We continue our every-Sunday-celebration of the 30th anniversary of Binding The Strong Man, Ched Myers’ political reading of Mark’s Gospel.
The story of the Syrophoenician woman bears certain affinities with its counterparts in the Jewish cycle. She, like the hemorrhaging woman, demonstrates inappropriately assertive female behavior that is vindicated. The parallel with the Jairus story goes beyond the common petition on behalf of ailing daughters at home. Both these episodes articulate feeding-symbolics that are carefully correlated to Jesus’ feedings of the masses in the wilderness. Jesus’ somewhat anticlimactic instructions in the aftermath of his dramatic raising of Jairus’s daughter were for those present to “give her something to eat” (Mk 5:43). In like fashion, Jesus instructs his disciples in the first feeding to “give the crowd something to eat” (Mk 6:37). Similarly, Jesus tell the gentile woman that “the children must first be satisfied” (Mk 7:27 chortastenai)–which satisfaction has indeed already been reported in Mk 6:42 (“they all ate and were satisfied,” ephagon pantes kai echortastesan)! This is how Mark prepares the way for the fulfillment of the Syrophoenician woman’s request–the feeding and satisfaction of the gentiles–which will indeed shortly take place (same verb, Mk 8:4,8). Continue reading “The Cornerstone to the New Social Order”
From the introduction to the fabulous resource “
By Ruby Sales, Another Love Letter From The Front Porch, August 31, 2018)
From Rev. Sonny R. Graves, pastor at New Spirit UCC, who posted this on Facebook last week during a pilgrimage to the U.S./Mexico border with the 
By Rhonda Newby-Torres
By 
This week Rev. Traci Blackmon offered this prayer on the Mexico side of the U.S. border wall with a group of about 80 sojourning with the United Church of Christ’s 
Radical Discipleship 