God's great mercy

Inspired by our Genesis readings about Joseph’s dysfunctional family, I think I need to tell you a little about my family. Not Jim and the kids, they get talked about in my sermons enough – but my own extended family of origin. My mom was an only child; her father left the family when she was a baby. She was partially raised by her grandparents while her mother worked, and later when her mother remarried, my mom was adopted by her stepfather. When my mom was an adult, her mother divorced her stepfather, and insisted that my mom ‘divorce’ him too (she didn’t). Then she met up again with her first husband and remarried him. (I was a witness to that wedding, as a baby.) Later in my own generation, my two brothers both divorced their first wives and remarried, in the process becoming estranged from their kids – and now grandkids – of their first marriages. (My blessed mom has found herself in the position through many years of keeping in touch with everyone, regardless.) Meanwhile, on my father’s side, Great-Uncle Howard stopped speaking to my grandfather for several years after my grandfather took all the inherited National Geographics. So our family history is checkered with stories of who doesn’t speak to whom, who was related but now isn’t, and whose fault it is according to whom. Kind of like a lot of families; kind of like our country; kind of like humanity. And all of it utterly opposed to how God would have us live. Forgiveness, humility, the willingness to admit you’re wrong…all of that can be in short order among human beings. Yet all of these Jesus models for us.

But not right away, at least not in today’s gospel. First he offends the Pharisees and then he insults the Canaanite woman. Two different stories, but neither of them Jesus behaving at his best. The faithful Jewish scribes and Pharisees come asking a good question, why Jesus and his disciples aren’t honoring tradition – but Jesus challenges them in return, calls them hypocrites, and then shames them in front of the crowds. No wonder they’re offended. Jesus’ teaching is sound, of course, and a freeing idea to hear – that goodness comes from within, not just from observing external ritual – but he doesn’t convey it in the kindest of ways.

But then in the very next exchange it seems he has to learn that teaching for himself. He travels to Tyre and Sidon, a Gentile area, and is approached by a Canaanite woman begging him to heal her daughter. First Jesus ignores her, then he shrugs her off, and finally when she will not let him go, he insults her to her face. It’s hard to read and to hear. I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel, he says. But the woman persists still further, arguing that even she, a Gentile woman, is part of his mission field. And suddenly he looks at her with new eyes. You’re right, he says. Goodness comes from within – didn’t I just say that earlier? Great is your faith!

We’re used to stories of the disciples acting this way, shoving people aside and barring their way to Jesus. They do this with children, they do this with the hungry, they do this with people who are trying to act in Jesus’ name without joining their group – like many of us Christians continue to do today, to be honest. In every one of those cases Jesus rebukes the disciples and welcomes the ones trying to come to him. But in this story, he doesn’t. Jesus refuses to engage with this woman. He calls her a dog. Until finally she persuades him, and then he embraces her.

The story doesn’t stand totally distinct in scripture. There’s a long debate in the Bible about who is and who is not part of God’s people – through the prophets and the later writings you can see the idea emerging that all people are part of God’s world, not just the Hebrews. That idea gets more clearly defined with the coming of Jesus – think of the Wise Men from the east, and stories of Gentiles coming to be Jesus’ followers. And it is especially clear after Jesus’ resurrection, when everyone starts having visions and clarity that this new kingdom of God is for everyone, Gentile, Jew, slave and free. Though it still, thousands of years later, is hard for us to totally accept and live that out in our lives.

I can’t say with certainty what Jesus is thinking in this story. His amazement at the woman’s faith seems too real for him to be just playing her as a teachable moment. I don’t want to think of Jesus as limited in his love and care for others, but it’s hard to explain away. The thing is, he doesn’t stay limited. Hearing her words, Jesus turns – repents – and speaks to the woman directly. He expresses awe at her – even, perhaps, gratitude at what she has done for him, her tenacity and truth-telling opening a path to greater love. And as he does this, he shows us a way forward. He shows us the way to drop our hatred and our history and our assumptions and see with new eyes. And in so doing, to recognize God at work, what great faith shows us to be true. To see how broad is God’s embrace. 

I don’t know if you’ve got family drama like mine. Or whether you have friends who stopped speaking to each other because of some misunderstanding, or maybe just because they stopped agreeing about politics. Or whether you yourself are tangled up in something like that, whether you sometimes find yourself thinking of some other people with contempt. Let’s be honest, I think all of us do sometimes. Our public discourse today allows so much more of that out in the open than it used to, with even our leaders talking that way about people they despise: immigrants, foreign leaders, members of the other political party, you name it. Our worst, most childish inclinations are in full force these days and we rarely seem to stop ourselves or call it out. Too easy to call each other hypocrites or dogs or whatever term of art comes readily to hand.

But Jesus shows us a different way – Jesus the fully human one growing in his own understanding of God’s world, Jesus the son of God demonstrating what it looks like to change, to repent, to do differently. Each one of us is called into a change of heart that requires us to repent, to turn to someone we had discounted or ignored, to see in them God’s beloved child. And even more, to see in them God’s messenger of mercy to us. Perhaps when we ourselves get called on our own narrowness, and so see how much greater God’s love is, how much more beyond our seeing is the work of God’s Spirit in the world.

No matter who we are, no matter where we’ve come from, no matter our politics or color or creed, God calls us into love, part of the new and glorious kingdom of God. We limit it at our peril, and to the great detriment of God’s children in this world. We risk missing the boat on what God is doing around us. As the hymn says, there’s a wideness to God’s mercy, like the wideness of the sea – and we are called to speak that news far and wide. God’s mercy is big enough for all. May Jesus redeem our hearts, that we also may love as we are loved.