20th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Cycle A 22-23

20th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 56:1, 6-7 | Romans 11:13-15, 29-32 | Matthew 15:21-28

Oh God, you have prepared for those who love you good things, which no eye can see.  Fill our hearts, we pray, with the warmth of your love so that, loving you in all things and above all things, we may attain your promises, which surpass every human desire.  Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.

I want you to think for a few moments about Jesus the man, his humanity. What did he know? How much did he know about who he would become? Since we’re told that he was 100 percent human, it would seem that he had to grow and evolve, just as we do, and try to understand something that was beyond his understanding. So there had to come a time in his early ⎯ well, when he turned 33, that was his ⎯ that sounds young now, but that was a full-grown adult. But all through adolescence, you wonder, “What was he wondering about what his ministry would be like? Did he know at that time he was going to be called to be the Messiah?” I think it’s more realistic to think that he grew into it rather than, when he came into this world, he had this amazing knowledge. He was human, and so he must have been very much influenced in the beginning by the temple. In fact, the only stories we know about his years before his public life were involved with the temple. He was taken there for his circumcision, and then at 12, he was found there, obviously having been taught by the temple, interpreting scripture as the temple interpreted it, because when the Pharisees and scribes were asking him questions, he gave such stunning answers. So he had to be well-imbued with the teaching of the temple. So why did he end up hating it? Why did he end up being killed by it?

I think the first thing to begin to think about is how did God awaken in Jesus an awareness that he had a new message, and I don't know if he thought perhaps that the message that he was given by God, that was so radically different than the temple, I don't know whether he naively at first thought, “If I just tell them this, they’ll understand it,” but what we have to understand is what Jesus was initiating was a new kingdom, radically different than the temple. The temple was based in justice and the law and sacrifice. God was distant. God’s spirit lived in the temple, and the men that were surrounding that were the ones that could dole out, when they felt they could, through the practices they asked people to go through, they could dole out forgiveness. They were the complete and total connection that people had with God. It was only through the temple that people would find God’s justice, and so in a sense, they were the servants of God. The temple explained very clearly, “When you make a mistake, you have to come to us, pay a lot of money, and then you will go through a sacrifice. And then you will be cleansed again, and every time you come into the temple, you need to wash yourself, because your cleansing is really not that good. You’re still pretty unattractive to God,” if I can say that. So what does Jesus come along with? He doesn’t talk so much about justice, though he certainly taught it, but he opened their eyes to a new vision of the relationship between God and humans. It was not simply through an institution called the temple, but it was directly from God to an individual. He cut out the power of the temple. Now, I can see very clearly that there was something else going on that Jesus was aware of, and that didn’t make him very popular with the people of the temple, but it was filled with corruption. It had become something that wasn’t giving life but robbing people of life, a den of thieves. So you see that Jesus, even though he was taught by the temple, realized, as he got older, how far it was from what God longed for people to know about who he is and how he works.

So when I listen to this gospel, it’s so interesting, because here is Jesus, and we know that one of the things that was so spectacular about his ministry were the miracles that he performed, acts of kindness, acts of healing, God working through Jesus, healing people. Jesus knew it was the power of God, not him, that was healing, and what’s interesting about this image of that, that he had such ⎯ how would I say this ⎯ such a keen awareness of that, but I don't know that he realized what he was doing in the sense ⎯ maybe he did, but when this woman was coming to him and said, “Please, please forgive me,” he was tired. He was worn out, and so one of the things that he did was kind of fall back on his training in the temple. “I don’t have any responsibility for you. You’re not of the ⎯ you don’t belong to the temple. You’re not an Israelite. You’re a Canaanite,” which is really a bad thing to be. So he reverts to his early training, and then the woman comes up and is the exact expression of who God and Jesus himself wanted the temple to say to him. “I believe in you. I believe you can do this. I believe God uses human beings, and through that human being, they can touch me, not through the temple, just through a human being who believes.” And his heart is melted, and he heals her and said, “That’s what I want from the temple,” some kind of faith in what I’m saying, because what I’m saying, Jesus was convinced was the truth.

So that asks you and me, I think, what is it we still cling to. Is it the incredible example of Jesus as one of us, like us filled with a message radically different than the one we basically would come up with ourselves? And what the temple did and what most religions come up with, “We will teach you what God wants from you. You will do what he asks, and then you will be gifted with what you ask for, especially salvation.” That’s the heart of what most religions teach, and it means that God is a God who demands service. He needs you to serve him, but the truth is ⎯ and Jesus comes to not only blow the system of the temple apart, but he said, “Look, this God that you are longing to be a part of, and he longs to be a part of you, he’s a servant God. And all he wants is for you to allow him to minister to you.” Think how radically different that is, not an institution that demands you do certain things and don’t do other things but a God who works directly with you and dwells in you and serves the people that you love through you by you melding and uniting your intention to him, because he said, “I’m going to take the law that is the heart of the Old Testament and place it on your heart, and that’s where the law will be. And what you have to understand is I have added to the law mercy, and mercy sounds like just forgiveness. No, mercy isn’t just forgiveness. It’s a radical change as to the focus of what religion is inviting people to engage in.” It’s not about justice but about mercy, and mercy is not about forgiveness, though it includes that, but about the most amazing relationship that we’re invited to have with God by allowing him to allow us to believe in this story, this beautiful story of a Messiah who comes into the world with the most amazing message.

Paul got it. He changed, and throughout his reading in this particular set of readings, he’s so sad that ⎯ why don’t the Israelites believe this? And they still, in a way, don’t. So what is it? Why are they there? Why did they resist? I think it’s only to make absolute, totally clear what religion can become and what it always tends to become against what it should be. The shadow of religion is power over people. Mercy is empowering people, not just to receive healing and goodness, which is a wonderful thing, but it knows human beings so well that it says, “Not only do you want to be touched and healed by me, and that creates thanksgiving, but if I can empower you to heal one another through my presence in you, that’s the joy that I feel when I heal you. And that’s a joy I want you to feel.” That’s a different religion.

Father, you long for intimacy with us. You long to engage us in the work that is so dear to your heart. You want us to feel the feelings that you have when you bring life to someone who’s already somehow caught in a darkness. Bless us with this gift, most especially believing that, as you promise, that we will be empowered and be like you, and we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.