For Sunday
Proper 15A
Collect
Almighty God, you have given your only Son to be for us a sacrifice for sin, and also an example of godly life: Give us grace to receive thankfully the fruits of his redeeming work, and to follow daily in the blessed steps of his most holy life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
Reading
Reflection
A woman comes to Jesus and convinces him to save her daughter from a demon. On the surface, this shouldn’t be among the most controversial passages in the gospels. But it is one of the most deeply consequential.
Jesus has left the comfort of Hebrew territory for the borderlands. And this woman is a Canaanite. The people God tells Abraham’s line to not consort with in Genesis. So it goes all the way back.
The woman shouts for help, the disciples try to stop it, she persists, Jesus insults her…the whole thing feels weird to us. It is so unlike the Jesus we know: who offers grace to anyone who comes to him. The battles of division were fought so long ago, and the universal love version of Jesus is so present to us. It feels like it’s from the before times.
This is at the root of what makes it controversial. Because Jesus is insulting this woman. He is buying into the division. And he is changed by the woman’s conviction. And a lot of people of faith find this whole thing just can’t work. Except that it does. Beautifully.
As much as Jesus has been pushing others to see the holy in their midst—and to focus on what God is actually up to, not just what we want—he is confronted in a moment when he hasn’t been doing the same. And she awakens an entirely new possibility.
The borders he has put between people just don’t work.
As a preacher, I don’t start with what “you” need to hear. I start with what startles me awake. And often, what comes out of it, is something I needed to hear. And I share it knowing that other people, like me, probably do too.