We usually think of God as a being wholly different from us, unknowable except to the extent God has revealed something about God's nature, a being completely beyond us. All true, of course, but I wonder if we sometimes fail to grasp the importance of the "exception," because one thing that God has revealed to us is that God-- the second Person of the Trinity-- became human. God didn't just become human (while remaining divine), God stayed human. God was born human, died a human, was risen from the dead as a human (with a resurrection body) and ascended into heaven as a human where Jesus sits-- as a human who is also divine-- at the right hand of the Father. We might keep that in mind as we reflect on today's Gospel reading (Mk 7: 24-30). In the reading we are told that Jesus has travelled to Gentile territory, where He is recognized by a Gentile (Marks says she is Syrophoenician--from coastal Syria but of Phoenician origin) woman who seeks healing for her daughter. Jesus initially declines the request, in particularly harsh terms, using a reference to Gentiles that the Jews sometimes used-- "dogs"-- and used not in a positive sense. He says, essentially, that His gifts of healing are for the "children," the Jewish people, and not for the "dogs," the Gentiles. It could have ended there, but the Gentile woman won't take no for an answer. She'd got a very sick child, after all, and she isn't intimidated by the ethnic put-down or the fact that she, as a woman, is taking on a powerful man. She's a strong woman. Jesus seems to interact with a lot of strong women. She turns the "dogs" reference back at Jesus, and reminds Him that even dogs get table scraps. That's all she wants. She believes that just a simple word from Jesus will heal, to jesus nothing more difficult than giving a dog a table scrap. By pushing back she gets what she wants. Her daughter is healed from afar, one of the two such distance healings by Jesus in Mark's Gospel (the story of the Roman centurion's servant is the other one). So, like other human beings, Jesus is someone whose mind can be changed, who can be persuaded by reason or by simple persistence. That hasn't changed. Jesus in heaven is still the same person that He was here on earth. He still seeks a relationship with us, a relationship that is honest, genuine, true. Jesus wants us to be in a relationship with Him that is like the interaction He had with the Gentile woman with the sick daughter, a relationship where we can speak our minds, and push back if necessary. Otherwise we don't really have a relationship at all. We simply are servants, not brothers and sisters, fellow sons and daughters of God. We might remember to talk to Jesus as we would talk to a great friend or sibling, lovingly speaking the truth, voicing our fears, frustrations, even anger. We might ask for what we truly need and want. We won't always get it, of course, but the story of the Gentile woman proves to us that we have a human God, a God whose mind can be changed.