Welcome to Issue #79 of Biblia Luna, the (approximately) weekly newsletter about the intersection of mental illness and faith, written by a pastor who lives with depression. I put the holy back in melancholy! If you find this newsletter helpful or interesting, please consider sharing it with someone else. It might help them too. And it will help me grow my audience, and reach more people. Thank you!
Hopefully Tomorrow: Crumbs
There’s a story found in the gospels called the Story of the Syrophoenician Woman (or the Canaanite Woman, depending on which gospel you’re reading). The version in Mark goes like this:
24 From there [Jesus] set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, 25 but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. 26 Now the woman was a gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27 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.” 28 But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” 29 Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” 30 And when she went home, she found the child lying on the bed and the demon gone. (Mark 7:24-30, New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition)
Now, this story is very problematic to understand, in part because Jesus appears to be uncaring and even racist. But setting that aside for the moment, consider this: the woman asks for crumbs. She asks Jesus for crumbs.
Now, that could be seen as a sign of her deep faith. To her, Jesus is so powerful that even his crumbs would be enough to cure her daughter! And indeed, that ends up being true. But there’s another way to think about it.
This woman was an outcast. She knew Jesus was a Jew, and she knew that her people were seen as outsiders, even enemies, by the Jews. On top of that, she was a woman. She expected that she could not command the attention, respect, or compassion of a Jewish man. She had the fortitude and confidence to respond to Jesus’ rebuff, but even then, she asked only for crumbs.
And I wonder how many people in our world today ask only for crumbs, because they know that they won’t receive more. How many times do people of color still today only ask for crumbs? How many times do women ask for crumbs? How many times do gay or trans people ask for crumbs? How many times do people with mental illness ask for crumbs? “Just give us something, please.” “Just respect us as human, please.” How many groups of people do this, because they know that they’re not considered worthy of more, because they know they’ll just be considered “uppity”?
And sometimes it can be internal as well. Our self-esteem can be so shredded that we honestly think we don’t deserve more than crumbs. I don’t know what it’s like to be part of a minority group, but I would guess that this kind of self-effacement happens. And I know it happens with mental illness. I’m not worthy of more than crumbs, but please give me a little. Just let me have parity with my medical care. Treat my illness like a physical illness. Don’t treat this like a moral failure. Don’t blame “people like me” when a mass shooting happens. And so forth.
And even with God it can feel like that sometimes. Sometimes it feels like God has only given us crumbs. And yet – as I said earlier, the “crumbs” that Jesus gave the woman were more than enough. The crumbs were enough to heal her daughter, give her exactly what she needed. I wonder if the crumbs God gives us today are also enough.
In my faith tradition, we share Holy Communion weekly. When we do that, we call it a “meal,” yet from a nutritional viewpoint it’s not much of a meal. Just a small morsel of bread and a sip of wine. Basically, crumbs. Yet we proclaim in faith that this tiny meal of crumbs is the gift of Jesus’ body and blood, the gift of God’s very presence in our lives. And that is enough. We don’t need to each eat a loaf of bread and drink a jug of wine – what looks like crumbs are enough.
What if this were really true? What if God really gave us as much as we needed, even those of us with strikes against us in life, for whatever reason? And what if we used that to reach out and help provide more than crumbs to those in our world who need it? I wonder how that might change the world.
Harvest Full of Hope
Harvest Full of Hope is an annual Mental Health conference held in the Lehigh Valley. This year’s conference will be held at Steelstacks in Bethlehem on Tuesday, October 15. I’ve attended in the past, and have found it to be inspiring and helpful. I plan to be there again this year, learn from some great speakers, and network with some of the vendors. Click here for more information. Maybe I’ll see you there!
This Week’s Question
I’d really like to grow a conversation from this newsletter. So please consider leaving a comment with your answers to the questions I pose each week. This week’s question is based on the gospel story I shared — in it, the woman makes an important point about dogs to try to persuade Jesus. So my question for you is:
What animal do you love, and what’s one special thing about them?
Biblia Blessing
The God of all consolation bless us in every way, grant us hope all the days of our life, restore us to health and grant us salvation, fill our heart with peace, and lead us to eternal life. Almighty God bless us, the Father, the + Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
My cat Lola feels like the Holy Spirit. She is always with me, night and day, giving me comfort and peace.