Village Shepherd

I watched a television documentary recently on gladiators in ancient Rome. I've always found it particularly difficult to understand how scenes of such carnage could possibly be crowd-pullers, family outings of the time.

But gladiators of the day, fighting each other sometimes to the death with a variety of vicious weapons, was entertainment provided by those in authority for the masses and was greatly enjoyed by the masses and their children.

One reason why such entertainment was so greatly enjoyed was that characteristics which were thought to be the nearest to God were those of valour, courage, strength, ruthlessness, and good fighting ability. All those qualities of course, were seen in the arena. And there was no question that in a military nation such as that of ancient Rome, those sorts of qualities were essential.

But when Christians first came on the scene, they held different qualities to be important. Suddenly, for the first time, compassion was preached and practised by Christians. To the ancient Romans this was sedition, an attempt to undermine the Roman empire, hence the gruesome punishments for Christians in the arena. Christians really were considered to be criminals, and the crowd roared approval when such criminals were made to face lions or gladiators.

From a distance of some seventeen or eighteen hundred years or more, it's difficult for us to be able to understand the culture of those days. The best I can do is look on as a spectator and wonder at the mindset of people who enjoyed violence as their major form of entertainment.

But the documentary I watched, rather cleverly compared scenes in the arena of ancient Rome with scenes in the bullfight arenas of today's Spain. There, in Spain, the crowd were also enjoying the spectacle of violence, and the camera panned to a priest enjoying a front seat view. None of the people at the bullfight had any compunction or problems with their sport, it was simply their form of entertainment. And for many people in our country today, violence is enjoyed through video games or films or horror stories or detective novels.

So perhaps today we enjoy violence but only at a safe and comfortable distance. And just as it's difficult for us to understand the violent culture of ancient Rome, so it's also difficult for us to understand the culture of the New Testament, at a distance of 2,000 years.

Jesus had slipped away to the region of Tyre, on the coast of the Mediterranean in gentile country, and the text implies that his intention was to escape the crowds. But even the gentiles had heard of him, and a gentile woman was desperate about her sick daughter. She treated Jesus with great homage, and begged him to heal her little girl.

But astonishingly, Jesus refused. He said to her, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." Looking at his remarks from the distance of the 21st century, they sound incredibly rude and brutal.

It's difficult for us to understand the feelings of revulsion which Jews had towards gentiles. Jews only spoke to gentiles when it couldn't be avoided, such as in matters of trade. And when a Jew had contact with a gentile, that Jew became unclean (Acts 10:28) and so unable to take part in any social gatherings or any sort of worship. And it was unheard of for a gentile woman to approach any Jewish man.

So perhaps it isn't so surprising that Jesus responded so rudely to the woman. In fact, he was using a well-known saying of the day, and given the culture of the time, the woman was not surprised or offended or taken aback by his words.

She accepted them immediately, perhaps only surprised that she hadn't been thrown out on her neck but that Jesus had responded to her at all. Anyway, despite Jesus' words and attitude, the woman wasn't about to give up. She countered Jesus' argument with an argument of her own, and she managed to do it in a neat and gentle and humourous way.

"Even the dogs under the table," she said, "eat the children's crumbs."

And it seems that Jesus then realised for the first time that his mission wasn't to be solely to the Jews, and that he must go also to gentiles. He had to begin to think the unthinkable, for God. Through his encounter with this woman, Jesus had to begin to question the Jewish attitude towards those of other races. And then he had to take a decision which required great courage, because he knew that if he associated with gentiles he would be despised by his fellow Jews and spend much of his time in a state of uncleanness.

Being Jesus, once he'd made the decision he went into it in a big way. He not only healed the woman's daughter, but as soon as he returned from Tyre he went into the gentile Decapolis region to continue his ministry. And the very next story is about the healing of a deaf, gentile man.

Thinking the unthinkable is difficult, because it always feels as though the unthinkable is directly opposed to God. And those who dare to think the unthinkable nearly always find themselves, as Jesus did, rejected by the establishment, especially in the early days when the unthinkable is very new and strange.

It was once unthinkable that slaves should be freed. It was once unthinkable that marching into someone else's country and taking it over, might be morally wrong. It was once unthinkable that a country could or should survive without capital punishment. It was once unthinkable that women could be priests.

Perhaps the most unthinkable item exercising the Western Church today, is that of gay priests. It may be that homosexuality is totally against God's will and totally against nature, and that gay priests should be stamped out. Or it may be that God has called men and women who happen to be gay, to serve him as his priests, just as he's called straight men and women. But until, like Jesus, we dare to begin to think the unthinkable, we shall never know.