Insiders & Outsiders
Every community has people who are insiders and outsiders. It does not matter whether you are part of a group of people or by yourself; your particular characteristics, beliefs, race, skin color, education, wealth, and behavior judge you. Many will see you as either a winner or a loser.
If I were a Jew in Nazi Germany, for example, I would have been an “outsider” and required to wear a yellow Star of David on my clothes. If I were a Tutsi in Rwanda in the 1990s, I would have had an ID card identifying my race. If my skin color were a specific shade, it would designate me as a racial “outsider.”
However, who is inside and outside any culture is a matter of perspective. I have a friend in Tennessee who is an Anabaptist. He told me his church community intentionally lives as “outsiders.” They push away most of the modern secular culture in the United States. Being an outsider is their desired identity. We live in a world of suits and ties; tattoos and body piercings define one as an outsider. People choose to live as outsiders for different reasons; body art is just a means of “dressing” that differs from the rest of society. The boundaries around who is in and out shift and change constantly.
The Gospel record of Jesus’s life often blurred the lines between who was inside and outside. He often said those outside of society were actually on the inside. In his “outside-in” statements, the first would be last, and the last first. He rejected the outsider rules that rejected the poor, the broken, the sick, the disabled, and persons of a different race.
For those whom the community said were on the outside, Jesus opened his arms and heart wide in hospitality, far beyond what was acceptable at that time.
Jesus’s example during an encounter with an unnamed woman was a great teaching moment for me. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is passing through a gentile region of Tyre and Sidon when an unnamed gentile woman asks him to heal her daughter, who was possessed by an evil spirit. Being a male from the tribe of Judah, her people saw him as an outsider in their gentile land. But, he speaks to her as he being an Israelite insider. “It is not good to take the children’s food and give it to the dogs.”
(1) In Matthew’s account of this encounter, this woman’s outsider status is highlighted in even stronger terms. She was a Canaanite woman—a member of the people group Israel was commanded to expel from the land but didn’t many years earlier.
I was more familiar with a loving, welcoming Jesus and was shocked by what seemed like a very uncaring response. Matthew said the woman pleaded with Jesus to help her, yet “he did not answer her a word.”
(2) Is this the same Jesus who told of the good Samaritan who welcomed an outsider into his care? How is it that Jesus could ignore her cries for help? Or was He waiting for her to plead and keep pleading for her daughter’s needs? This woman was not discouraged by Him being slow to respond. She may have experienced many times how others treated her as an outsider. She loved her daughter, and after hearing news reports about Jesus, she was not giving up. She reminded me of other great negotiators in the Scriptures—Abraham, when he bargained with the heavenly visitors over the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah; Moses, who bargained with Jesus over destroying the people in the wilderness; and King Hezekiah, who bargained for more years of life—she said: “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
Matthew and Mark record Jesus’s delight at her response, which came from Faith. In Mark, Jesus is impressed simply by what she has said; “For this saying you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.” In Matthew, Yeshua acknowledges her extraordinary Faith; “O woman, great is your faith!”
For a long time, I did not realize the boldness and courage of this outsider and the gift of Jesus in allowing her to speak to him. A Gentile woman alone with a daughter did not have a very good position in first-century society, and I am sad to say that has not changed. As a Gentile and a woman, she was an alien invisible to the insider society. Her ‘outsider’ status was meager because she did not have a husband to represent her in the community. The number of men she has been with shows that life was not easy or secure. Yet, this woman stepped beyond the boundaries set by the insiders and, most likely, the outsiders to seek out Jesus for her daughter. Jesus speaks of her great Faith and determination.
This woman’s story demonstrates that the covenant given to Abraham then passed to Isaac, Jacob, and Jacob’s sons, overflowing to the outside. This woman, with great Faith, demonstrates this lesson more than others given inside Jesus’s circles. This story also enlarges the Father and Lamb’s Grace to the Gentile world.
We never have to worry that a blessing given to someone on the outside does not take away the blessings allotted to someone on the inside. Peter told the gentile Cornelius, “Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation, anyone who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God.”
(3) Beyond this ancient story, be encouraged if you feel like an outsider. For here, this woman, an outsider of outsiders, is the recipient of healing.
Read the full story in Mark 7:24-30. Matthew 15:21-28, and Acts 10:34-35.
To the Israelites & Gentiles today, we don’t know what DNA blood we have. Natural and Wild Branches must be grafted into the True Vine of Jesus. The Father will gather the scattered house of Jacob and adopt Gentiles into his Kingdom. There will be only one house of Israelites. After the heaven and earth are made new, Israel will enjoy a Jubilee given the final fulfillment of a fresh new “Promised Land.” It will be divided by Tribe and family [Ezekiel 48]. We all will live on this New Earth and come into one of the 12 Gates of the New Jerusalem to worship on the New Moon and Sabbaths [Isaiah 66:22-23] to sing and worship at the Father and Lamb’s Throne [Rev 22:1-3].
