One of my favorite stories in the Bible is the encounter between Jesus and Syrophoenician woman. It is a narrative that is rarely preached about in the Christian tradition. Why you may ask? To acknowledge the truthfulness of this story one must come to grips with the fact that the Son of God, Son of Man, Son of David, the Prince of Peace, the Messiah, Immanuel, Master, Light of the World and Rabbi was biased.

What was the offense of Jesus? He called the Syrophoenician woman a dog-one of the vilest ethnic slurs you could call someone in those days.

The story as told by the writers of the Gospels of Mark and Matthew describes the Syropoenician woman as stalking Jesus and his disciples in an effort to obtain a miracle for her sick daughter. Like body guards that shoo away admiring fans from a rock star, the disciples were successful in keeping this distressed mother away from Jesus. At some point, Jesus even asked his brothers who was this woman that had been hounding them for days. The disciples dismissed her as just another admirer and pursuer of a celebrity. They told Jesus he had better things to do than worry himself about a lowly peasant woman.

Jesus cannot take this this incessant pest who calls out his name every day any longer. He finally confronts his stalker.

The woman falls down at the feet of Jesus and begs him to cast the demons out of her possessed daughter. Jesus replies, “Let the children first be fed, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” The woman responds, “Yes Lord, yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Jesus realizing his mistake after being confronted by the woman of his bias retorts, “For this saying you may go your way, the demon has left your daughter.”

Let’s give Jesus some credit by having this difficult conversation. For a Jew to dialogue with any woman particularly a Gentile in public was unheard of in Jesus’ day. In many ways, Jesus cracks the glass ceiling by giving a member from a subordinate group an audience.

What was Jesus really saying to this pagan woman when he essentially said, “Why should I let a dog like you eat at my table?” He meant that his message and ministry was only for the Jewish people clothed in ethnic exclusion and bigotry. He was gravitating toward his in-group. The folks who looked like him, talked like him and acted like him. He had an amygdala hijack. His emotional brain overwhelmed his thinking brain.

What makes this encounter with the Syrophoenician woman even more noteworthy; it was the first account in Holy Scripture of Jesus ever changing his mind about something.
 
Unlike most of us, Jesus shines the flashlight on his unconscious bias. He brings it into the conscious realm by not only recognizing it but doing something about it. He learned to listen to folks whose stories he did not agree with. But most importantly, he allowed a different reality to enhance his own perspective and invited those experiences to have a seat at his table.
 
Workplaces are like tables. We make decisions everyday as to who sits in our workplaces because those seating arrangements decide what gets talked about, how it gets talked about, what is going to happen and what is not.

The encounter with the Syrophoenician woman was not the last inclusion example Jesus modeled for his followers. Probably the most memorable one came during his last days on earth at the Last Supper with his disciples.

His message was a simple one. When it comes to who gets invited to our workplace tables, it is not by invitation only. It is whosoever will let them come.