Readings of the day: Isaiah 56:1, 6-7; Psalm 67:2-3, 5, 6, 8; Romans 11:13-15; Matthew 15:21-28
To the extent that we
welcome those who are excluded and estranged, we heal divisions in our world
and in our Church. We become more perfectly, as we pray in our Eucharistic
Prayer at Mass, “one body; one spirit in Christ.” We might say, as Jesus says
to the Canaanite woman in our Gospel reading, “Let it be done for you as you
wish.” Welcome, those who are excluded; welcome, those who do not “fit in”; welcome, sinners.
Welcome into the real presence of Christ. Welcome into the one body of Christ.
Who among us has ever experienced not
belonging; not “fitting in” to a social group or even within the Church? Have any
of us ever excluded others from groups to which we belong, for whatever reason?
Our Gospel reading today begins with
Jesus and his disciples going into “the region of Tyre and Sidon”‒ pagan,
non-Jewish territory. Can we not imagine Jesus and his disciples, as Jews,
being excluded or simply ignored by the majority Gentiles near Tyre and Sidon?
Can we fault Jesus and his disciples if, amid their not “fitting in” among the
people of Tyre and Sidon, they wanted to return to a more comfortable social
environment; to focus their ministry on “the lost sheep of the house of Israel”?
More broadly, today’s Gospel reading occurs
immediately after Jesus has scolded the religious leaders of his time, the
Pharisees and scribes, for excluding those who do not follow their
interpretation of the Jewish Law to the letter. This section of Matthew’s
Gospel is all about who is included in and who is excluded from the faith
community, a great controversy in Jesus’ time and in the time of the earliest
Christians. Who is “in” and who is “out”?
In “the region of Tyre and Sidon,” Jesus
and his disciples, probably already outside their cultural and religious
comfort zone, encounter “a Canaanite woman” who is clearly “out”; clearly does
not belong to the social and religious group of Jesus and his disciples, let
alone in her own social environment. There are several reasons for which the
Canaanite woman in today’s Gospel reading might not have belonged socially
and religiously. First, she is a woman. Women had few social rights at the
time: They could not own property (in fact they were considered property of
their fathers and then their husbands); they had no authority in their faith
communities, whether Jewish or Gentile; they had no right to vote or even to work
outside their homes… Second, she is a Gentile, surrounded by Jews: Jesus and
his disciples. Third, she is quite simply annoying! And so Jesus’ disciples
want to be rid of her. “She keeps calling out after us,” they complain.
At first, it seems that Jesus is
receptive to his disciples’ discomfort with this annoying Canaanite woman. “I
was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” Jesus says. Even more offensively,
even for Jesus’ time, he says to the woman, “It is not right to take the food
of the children and throw it to the dogs.”
Would we not be aghast if someone, even
Jesus perhaps, were to insult another in this way? I wonder: Were Jesus’
disciples offended by his insult of the Canaanite woman? “How dare you call her a dog?” one of them might have asked (and
probably would have asked had our Gospel story happened today). But then my question
becomes this: Should Jesus’ disciples
have been offended by his harsh words to the woman? To what extent, in this
“living parable” in our Gospel, does the attitude of the Canaanite woman become
a contrast to that of Jesus’ disciples’ as to who belongs; who “fits in”
socially and religiously and who does not?
The Canaanite woman, as well as Jesus’
disciples and Jesus himself, are among those who do not belong; do not “fit
in.” And yet the ways in which the woman, the disciples, and Jesus respond to
their not belonging differ. The disciples try to exclude the Canaanite woman
from their “in” group; the only place they feel any sense of belonging and
comfort: their communion with Jesus. The woman’s faith is so great as to be
annoying. It matters less to her that she is among those who do not “fit in”
than that she knows Jesus to be “Lord”; to be the one who can heal her
daughter.
And Jesus leaves himself open (perhaps
deliberately, for the sake of furthering the conversation?) to her witty retort:
“Please, Lord… Even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their
masters.” Jesus recognizes the woman’s faith, not primarily the fact she is a
Canaanite, or a woman, or how annoying she is, or how uncomfortable he might have
been in Gentile territory. “Let it be done for you as you wish,” Jesus says to
the woman. “And the woman’s daughter was
healed from that hour,” we hear from Matthew’s Gospel.
And so I ask again: Who among us has
ever experienced not belonging; not “fitting in”? Have any of us ever excluded
others from social groups to which we belong? Have we ever responded to our own
discomfort; our own exclusion, as Jesus does in our Gospel reading, by
nevertheless including others who may be even more excluded than some of us
are? Or have we responded to our own exclusion, if we have experienced it, by
excluding others? Perhaps some of us have been bullied at school or at work.
Perhaps some of us have been ridiculed for our Catholic faith. Perhaps some of
us have experienced divisions within our own families. What is our response to
these forms of exclusion? Do we exclude in turn or do we respond with kindness;
by including others; by befriending others; by seeking one another out as
sisters and brothers in Christ?
Let us take the example of the Church. Who is
the Church? We are the Church. And yet are not many estranged from the Church?
Many feel or have been made to feel such deep guilt for sin that they are
driven away from the Church. How sad, when we are by our nature a community of
redeemed sinners! We know people who differ from us in our political views; who
differ from us in how we understand Church. We have people in our communities
who are poor; who are unemployed; who have lost loved ones; who have
experienced familial breakdown; who are migrants or refugees; who differ from
us in spirituality; who are perhaps simply annoying to us… How great an effort
are we willing to make to seek out and to welcome these people?
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