20th Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 16, 2020

/

Gospel: Matthew 15: 21-28

Theme: Who belongs? Who gets heard by God?

Matthew 15:21–28

Then Jesus went from that place and withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanite woman of that district came and called out, “Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not say a word in answer to her.

His disciples came and asked him, “Send her away, for she keeps calling out after us.” He said in reply, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

But the woman came and did him homage, saying, “Lord, help me.” He said in reply, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.”

Then Jesus said to her in reply, “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed from that hour.

Music Meditations

Companions for the Journey

From “First Impressions,” a service of the Southern Dominican Province:

When the Israelites went into Babylonian slavery they lost almost everything—their liberty, lands, temple, etc. In that foreign land one more calamity threatened them, loss of faith. In exile they wondered if they were worshiping the right God. It was tempting for them to think that the gods of the Babylonians looked much more powerful than their own, since Babylon had conquered Israel. So, many dropped their adherence to the God of Israel and drifted over to their conquerors’ pagan religious practices. Exile broke the spirits of many. Not unlike today, when people who suffer great loss decide to turn away from the God they feel let them down.

But even in exile there was a faithful remnant who hoped against hope that God was still with them and would someday take them home. In the meanwhile these faithful ones did what they could to protect themselves and their children from the strong pagan influences that must have felt overwhelming. Can’t we identify with their struggle to keep themselves and their children true to the faith they had inherited from their forebears? For we too want to pass on to the next generation the faith that has sustained us. Like Peter, in last week’s gospel, our faith has helped us walk on stormy seas, probably more than once in our lives and we want our children to be strengthened by that faith too.

In their struggle to keep faithful in the harshest conditions the exiles came up with a solution. They decided to “circle the wagons”—to gather together for mutual support and to reject what, to them, was foreign, pagan and a threat to their very survival. For those who did make it back to Israel they found it was not what they had remembered. Foreigners now lived there; again pagans seemed to surround and threaten the faithful people’s core beliefs with foreign teachings and religious practices. Should they once again circle the wagons, as they tried to do in exile? Many, encouraged by their religious leaders, did. (We can hear clear hints of the exclusionary tactics in what Jesus says to the foreign Canaanite woman in today’s gospel.)

Matthew writes his gospel from strong Jewish roots. He sees Jesus as a new Moses and the founder of a new Israel. Yet there are significant moments in his gospel when outsiders manifest faith. Remember the foreign Magi (2:1-12) and the Roman centurion (8:5-13)? And now we have the Canaanite woman.

Jesus is out of his usual element in today’s story. He has entered Tyre and Sidon, pagan territory. He is among the people who inhabited the holy land before the Israelites arrived. These are the people faithful Jews struggled against throughout their national history to preserve their faith. Jesus and his disciples would expect to meet opposition there to the good news they preached. But they were surprised and so would Matthew’s readers be, since the early church still had anti-gentile sentiments.

At first Jesus is reluctant to expand his ministry beyond his initial calling to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But this woman will hear nothing of protocol and religious priorities, after all her daughter is desperately ill, “tormented by a demon.” She “came” to him, called him “Lord” and recognized him as “Son of David.” Here is a pagan who express the faith Jesus had hoped to find among his own people. She also acknowledges that God’s bread was meant for the chosen people and yet, in asking for “scraps that fall from the table,” she is asking for a share in that food. She is insistent, despite Jesus’ initial reluctance to go outside the pale to pagans. (It may help soften Jesus’ response to the woman to know that some commentators have said, that “dogs” can also be translated “puppies”—implying some affection on Jesus’ part.)

The woman’s faith stirs a response from Jesus. She may not have had the “proper” religious heritage or upbringing in God’s covenant and laws, but she captures the faith of believers like us who also recognize Jesus as “Lord,” the One who will provide bread from God. (Isn’t that what he is doing today at our eucharistic table?) How often do we meet people who may not be enrolled on our church’s membership lists, but who manifest by their words and actions the self-giving influence of Jesus’ spirit? Somehow God has found a way to renew and nourish them; how else could they be the people they are?

