20th Sunday OT A

v This gospel can be a little confusing. Here we have a Canaanite woman who is asking for her daughter’s healing, and Jesus doesn’t even seem to give her the time of day at first. He seems to ignore her, state that he has nothing to do with her, and then calls her a dog.

Ø (What would Jesus do? – call them a dog.)

v But there is so much going on underneath this story… there’s some background that we have to understand first before we can see the beauty of what’s actually going on here: the beauty of God welcoming and helping an outcast.

v A few points of background

Ø 1. The woman is from the region of Tyre and Sidon, an area north of the Holy Land where most everyone was a pagan. She is not Jewish. The Jews saw pagans as not much better than the dirt on their sandals.

Ø 2. She is a woman, and she is alone. In the ancient world, women had very, very few rights. Without a husband, they were incomplete and a nobody.

Ø These two points of info hopefully give us a feel for what was going on then. A lone pagan woman approaches a group of Jewish men begging for help. You can imagine how she must have felt.

§ Have you ever felt totally out of place, like you were being judged? You felt uncomfortable, all eyes looking at you? I know I’ve felt that before.

v With this background information, what we can see now is remarkable. And it is remarkable from two angels:

Ø It is remarkable what the woman does, how bold she is despite the judgmental situation. She knows that she has no merit of her own, she isn’t entitled to Jesus’ help, and she relies not on her good works, but solely upon his mercy.

Ø It is also remarkable what Jesus does. What might look to us as giving her the cold shoulder and dismissing her, Jesus is actually giving her the opportunity for her to stand up against the judgmental lies for herself, to overcome the conventional stereotypes about herself in her own mind, to have a pure faith in God alone.

§ It’s almost as if Jesus is playing with her for her own good, just as a coach might tell one of his star players who just got hurt that he’s hurt too badly to play, knowing that he’s actually not and wanting the player to get angry and want to prove the coach wrong.

Ø It’s remarkable that Jesus does give her the time of day, looks with love upon this woman judged to be an outcast, and grants her request because of her faith. According to the social rules of the day, he shouldn’t have done that. He acts against the rules of the world, the rules of the in-crowd. God welcomes all, no matter what.

v This is what we see from the reading from the Prophet Isaiah, that God welcomes those who are judged to be “not part of the group” those who are “a bit different” those who are foreigners.

Ø He says that “The foreigners who join themselves to the LORD, loving the name of the LORD… I will bring them to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer.”

v And this calls us, you and me, to ask… who are the foreigners in my life? Where do I find them?

Ø And The first place we can look for foreigners is in the mirror. Are we not all like that woman from the gospel? We have no merit of our own, we’re sinners, we’ve been judged as outcasts at some time or another, either by others or by ourselves.

Ø We have journeyed away from God, done what is wrong… AND HE TOOK US BACK. WITH GREAT LOVE HE WELCOMED US, THE FORIGNER, WITH GREAT JOY AND REJOICING.

HE HAS WELCOMED THE LOST, THE SINNER, THE OUTCAST. The love of God always welcomes magnanimously, with open arms, to those who recognize their need and their error. We are the first foreigner.

Ø God has welcomed us, and he calls us to do the same with others. So again we have to ask the question, where do I find the foreigners in my life? who do I treat as a foreigner? Who does the world treat as a foreigner…?

§ The foreigner is the child in the womb, yet to be born. Our culture can look upon him or her as an inconvenience, as less than a person, not deserving of life.

§ The foreigner is the immigrant from Mexico, Central America, Africa, or India who is looking for a better life here in the US, who might be afraid or feel judged by others.

§ The foreigner is the estranged member of our family, or the brother or sister we always fight with, whom everyone talks about, and maybe is looked down upon because of his or her choices.

§ The foreigner is the person who thinks differently than us, politically red or politically blue yet who has the right to free speech and freedom of conscience.

§ The foreigner is the LGBTQ person who might feel misunderstood, judged, or estranged from the Church.

§ The foreigner is the homeless person who might feel labeled and judged, rather than known and accepted.

§ The foreigner is the person of another race who feels just as estranged from you as you do to them.

§ The foreigner is the sinner, the one who has fallen short of the glory of God and is in need of mercy.

§ Who is the foreigner? We are. And we are called to welcome all as brothers and sisters, just as God has welcomed us.

Ø God says to us in the book of Leviticus: You shall treat the foreigner who resides with you no differently than the natives born among you; you shall love the foreigner as yourself; for you too were once a foreigner in the land of Egypt.

Ø Now, of course, welcoming and accepting someone doesn’t mean we welcome sin or error, just as when we love ourselves we don’t simply accept our wrongdoing as ok. We accept ourselves for who we are, lovingly challenge the wrong in us, and we go forward. This is what it means to welcome others as well. To love the person as such, not label them with their sin, but call them forth from it in love.

v This is what God has done with the woman in the Gospel, this is what he has done with us, and this is what we are called to do to others. This is what it means to be Catholic… to be UNIVERSAL. A Church that welcomes all nations, all cultures, all classes. …for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.

Ø We come together at this altar every week to receive from Him who welcomes all. So I leave us with this question: Who do we need to welcome in our heart today, to ask forgiveness from, before we come to Him who has welcomed us?