Jesus and the “foreigner” in Mk 7,24-30

Abstract

The Lord, as he is called by the syro-phoenician, is presented in the pericope of Mk 7:24-30 as the true stranger and even dependent upon the welcome of another. Among the places where Jesus was in his public life, acting against the forces of evil, stands out his passage through lands not intended to be spaces for the reception of the Messiah. In a relatively simple text, with the participation of a few characters, a liberating and enlightening dialogue is developed capable of showing the full opening of the message of God, which generates life, for the reception of those who are its recipients. However, this universality, characteristic of the message, sometimes runs up against human limits, particularly in its announcers, and becomes a source of oppression and exclusion of the different. Here dialogue is a determining factor so that the announcers of the message open themselves to the novelty of welcoming the other in order not to betray the first vocation of the Divine Word, the generation of the Good, of the Kingdom of God, and not of the evil of the “anti-kingdom”.