Fringe Jesus

I preached last Sunday on the tendency Jesus had to hang out on the edges of towns and cities where, of course, edgy and marginalised people are to be found.
Here are the words…
Mark 7:24-37  Jesus on the margins   Sermon by Mart the Rev
I am interested in the context of the two healing stories from Jesus ministry that we heard this morning.  The first, the encounter with the Syro- Phoenician woman who badgered Jesus into offering just some of the crumbs from the table of the ‘Chosen People’ so that he would heal her daughter’s malady, and the second, the healing of the deaf man who could not speak clearly because of his disability.  Both stories are from the margins.  One, across the border in what we now know as Syria (an interesting place for Jesus to go!)  The other, in the region of the ten cities of the Decapolis.  The Decapolis was the name given to cities that the Greeks and then the Romans had developed over the centuries.  They were cities influenced more by these cultures than by the cultures of the natives of the regions in which they were located.  They were cosmopolitan cities and the population of these cities was mainly Gentile.  The only one of these cities mentioned in the gospels is Caesarea Philippi – and then only in reference to Jesus and the disciples visiting the villages nearby.