Most of us walk away when someone in authority says no. She persisted because love refuses to negotiate. It finds a way through.
I woke up this morning to my daily practices, including reading my Bible and listening for what God wants me to hear. It’s tough to discern the message when our scriptures are so old, and their cultures are so foreign. Jewish customs and first-century dynamics don’t always translate cleanly to a Western mind.
Not first thing on a Tuesday morning.
Mark 7. Jesus is tired. He wants peace. He slips away with his disciples to the region of Tyre, Gentile territory, and tries to disappear inside a house. Then a woman finds him, walks in, kneels at his feet, and asks him to heal her demon-afflicted daughter. She’s not Jewish. She’s Greek. Syro-Phoenician by birth. A Canaanite woman. So how exactly did she make it inside? It’s puzzling.
And bold.
She took a huge risk by entering a house where a Rabbi was trying to rest, only to interrupt him. An unclean woman took a chance for her sick daughter, and she somehow made it through to Jesus? How? For argument’s sake, does it really matter how? She’s there.
So that’s where this encounter gets sticky, theologically speaking. Two sets of theologians dig in on this story with two vastly different ideas. The first camp says Jesus was kind. They point to the language of the day, the diminutive Greek word for dogs, the rabbinic style of debate. He was engaging her, not dismissing her, loving her. The second camp says Jesus was fully human, tired and shaped by his culture, and his words reflect that reality. Harsh and jagged. Fully human.
I’m stuck between both camps because I think they’re both right and miss the point entirely.
I’m no theologian, so I really can’t and won’t argue about who’s right. What we don’t know is what Jesus was thinking in that moment. All we have to go on are Mark’s remembered words and the exchange. That’s more than enough. Jesus was moved by this woman. It’s supposed to make us feel uncomfortable. I know I certainly do.
Here’s the thing: in the end, it wasn’t what Jesus said to her that mattered. It was how she handled it and what she did with it. She didn’t let go. She didn’t argue. She walked straight into an uncomfortable conversation, refusing to quit, because her daughter was sick. Jesus could heal her. She was a mother, protecting her daughter. She got this far and wasn’t about to back down.
Desperate love is like that. It refuses to negotiate. It reads the room, decides the odds are less than favorable, then finds a way through anyway.
It would’ve been so much easier for her to walk away. Most of us do. A leader says no and we defer, assuming they see more clearly, know better, carry more wisdom than we do. That’s occasionally true. And occasionally it costs us everything. We confuse institutional pressure with correction and leave the room believing we were the problem.
I’ve done it. More than once. I’ve walked away from hard conversations I should’ve stayed in, for people I should’ve fought harder for. I’m still learning the difference between humility and surrender.
She got it. I’m still learning it. Love doesn’t wait for permission. It finds the crack in the door and pushes through anyway.
Standing up for the right thing can feel like you’re getting nowhere. That’s okay. You do it because it’s right, not because it’s working.
Today, instead of walking away, I stay. I show up differently, move forward, love well and stick around to repair what can be repaired.
Love God.
Love others.
This is not a negotiation.
This is a way of living.
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