Mass readings for Aug. 16:
Isaiah 56:1, 6-7
Psalm 67:2-3, 5, 6, 8
Romans 11:13-15, 29-32
Matthew 15:21-28
This Sunday, one thing becomes clear: God really doesn’t check passports or papers.
That is one of the messages of this Sunday’s scripture, and it couldn’t be more timely or provocative. In our polarized world – a world divided by nationalities and religions, raging at each other with drones and missile strikes, seeking to expel foreigners and build walls – these readings offer another way. Here is a way of mercy and acceptance and a love that knows no borders.
The first reading from Isaiah lays out God’s priorities: “The foreigners who join themselves to the Lord…all who keep the sabbath free from profanation and hold to my covenant, them I will bring to my holy mountains and make joyful in my house of prayer.”
The Lord opens his arms to everyone: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” The psalmist even gives us this refrain: “Oh God, let all the nations praise you!”
And if that weren’t enough, Paul, the “apostle to the Gentiles,” echoes the Lord’s magnanimity: “God delivered all to disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all.”
But the most memorable lesson – and, maybe, the most eye-opening comes in Matthew’s Gospel, which recounts how Jesus meets a Canaanite woman who pleads for pity because her daughter is being tormented by a demon. Pay close attention to the first reaction to this woman. It doesn’t come from Jesus. The blowback comes from the disciples.
“Send her away,” they tell him. To them, she’s a nuisance, a problem, a pest. She’s not one of them, anyway. Canaanites were ancient enemies of the Jews.
Yet, the rabbi knows better. Jesus sees a teachable moment. He seizes it. At first, he appears to side with his disciples, dismissively comparing her to a stray dog; he evidently agrees that since she is a Canaanite, she’s not one of those he was sent to save.
But then comes the woman’s response – quick, sharp, pungent and almost comical. “Even the dogs,” she replies, “eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.” That does it. Her daughter is healed.
The disciples were probably stunned. The response of Christ flies in the face of everything they were expecting. Shouldn’t he have just turned away from a Canaanite and moved on? Jesus himself said she’s not part of his mission. And Jews hated the Canaanites. So, what happened? Did Jesus somehow have a change of heart?
In fact, the hearts that Jesus intended to change belonged to the disciples, the very ones who considered this foreigner unwelcome and unworthy.
Jesus understood that. He understood the prejudice that could make them feel that way. He understood the very human compulsion to write people off because of what they believe or where they came from.
But he knew better. And he needed to teach a valuable lesson in the most provocative way possible.
Jesus didn’t see her as merely a Canaanite, an enemy, a foreigner. He saw a woman in need, helpless and turning to the Lord for healing and hope. He couldn’t just walk away.
And he carried the words of Isaiah in his heart: “The foreigners who join themselves to the Lord…I will bring to my holy mountain.”
How often are we encouraged to see outsiders and foreigners, those who live or believe differently as people to be avoided, excluded, pushed aside? How often does our world dismiss others because they are considered “not one of us”?
How often do we close our hearts to others because we believe “that’s not my problem”? The scriptures this weekend tell us otherwise.
Deacon Greg Kandra is an award-winning author and journalist, and creator of the blog “The Deacon’s Bench.”
