A House of Prayer for All People

St. Mary’s Episcopal Church

May this be in the name of our loving, liberating, life-giving God. Amen.

We have quite an interesting story in today’s gospel. It’s certainly NOT the typical picture of Jesus we are used to. First, context is key. Jesus has been talking to the crowds and arguing with the religious elite about ideas of purity, about what makes someone clean and what makes them impure. “It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles…what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles.” Sadly, in Jesus’ time, as in ours, ideas about pure and impure continue to influence our opinions and judgments of others. This is not the case with our good and loving God. This is a continuing theme for Jesus. Throughout his life and teachings on earth, again and again he breaks apart commonly held ideas of cleanliness, worthiness, and preference. For many people in the first century, purity codes were an enormous part of everyday life. And in our time, society’s never-ending quest for one upmanship, the “we’re better than them,” the idea of “us” and “them” have become engrained into how we define ourselves over and against others. This is not the case with our good and loving God. ALL, ALL, are clean, pure, worthy. ALL are beloved by God, created in the divine image, inherently good and lovable.

It is this idea that Jesus’ interaction with the Canaanite women spells out quite vividly for the disciples and the readers of Matthew’s Gospel. Context is key. After this teaching about what comes from our hearts having the real potential to harm others and ourselves, Jesus heads to a borderland. The region of Tyre and Sidon is on the edge of Jewish and Gentile, or pagan territories. Inhabitants of this region were natural enemies of the Israelites. And the women who comes to Jesus is a Canaanite. Canaanites were polytheistic, believing in multiple gods, Jews were monotheistic, believing in the one God, YHWH. AND…she was a woman, a non-Jewish woman, daring to call out to this Jewish man. Talk about taboos and biases!

“Have mercy on me, Lord, son of David: my daughter is tormented by a demon.”

She seems to know who Jesus is. The fact that she is shouting would imply that she keeps her distance. She is a mother and her daughter is not well. She is crying out for mercy because she can’t bear to see her daughter suffer any longer. And what does Jesus do or say? NOTHING. What? This seem QUITE out of character for him, right? The woman is persistent and the disciples urge Jesus to send her away because she keeps shouting. Jesus answers them, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” I imagine it this way, “What do you want me to do? She’s not a Jew. My mission is to gather God’s chosen people, the Israelites.

Next, notice that this woman dares to approach Jesus and even kneels before him, pleading with him for help. Jesus continues his line of thinking, society’s line of thinking, as he goes on to insult her: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Ouch! Especially in Jesus’ time, dogs were not the furry, fun pets that some of us have in our homes and love, no, they were feral, mongrel packs, certainly viewed as worthless, dirty trash. Is Jesus really calling this woman a dog? Is Jesus using derogatory language, a slur, with this child of God? Well, yes, and no. What Jesus is doing is confronting the disciples and others with their own biases, with their own judgments, with the ways they are seeking to limit God’s love and attempt to place conditions on unconditional love.

The Canaanite woman’s response is excellent: “Yes, Lord, (you’re right, that is the way things work in our world), yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Even the lowliest are entitled to the crumbs that those in power don’t want, need, or care about. Touché. She has answered Jesus with a witty retort. Jesus commends her, hears her plea for mercy and heals her daughter. “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And Matthew tells us that her daughter was healed instantly. Jesus commends this pagan woman for HER faith! Woah!

In Jesus’ interaction he shows, with her help, that faith, worthiness, and beloved status, are not limited to a specific group, ethnicity, or religion. Jesus shows that with our good and loving God, it is not about purity, it’s about what comes from our hearts, it’s about our divine identity.

At the back of our prayer book, beginning on page 845 is an outline of our faith, commonly called the Catechism. It’s an explanation of our Christian, Episcopal faith laid out in the form of questions and answers.

Human Nature:

Q. What are we by nature?

A. We are part of God's creation, made in the image of God.

Q. What do we learn about God as creator from the revelation to Israel?

A. We learn that there is one God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and

unseen.

Q. What does this mean?

A. This means that the universe is good, that it is the work of a single loving God who creates, sustains, and directs it.

Q. What does this mean about human life?

A. It means that all people are worthy of respect and honor, because all are created in the image of God, and all can respond to the love of God.

We are a part of God’s creation declared good, very good, made in the image of a good and loving God. This Creator God made all that is, seen and unseen, and as a result of this, our universe is good, the work of a loving God. And from this it follows that we, humans, all of us, are worthy of respect and honor because we are all created in this good, loving image of God. God is with us, and all around us, and within us. And this is why all of us are capable of responding to the love of God, of receiving God’s love and returning it, of giving thanks to God and sharing God’s love with everyone, from every place, every language and culture, every religion. All are called, all are included, all are loved, as the prophet Isaiah speaks for God: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those already gathered.” God’s love is coming to gather each and every one of us up into a loving embrace. Thanks be to God.

Amen.