges those systems, traditions, and people that are neither just nor moral, but deleterious and deadly to oneself, once people into the human race. According from Bill Hooks, quote, "Moving from silence into speech is for the oppressed, the colonized, the exploited, in those who stand and struggle side by side, a gesture of defiance that heals, that makes a new life and new growth possible. It is the liberated voice," end quote. - Thank you. Talk about how you relate the Sartre Phoenician woman story to contemporary black women such as Sandra Blann and that whole impact of being able to use talkback or sass in her case, it wasn't effective, and it gets her killed. But how do you relate those to? How do you relate the Sartre Phoenician woman's use and Sandra Blann's use of sass? - Yes, I wouldn't say that in Sandra Blann's case, that it was ineffective, it depends on what in the sense that it doesn't accomplish anything because it does. If only, and I'm using the word only, but I'm trying to figure out another way I want to say this, what it does is at least assures her human dignity. She exodes her rights, her dignity as a human being, as a black woman, as Tana Hesse cult says in his book, between the world and me, he said to his son, that you may not get the results that you need, but you do assure yourself. a human dignity, right, in talking back to systems of injustice. And so that's what, you know, Sandra Blan shows. She could have died. And, after Sam Sr., it seems to me, he was out to get somebody, right, and she could have died in silence, right? Bell Hook says, I'm sorry, not Bell Hooks. Oh shoot. Oh, God. Oh, God. Yeah. As I said, you know, they would like to say that, you know, we can die in silence. And they'll say, we liked it, right? That we had no problem with it, right? But she fought back, Sandra Blan fought back. And it doesn't assure us that we will live, right? But at least we are, we are living in that moment in our human dignity, right? Demanding our dignity and our rights. And so, yes, and more recently, you know, I use, uh, stash and talk back interchangeably, sometimes, but I want to say that it is bold, it is audacious, is an expression of resistance to oppression, but it is also creative. And I think about it in our modern context, I think about representative Crockett, right? Who, who, who, when she was verbally insulted by representative, uh, green, my Taylor green, Marjorie Taylor green, uh, she was quite creative in her response and her talk back in her sass and using a little Asian bag built good body, right? So that has gone viral. Uh, so, so, so it is, it is that we will not be silenced in the face of oppression, right? That we will demand our dignity, we will assert our dignity and our humanity. And sometimes in very creative ways. And yes, it does not assure, uh, our, our survival, but hopefully that it, um, contributes to the survival of those who come after us. Yes. What surprised you most when you were writing this essay? What surprised me most was looking at the, uh, Jesus's final response to the woman, where he says it is because of your word, LaGos is the word, right? Too often we can inflate the story of the Canaanite woman in Matthew with the story in Mark's gospel. And we want to impose the great faith that Jesus, uh, imposes upon her or Matthew, imposes upon her and Matthew upon this story as well. But I was, I was pleasantly surprised when I look closely at that to see, he attributed, right? Her daughter's wholeness, right? To her word, right? To the power that resided in her. Right. Last question. What do you most want listeners to take away from your interpretation of the Syrophonician woman and her daughter's story in Mark 724 through 30? Yes. Uh, I think I want, uh, the other thing is a number of things that, uh, readers, depending on the reader's context, will take away. But I'd like, uh, to focus on just what I just, what I just stated in terms of Jesus's final word to her, is that each of us, right? If we believe we are created in the image of God, uh, however we name God, however we worship God or whatever religion we are, is that God created a God, uh, spirit God, she has placed in us, right? Power, right? Power resides in us and we can choose to develop that power, to use that power or not. But I believe divine power, power to, uh, metaphorically, move mountains, right? Power to effect change. There is power in our words, in our speech, and particularly in our collective, right? Speech and efforts. Thank you so much. I have, uh, really enjoyed the way that you have framed the Syrophonician woman's story and her daughter with her talk back and with that Sandra Blan and bringing it, making it contemporary for our listeners. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. That brings us to the end of this episode. Thanks for listening to Woman's Bible Talk, a podcast where woman's Bible readers and friends. If you enjoyed this podcast, please help spread the word on your social media platforms or by word of mouth with others who might be interested in this topic. Check out Woman's interpretations of the Bible, expanding the discourse at SBL Press or on Amazon.com to keep the conversation going. Music for Woman's Bible Talk is composed and performed by Dinman Turner Entertainment Group. The cover artwork for this podcast is Woman with Her Own Garden by Marlon John Jill. Support for this podcast was provided by a Louisville Institute sabbatical research grant. Peace. [Music]