This weekend our church was looking at Mark 7. This is a challenging chapter on numerous fronts. It shows Jesus in a controversy over purity rituals in which he argues for upholding God’s law rather than setting it aside in favor of human tradition. And then, in the explanation of purity issues to the crowds and disciples, Mark tells us that Jesus sets aside the Law as it pertains to dietary restrictions.
The reorientation of purity is telling: the story of Israel is being transformed. With the advent of the Kingdom of God, the posture of the people is being definitively defined as a people whose purity can be maintained without retreating from the world, a people who look within for the sources of impurity and are thereby freed to mingle themselves freely with the world without fear of contagion. In fact, as the larger story shows, the people of God are being prepared to carry on Jesus’ mission of reversing contagion: when pure and impure touch, the power of purity proves to be the greater.
The stories on either side of this purity episode frame the narrative so as to provide an alternative vision of the power of purity in God’s dominion.
The antecedent story is a short, summary narrative describing Jesus’ healing power. In contrast 
to the concerns to keep one’s hands to oneself and carefully cleaned that we see in Mark 7, this story at the end of Mark 6 is one of abundant contact: people wanted to touch Jesus, even the hem of his robe, and as many who did found healing. This is a picture, however underdeveloped, of an alternative story of power from the story of segregation for purity’s sake. Whereas the latter trades on a vision of uncleanness as the greater power against which the people of God must huddle together and from which they must flee, the story of healing by touch tells a story of a greater power than the power of uncleanness, sin, death, and decay. The power of God is at hand.
Subsequent to the story of uncleanness, Jesus goes into the region of Tyre and Sidon and, what do you know? actually runs into a woman from that region! We are told that Jesus wanted to remain unknown, but that he was not able to hide. Of course he couldn’t hide! The light has been lit, not to be kept hidden–nothing is hidden except to be revealed. The power of the kingdom cannot be contained, the story of separation and segregation is giving way to the mission of God.
The interaction between Jesus and the woman is deeply troubling–doesn’t he basically call her a Gentile dog? “It’s not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs,” he says to the woman who is calling for aid for her daughter. But when this faithful woman
is willing to appeal for the crumbs from the table, Jesus grants the request. And then? The conversion. The healed one is no longer dog, but child (τὸ παιδίον)–like those at the table (τῶν τεκνῶν).
How do we understand the story of the mission of God? It demands to be understood as a story that turns the narrative of the world on its head. Too often, those who proclaim faith in Jesus view our position in the world as the small, persecuted, powerless minority, striving as best we can to plug our little Christian narratives into the overwhelming narrative of sin, death, and corruption. And when we see ourselves as so small, and our power as so slight, we perceive our calling as one of making holy enclaves, to protect ourselves from the impurities and powers of the world.
How different is our posture when we see that the big Story, the True Story, is the story of a kingdom come with power–a power that does not succumb to the powers of the world, either by imitation or by retreat. We do not come as agents of a small story into the overwhelming true story of the real world; no, we enter as agents of the true story, messengers of the true king, whose story ultimately determines the outcome of the little stories of power, separateness, and segregation.
If we touch the other, what will happen? Will we become impure, or do we trust that the healing and embracing power of God will go forth?
I read this with nostalgia. This was the Story you articulated @ our Fuller orientation evening. It was this articulation that affirmed my decision to advance my understanding and participation in The Story, @ Fuller.