Homily for Wednesday, 6 July 2016– Ferial

Wednesday of the 14th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Hosea 10:1-3, 7-8, 12; Psalm 105:2-3, 4-5, 6-7; Matthew 10:1-7

Optional memorial of St. Maria Goretti, Virgin and Martyr

This homily was given at the chapel of Kateri House Women's Residence of St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

For how many of us, after hearing today’s Gospel reading from Matthew, does Jesus seem to exclude entire groups of people from having “the good news” proclaimed to them, for no particular reason?

After choosing his twelve apostles, Jesus says to them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Does Jesus’ instruction here not contradict other well-known instances in our Gospels in which Jesus goes out of his way to include the otherwise excluded: Gentiles; Samaritans; essentially anybody not Jewish; sinners; those with physical or spiritual illnesses; outcasts? We know, for example, of the story of the Good Samaritan or of Jesus’ healing of a Roman centurion’s son, in which Jesus teaches us that God has created; loves; and wills to save all people, not only the Jews or, later, us Christians.

And so why would Jesus instruct the Twelve to avoid the Gentiles and Samaritans; to “proclaim the good news” that “the Kingdom of God has come near” to only “the lost sheep of the house of Israel”? After all, among Jesus’ apostles are Peter, who would deny Jesus and leave him to die on the cross, “Matthew the tax collector”… “and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.” Why accept these people as apostles, among essentially a group of unknowns if not worse, but deny the hearing of “the good news” to the Gentiles and Samaritans?

Or is Jesus as exclusionist as it seems when we hear today’s Gospel? I suggest not. My interpretation of Jesus’ instruction to the Twelve here (and please feel free to differ from me but, more importantly, take some time to reflect on this or other parts of Scripture you may find troubling) is that he is not saying, “No, do not go to anybody but the Jews,” but “not yet.”

Many scholars consider Matthew, among the four Gospel writers, to be most concerned about a Jewish audience: Early Christians who had Jewish more than pagan (Roman, Greek, Assyrian or other) backgrounds. The Samaritans of Jesus’ time were considered by many to be on the borderline between Jews and pagans, not “pure” Jews. Matthew is clearly most concerned about the well-being of communities of these early Jewish Christians. Here, might we make a distinction between the time-conditioned and the timeless aspects of our Scriptures?

Jesus’ “not yet” through Matthew has, I think, become our “now.” We recognize more than ever our Jewish sisters and brothers as those who first heard the Word of God. And we might recognize ourselves as, while usually faithful to God, occasionally among “the lost sheep” in special need of God’s mercy. May we then be a people who continues to seek out “the lost sheep of the house of Israel”; the lost sheep among ourselves, to proclaim God’s mercy to our world without exclusion. Now, more than ever, “the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.”