Conversation Starters

1. Read Mark 7:1-37.

2. In what ways do we “abandon the command of God to hold on to human tradition (7:8)”?

3. What do we learn about Jesus from his debate with the Pharisees?

4. Why does Jesus initially seem to respond so harshly to the Syrophoenician woman? How might she have felt?

5. Contrast Mark’s portrayal of the Pharisees versus the Syrophoenician woman. How is the way Jesus deals with “outsiders” radically different from what’s normal? What would it look like for you to act similarly?

Title: Jesus Receives
Reference: Mark 7:1-13
Speaker: Bill Gorman, BillG@cckc.church

Corban was similar to the concept of deferred giving. Today a person may will property to a charity or institution at his or her death, though retaining possession over the property and the proceeds or interest accruing from it until then. In the case of Corban, a person could dedicate goods to God and withdraw them from ordinary use, although retaining control over them himself. In the example of v. 11, a son declares his property Corban, which at his death would pass into the possession of the temple. In the meantime, however, the son retains control over the property — and his control deprives his parents of the support that otherwise would hare been derived from the property in their old age. ~ James Edwards

Jesus's reply sounds shocking to us: "It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs". In the Old Testament, the Israelites were often called God's children. Conversely, Jews of Jesus's day would sometimes refer to Gentiles as dogs. Jesus's Jewish disciples might well have nodded along as Jesus spoke. But rather than recoiling at the insult, the woman picks up Jesus's metaphor, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table". Jesus has just come from the Pharisees, who were trying to teach Jesus a lesson about how his disciples should eat. He's called them "hypocrites"... who have no idea what they're talking about. But this woman understands what the Pharisees could not. She knows she has no right to sit at Jesus's table, and it's precisely those who know they have no right that Jesus welcomes in. ~ Rebecca McLaughlin, Jesus Through the Eyes of Women.

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

The problem is inside of us, not outside of us.

– A new heart, not more rules

Sin is not the bad decisions we make. Sin is the disease inside of us that causes us to make bad, self-destructive decisions. ~ Micheal Graham and Jim Davis, The Great DeChurching

– A new community, not more exclusion

– New practices, not more empty routines

Practicing the Way by John Mark Comer.