Matthew’s community was expanding into gentile settings where it proclaimed the good news about Jesus. The gentiles were responding and entering the community of believers. Stories like today’s, about the Canaanite woman, must have helped the original Jewish converts to Christianity accept people as brothers and sisters whom they once called “dogs.” They heard the woman acknowledge the priority of the Jewish faith and God’s openness to all believers through Jesus Christ.

She was not among the acknowledged members of Jesus’ followers, but her trust in him and her faith that he is God’s anointed, is a sign of God’s mercy working beyond the norms and conventions we humans set up to determine the “in” and the “out” crowd. If a pagan could surprise us with faith, then who are we to limit our expectations of where and how God is at work in the world?

Weekly Memorization

Taken from the gospel for today’s session…

Woman, you have great faith. Let your wish be granted.

Living the Good News

What action can you take in the next week as a response to today’s reading and discussion?

Keep a private journal of your prayer/actions responses this week. Feel free to use the personal reflection questions or the meditations which follow:

Reflection Questions

  • Did the reaction of the Canaanite woman surprise me? How would I have reacted if the first answer I got from Jesus was “no”?
  • Have I ever felt that my misery was ignored by God, as Jesus seemed to ignore the Canaanite woman at first?
  • Do I see in this woman an indomitable spirit that will never give up hoping and praying for someone she loves? Who or what in my own life calls out that persistence in me?
  • Her prayer to Jesus was an expression of both helplessness and trust. Where in my prayer life have I expressed both?
  • Often we think of faith as belief in a set of theological constructs, but Jesus in this paragraph identifies faith as a trust in his love and kindness. How would I characterize the word “faith” in my own life?
  • In chapter 10 of this gospel Jesus tells his disciples not to stray out of Jewish territory, and at the beginning of this segment of chapter 15, he seems to be emphasizing that his mission is to the House of Israel only. However, by the end of the section, we see that Jesus has learned something profound about the faith of a non-Jew, and changes his negative response to a positive one.
  • Do I forget that Jesus had to learn how to walk, how to be a carpenter, how to pray, how to shape a mission, how to follow it, and that this learning might be a gradual process, subject to possible human error?
  • Is it hard for me to think of the humanity of Jesus, with its attendant learning curve?
  • Is it hard for me to think of Jesus having to learn things about his mission?
  • Although theology tells me that Jesus is both God and human do I frequently dwell on Jesus’ divinity, at the expense of his humanity?
  • Jesus’ tone in much of the exchange with the non-Jewish woman seems rather exclusionary. In this very story, what might Jesus’ assumptions about certain groups in our present day be?
    • Would he exclude certain groups of people from our worship assemblies?
    • Would the newcomer to our country find a warm welcome in his church?
    • Would he favor the benefactors over the welfare mothers and their crying infants in the back row?
    • Would he want teenagers to dress according to code?
    • Does he hear the prayer of someone who hasn’t prayed in thirty years as much as he does the devout nun in a monastery?
    • Does he confirm the notions of those exclusive Christians who see all others as “infidels” of one kind or another?
    Are any of these possibilities above a reality in today’s religious groups, including mine?
  • Do I harbor, maybe even unconsciously, a sense of exclusivity about how the faith should be lived out and by whom?
  • Has it ever seemed that at times God was ignoring me, or at least distant and unapproachable?
    Does initial rejection of a petition or hope send me away in defeat or resentment, or does it call forth an energy and determination to make myself known and heard?
  • Who are the people in my life that I don’t pay enough attention to?
  • Might the purpose of this story be to illustrate that membership in God’s kingdom is not limited to religious identity or to other external circumstances? Do I harbor an unconscious sense that my affinity group (religion, ethnicity, university affiliation, country of origin, etc) is better than others, or even more beloved by God?
  • “Dogs” was a Jewish name for Gentiles, and Jesus’ expression raised no eyebrows in his own time, when ethnic and tribal loyalty in the face of danger from the outside was the norm. Many of us have more unconscious tribal tendencies than we want to admit to. Do I have epithets or subtle exclusionary names for the “others” in my life? Does my parish or my social group provide welcome for “the other”, for the outsider?
  • Have I ever felt like an “outsider”?
  • Have I ever participated in an inter-religious dialogue? What happened?

