Loving God, your mercy is always greater than that which we either understand or deserve, and we give you thanks.  By the power of your Spirit, help us to continue to grow in mercy and in love, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

    The Scripture readings that are appointed for today all point in some way to the same topic.  They address the distinction between Jews and Gentiles – God’s chosen people and the nations – the insiders and the outsiders.  They explore the boundaries of God’s mercy and test it.  Is God’s mercy for all, as Romans implies (11:32), or are there some who are quite simply outside of God’s mercy?  The disciples certainly believe that some should be excluded, but it seems as though God’s mercy always breaks through those humanly devised boundaries.

    Now, don’t get me wrong.  The disciples didn’t just make this stuff up.  In fact, in part their attitude was based on the Scriptures.  It was based on that part in Genesis where Canaan and all of his descendants are cursed and destined to be slaves to his brothers (Gen. 9:25).  It was based on that part in Ezra where the Canaanites and all who dwell with them are associated with abominations (Ezra 9:1).  It was based on those passages in Isaiah where not just Canaanites, but all Gentiles will be servants to the Jews (Is. 60:10-16; 61:5-6).

    And so, when the disciples find themselves walking along the dusty road with Jesus near Tyre and Sidon, and a Canaanite woman starts following them and shouting out her distress to Jesus, those disciples are just like guard dogs trying to bar the door.  It’s not that this woman is rude or anything.  In fact, her words sound very much like the words of a faithful Israelite.  “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David” (Mt. 15:22).  She cries out to Jesus for mercy, for her daughter is being tormented by a demon.

    Jesus, though, does not answer at first, possibly waiting to see what his disciples will do.  She has at least two strikes against her, as she is both a Canaanite and a woman.  Perhaps predictably, the disciples bark out their judgement to Jesus.  “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us” (Mt. 15:23).  Jesus quietly turns to the disciples and reflects, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Mt. 15:24).

    Just then the woman dares to comes closer and kneels in front of Jesus.  “Lord, help me,” she pleads.  Quietly and gently Jesus remarks how it’s not fair to throw the children’s food to the dogs.  Undaunted, the woman points out how even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the master’s table.  By this time, it is quite purposely unclear who the dogs or the sheep or the children are referring to.  This woman who would have been treated like a dog by the disciples now finds herself among the lost sheep of the house of Israel.  The boundaries are blurred, and God’s mercy breaks through.

    This can be hard for us to conceive of at first, as we don’t make the same distinctions between Jews and Gentiles as there were in the first century.  Yet, surely there are other distinctions that we do make.  Are there, in fact, people whom we believe to be outside the boundaries of God’s mercy?  Are there people where we could see ourselves standing at the church door and saying, “I’m sorry - you can’t come in here”?  Are there people that would cause us to tell Jesus to send them away?

    Imagine a group of us gathered around Jesus, here today, here in this church.  Imagine that we are listening to him teach and asking him questions, and perhaps some of us have even been touched by him and healed.  Who are the ones that we would want to send away if they came and asked for Jesus’ attention?

    If a lesbian or gay couple came in and asked Jesus to bless them, would we allow them to stay?  What about an aboriginal family who live on welfare and struggle with addictions?  Would they be welcome?  What about some children who want to get close to Jesus and sit on his lap and laugh and play with him?  Would we allow that to happen?  What about a woman who brings her son with Tourette syndrome?  Would they be welcome?  How about a family where several children have ADHD?  Would we welcome them to come and be with Jesus?  What about a prostitute, or an ex-con who just got released from prison, or an AIDS patient?  Would they be welcome?

    Our boundaries may not be between Jews and Gentiles, but surely we all have our own ideas about who should be inside the body of Christ and who should be outside, perhaps even taken from the Scriptures, like the disciples did.  They believed that Canaanites were cursed and practised abominations and were outside of God’s favour.  Then along comes a Canaanite woman who recognizes Jesus as the Messiah and begs him for mercy – whose faith seems even greater than their own – and Jesus has mercy on her and heals her daughter.

    Later on, after Jesus has risen from the dead and ascended into heaven, the disciples persist with their same negative attitude toward Gentiles.  It is then that Peter experiences a vision of all kinds of animals that had been declared unclean and unfit for a Jew to eat (Acts 10).  A voice tells Peter to kill and eat, but Peter is horrified, for he has never eaten anything unclean or profane.  Then the voice says, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane” (10:15).

    Immediately afterwards, Peter is invited to go to the house of a Gentile in order to share the good news about Jesus, and Peter understands from the vision that he should not call any people unclean or profane.  While Peter is in the house of Cornelius, surrounded by Gentiles and telling them all about Jesus, Peter and the other Jews with him are absolutely shocked when the Holy Spirit is poured out on these Gentiles who have believed in Jesus.  Up until this point, they had still persisted in their belief that the Gentiles were beyond the boundaries of God’s mercy.  God’s mercy continued to break through the boundaries that they had set.

    For us, do we find this to be worrisome or to be good news?  Do we worry that God’s mercy might be extended to the wrong kind of people, or that people might not be held accountable for their sinfulness?  Or do we rejoice that not one of us - no matter what we might have done - are beyond the reaches of God’s mercy and God’s grace and God’s love?

    Some might find the Scriptural aspects to be worrisome.  Yet, those same Scriptures show us how people’s attitudes changed over time and how God’s mercy went beyond the boundaries that had been set by earlier attitudes.  This is not to say that those other verses were wrong in some way, but that we always need to read the Bible in light of its central message about Jesus.  It is not the words on the page that give life, but Jesus, who is God’s living Word (Jn. 5:39; 1:14).  And so we talk about the Bible as the Word of God because we find Jesus there and God continues to speak to us through those pages.

    God continues to speak to us as we hear about more and more boundaries that get broken through, for in Christ “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28).  God’s mercy refuses to be contained by any humanly devised boundaries – and this is good news!  God’s mercy breaks through to each and every one of us as God gives us salvation that we did not earn and do not deserve through the love of Jesus Christ.  God does this and then empowers us to pass on that same love and mercy to others.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

Lectionary 20(A)                            Matthew 15:10-28
August 14, 2011                            Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
St. Luke’s Zion Lutheran Church                    Isaiah 56:1, 6-8
Pastor Lynne Hutchison

© 2011 Lynne Hutchison  All Rights Reserved