The show at the top of the prohibited viewing list was Three’s Company, the sitcom starring John Ritter, Suzanne Somers and others. Though innocent by today’s standards, Three’s Company portrayed a man living with two women, which I assumed was the reason my parents didn’t want us kids watching it. But looking back, the content of the humor was likely the real reason for the prohibition. Again, innocent by today’s standards, the show made great use of the “double entendre,” a figure of speech — or even conversation — that carries two meanings: one straightforward and innocent, the other is more suggestive and risqué.

There is a kind of double entendre in the Gospel as well — not in a risqué way, but still in a subtly humorous way. This plays out in the seventh chapter of Mark’s Gospel, when Jesus traveled far north to the district of Tyre, presumably to take a break. The scene occurs in verses 24-30, where Jesus is visiting a particular house, hoping not to be noticed by anyone, when a pagan woman approaches Him and asks Him to drive a demon from her daughter. Jesus responds, “Let the children be fed first. For it is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” That might sound like a harsh response — and in some ways it was, especially when you understand how dogs were viewed in ancient Jewish culture.

In ancient Israel, during the time of Jesus and earlier, dogs were mostly wild animals that traveled in packs scavenging for food. They were often a nuisance and sometimes even dangerous. Some Jewish farmers did keep dogs for work purposes, but it was fairly uncommon for Jewish families to have pet dogs living in the home — not unheard of, but rare.

The pagan world, on the other hand, kept dogs as household pets much more often — in fact, probably more often than not. So the woman in this passage, who was “Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth,” responded to Jesus’ gentle rebuff by saying, “Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.” And there is the double entendre! Both Jesus and the woman were using “dogs” metaphorically in their exchange, but what each meant by the term carried very different meanings.

Jesus replies to the woman’s ingenious response, “For saying this, you may go. The demon has gone out of your daughter.” Why did Jesus respond positively to her request after first rebuffing her? Well, she was persistent — a trait often praised in Scripture — but she was also clever, and we see that quality praised in the Gospel in at least one other place as well.

In the 16th chapter of Luke, Jesus tells a parable about the dishonest steward who was accused of wasting his master’s assets. Facing dismissal, the steward cleverly reduces the debts of his master’s clients to secure their favor. In the parable, the master commends the steward’s foresight: The owner then gave his devious employee credit for being enterprising! Why? Because the worldly take more initiative than the other-worldly when it comes to dealing with their own kind (Lk 16:8). Here is the moral of the story: if we really want something from God — if we are fervently in need of Him answering a prayer — then we can become creative in how we ask; we can be creative in how we pray. The Gospels portray Jesus as appreciating ingenuity and cleverness, even when it comes to asking for things, just as the Greek Syrophoenician woman was.