In the Gospel reading set for Holy Communion today,
Mark 7.24-30, Jesus visits Tyre.
Tyre is one of the world’s oldest cities, her
ancient walls rising out of the Mediterranean, a jewel of the sea, a drop of
human creativity in the ocean.
It was famous for two things: firstly, purple dye.
The story goes that Tyre was founded by the god Melqart for his lover Tyrus.
One day they were taking a romantic stroll along the beach with her dog, when
it bit into a shell and its fangs dripped purple. Tyrus requested that Melqart
make her a dress in the same colour: he gathered up every sea snail he could
find, boiled them to extract the dye, and presented her with her prize. From
then, it became the choice of kings and queens and emperors: Mark (and John)
will report that at Jesus’ coronation as King of the Jews, the Romans will put
a crown on his head and a purple cloak on his shoulders, a Tyrian robe.
The other thing Tyre was famous for was high
quality wood from the cedar forests of Lebanon, that part of the mainland they
controlled. This wood made the best ships – Tyre had two harbours, one facing
north and the other south, and a fine merchant navy, crossing the Mediterranean,
founding colonies on her shores, including Carthage and Cadiz, through trade
not conquest, and even venturing out into the Atlantic – and the best temples.
David, king of Jerusalem, was friends with Hiram,
king of Tyre. When David made the arrangements for the temple his son Solomon
would build, he contracted Hiram to supply wood and purple yarn and cloth –
including the great curtain that hung in front of the Holy of Holies – in
exchange for wheat, Tyre possessing no arable land of its own.
Such alliances were often cemented by marriage,
including Solomon, and the later king Ahab, who married Jezebel, daughter of a
king of Tyre. Jezebel championed the worship of the gods and goddesses of the
Canaanite pantheon, reigning in tumult and eventually being thrown to her death
from a window, her blood licked up by dogs, reminiscent of the dripping fangs
of Tyrus’ dog.
No one could capture the island, though many tried.
Nebuchadnezzar besieged and captured Jerusalem but besieged and failed to take
Tyre. Again and again, they withstood enemy armies, until Alexander the Great.
They held out against his siege, too, until in frustration he had his army
throw great stones into the sea, building a causeway they could march along,
all the while the Tyrians throwing boulders and flaming arrows back at them.
Eventually, causeway complete and a mercenary navy recruited from Tyre’s treacherous
neighbours in Sidon, Alexander’s forces captured the city. The women and
children had already been evacuated by sea to Carthage, but the men were struck
down, including 2,000 who were crucified – the Romans weren’t the first or only
ones to use crucifixion to make a point.
The Greeks settled the city, the Romans following,
though all the while Tyre managed to emerge, Phoenix-like, from its own ashes –
the word Phoenician, meaning worker-of-purple-red-dye, and phoenix, or
purple-red bird, share the same root.
To this city, now connected to the mainland, Jesus
came. Trying to lie low, the word gets out. A Hellenised woman of Syrophoenician
origin (that is, the Phoenicians of this coast, rather than the Phoenicians of
their daughter colonies around the Mediterranean) comes to see him. Her young
daughter has been taken captive by an unclean spirit, and she begs him to cast
it out.
The following exchange is enigmatic, a weaving of
several threads of yarn. In saying that it is not good to take the children’s
bread and throw it to the dogs, Jesus may well be making the point (his own, or
the view of his disciples) that he must attend to his own people before the
neighbouring peoples. But the relationship between them has always been more
dynamic than that. Perhaps we might hear, in his words about throwing down and
dogs, in this Tyrian context, a concern about violence. He makes the point that
young children should be fattened up first. Perhaps he is implying that the
casting out of demons is a violent business – later, in Mark 9.14-29, we see
Jesus cast such a spirit out of a boy, who is convulsed terribly, such that, at
first, he appears left dead – and it would be better to wait until the young
girl was bigger, stronger.
But the mother responds by pointing out that even
the dogs get to eat the crumbs that fall from the table. Crumbs falling is far
gentler than bread thrown or cast out. Perhaps she is indicating her trust that
Jesus can cast out the occupying spirit without causing further violence to her
little daughter.
And Jesus says, It is done, as you understood it
could be when you came to me.
Jesus comes, not as an invading conqueror – not
making a way, where there was no way, for control over another's autonomy and
dignity – but hidden; proclaimed by a whisper on the wind; to restore us to our
own self, and to one another, and to the God who made us in and for love: you
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your
soul and all your strength, and love your neighbour as yourself. He treats all
with gentleness and compassion, with concern for their dignity and choice and
partnership.
He comes that we might all be Phoenicians,
phoenixes, rising to new life from the ashes.