Meditations

A Meditation in the Augustinian Style/Relationship:

Could we treat this pagan woman’s dialogue with Jesus as a prayer of petition and her response as a prayerful and honest reaction expressing her disappointment and feistiness? How often is our Prayer “sanitized”—expressing what we think God wants to hear? In many of the psalms (often called Psalms of Lamentation) we see a people who are honest and raw in their feelings about life, and willing to share their frustrations with God. Read selections from Psalm 42, then write your own honest psalm about where you are in your life right now:

4My tears have become my bread, by day, by night,
as they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”

10I will say to God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me?
Why do I go mourning oppressed by the foe?”
11With a deadly wound in my bones, my enemies revile me,
saying to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”

A Meditation in the Dominican Style/Asking Questions:

I read selections from psalm 69:

2Save me, O God, for the waters have risen to my neck.
3I have sunk into the mud of the deep, where there is no foothold.
I have entered the waters of the deep, where the flood overwhelms me.
4I am wearied with crying aloud; my throat is parched.
My eyes are wasted away with waiting for my God.
5More numerous than the hairs on my head are those who hate me without cause.
Many are those who attack me, enemies with lies.
What I have never stolen, how can I restore?

9To my own kin I have become an outcast,
a stranger to the children of my mother.

14But I pray to you, O LORD, for a time of your favor.
In your great mercy, answer me, O God, with your salvation that never fails.
15Rescue me from sinking in the mud; from those who hate me, deliver me.
Save me from the waters of the deep,
16lest the waves overwhelm me.  Let not the deep engulf me, nor the pit close its mouth on me.
17LORD, answer, for your mercy is kind; in your great compassion, turn towards me.
18Do not hide your face from your servant;
answer me quickly, for I am in distress.

I consider how many times we as humans turn to God only in times of personal crisis. What am I hoping for when I pray at moments like these? Do I just want to share my anxiety, and yes, my anger? Or do I want to manipulate God into changing the plans set out for my life? Anne Lamott, in Traveling Mercies says:

Here are the two best prayers I know: “Help me, help me, help me” , and “Thank you, thank you, thank you”. A woman I know says, for her morning prayer: ”Whatever”, and then for the evening, “Oh well”, but has conceded that these prayers are more palatable for people without children.

What do I think that prayer is for anyway?

A Meditation in the Franciscan Style/Action:

In the midst of the financial crisis caused by this pandemic, mothers are watching, helpless, as their children go hungry.

In the face of built-in inequality, mothers are watching, frustrated, as their children lack the basic learning tools and experiences to thrive and grow into their potential.

In the face of the opioid crisis, mothers watch in pain as their children succumb to anxiety and hopelessness, seeking escape from the lives they are living.

In the system of institutionalized racism, mothers watch in fear as their young sons are targeted for violence simply because of the color of their skin.

How do we answer the pleas of these mothers, spoken and unspoken? How do we help them nurture and protect their beloved children? The first step would be to learn more about the causes of these social ills. The next step would be to pick one cause that speaks to you personally and use the internet to discover where your resources and your time would be of use in our very community. The CC@S website would be a good place to start; contact Lourdes Alonso (lalonso@stanford.edu) for some information on social Justice groups in our Catholic community.

We need to do more than wring our hands. We need to do more than pray. We need to DO!

Poetic Reflection:

How does the following poem from the Rev. Ed Ingebretsen, S.J. capture the care Jesus takes of us in our deepest need?:

“From Narrow Places”

From narrow places
the strength of our voice
rises:

our every breath
is prayer,
the great poem of need,
a constant scattering
of praise.

Early
we reach to God
in the claim of our hearts,
while he,
our father,
mothers us
in his