Did Jesus Ever Need to be Spanked?

I ask the question because of the text I have been looking at for this coming Sunday’s sermon (Mark 7: 24 – 37) and because I want to share one of my favorite paintings.

The Blessed Virgin Chastises the Infant Jesus Before Three Witnesses: Andre Breton, Paul Eluard and the Painter (1926) was painted by the German artist Max Ernst, a leading figure among the Dada and Surrealist movements.  In it we see Mary, the mother of Jesus, spanking her firstborn son – who has apparently been a very naughty boy. His halo has fallen to the floor.  In the background Ernst and his friends turn away. Perhaps they are uncomfortable seeing this.

Indeed, it is discomforting picture.  Most of us are probably not very comfortable with the idea that Jesus might have needed to be spanked (or that he might have needed any other sort of corporal or non-corporal punishment whatever.)  And this is probably because we tend to think of Jesus in his divine nature.  Jesus, as the perfect, God incarnate God-man, seems to us incapable having any sort of blemish or fault, incapable of any sort of behavior that might need correction – or, heaven forbid, punishment.

But in thinking of Jesus that way, we run the risk of forgetting that he was also fully and completely human.  And with that comes lots of potential discomfort for his followers.  Being human makes him … vulnerable.   Could Jesus read?  Did Jesus need to learn?  Did Jesus ever need to be spanked?

In the text before me, the very human Jesus suddenly leaves the Galilean hillside and finds himself in the coastal city of Tyre – a gentile community. There he is confronted by a Gentile woman – specifically a Syrophoenician woman whose daughter has been afflicted by a demon.  She begs for Jesus, whom she recognizes as an exorcist and healer, to drive the demons from her daughter.  But, instead of reacting with compassion, Jesus insults the woman, saying, “First let the children eat all they want for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”

Did Jesus accept the common attitude of Jews in the first century A.D. that all non-Jews were filthy, unclean dogs?  Was Jesus guilty of racism?

Many commentators make the strange suggestion that because Jesus used (or that Mark records Jesus using) a Greek word that translates as “little dogs” that he was being cute.  Aww, look at the little puppies. But that’s hardly possible. Dogs were not kept as house pets. They were not cute…

Others suggest that Jesus was using a verbal technique known as “peirastic irony” – that his comments were a sort of test for her and that he expected her  to demonstrate that she understood what he really meant by correcting his ironic statement.  In this interpretation, he didn’t really think of her as a “dog” but expected her to show the truth of his underlying teaching with her own witty riposte.

And this may be what the author Mark is doing with the passage – but I hardly think it an appropriate interpretation of Jesus’ remark in and of itself.  A practiced and devoted disciple may have understood Jesus expectation (if this is a periastic ironic comment) and have been able to respond in turn.  But would this woman – a stranger to Jesus, who came to him in desperation and fear for the life of her daughter have been able to understand the irony and then be able to respond in kind?  I don't think so.

I’m not yet sure how to understand this passage. 

But I think that Jesus may have needed, at least on this occasion, some corrective discipline.