20th Sunday Year A - Homily 3

Homily 3 – 2011 

If you’re like me, you probably feel uneasy about today’s Gospel passage.  Mark was the first one to write about it.  Luke, writing about twenty years after Mark, for a quite different community of fellow-believers, left it out of his Gospel altogether.  Today we heard Matthew’s version of the story.  Interestingly, he used Mark’s story - but retold it in his own way.  Matthew was writing for a quite different community of fellow-believers from Mark (and from Luke, too, for that matter).  He wanted to show the relevance of this incident to the life of his community.

Matthew’s community was made up of Jews and non-Jews – a real multi-cultural mix - which in some ways was a recipe for tensions, and even conflict.  At that time, the Jewish members of the community saw themselves still as Jews.  As far as they were concerned, they hadn’t changed their religion.  Christianity was simply one more reform-movement within Judaism.  It wasn’t a new, a different, religion.  But being Jewish was not just a religious thing.  It was cultural, too, and deeply influenced their whole lives.  Jews defined themselves by their difference.  Their God was different – holy.  They were a holy nation.  Non-Jews were not holy.  Jews felt awkward, to say the least, with non-Jews.  But here were some of these non-Jews joining up with them, becoming ever more numerous, and beginning even to overwhelm them. Tensions.  Were non-Jews welcome in the Christian movement?  Could they belong?  On what conditions? And who made the decision?

In re-telling Mark’s original story, Matthew addressed precisely this problem. He clearly highlighted the differences between the woman and the disciples.  He didn’t just identify her by her geographical location, but used the word Canaanite [that was the ancient word for Israel’s’ long-time enemies]. He showed that the problem was firstly the disciples’ problem: She’s shouting after us.  He spelt out the usual Jewish objection by having Jesus say: I was sent only to the lost-sheep of the House of Israel. And, in fact, Jesus’ focus was undoubtedly Jews, not Gentiles.  But then Matthew added the balance. Jesus responded to and praised the faith of the woman: Woman, you have great faith.

And Matthew used the dialogue between the woman and Jesus to make the point that, when dealing with God, there is enough for all, even the dogs can eat the scraps that fall from their master’s table.  And the mention of the scraps gave meaning to the otherwise irrelevant observation tacked on to the end of the previous story of the feeding of the 5000+ Jews in the wilderness: When they picked up the scraps, they filled twelve baskets with what was left over.  God’s grace is super-abundant, and reaches out beyond Israel to embrace the whole world.

Matthew sought to make Mark’s story relevant to his community, in a different country and twenty years later.  As we listen today, twenty centuries later, a far different community with different questions, how can we see Matthew’s story relevant to us?  Tensions between groups.  Who belongs?  Who doesn’t?  and Who decides?  Different cultures finding it hard to open to each other.  Instinctively, they fear that their own wonderful specialness will be somehow compromised.  If they open a little, they still want to feel completely in control…

People fleeing persecution, fleeing oppression, fearing war, approach our borders.  How do we, from within our culture, instinctively react?  Let them in?  Keep them out?  Let some in?  Keep some out?  If they arrive by air, treat them one way.  If they arrive by leaky boats, treat them another way.  We mightn’t call them dogs, but are our other labels even less helpful – queue-jumpers, illegals?  Are they?  Whatever about our cultural influences, does our sense of Jesus colour our response?  Is Jesus relevant to real-life issues?