For nearly 2,000 years, the church has struggled with the question of who gets to be included in God’s family. We’re tempted to treat God’s love if it were like a pie with only so many pieces to go around. But as Paul reminds us in today’s reading, God has not rejected God’s people. As the Canaanite woman reminds Jesus, God’s mercy is bigger than the boundaries we draw. God’s love, mercy, and grace are big enough for all of us—and for “them” too. God’s love is not pie.
Today’s Scripture readings are Isaiah 56:1, 6-8; Psalm 67; Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32; and Matthew 15:10-28. I found helpful this week Nancy Lammers Gross’ commentary on the Romans passage at Working Preacher. Here’s the livestream from CTK and the sermon podcast audio:
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Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
I’m reading a book about the value of joy in a spiritual life, and one of the things that brings me joy is pie. I don’t like to compare churches, but my previous church in Iowa was very good at making pie. So, turn to someone near you and ask them their favorite kind of pie. Mine’s probably chocolate peanut butter, maybe pecan. Anyway, keep your favorite pie in mind.
Let’s start with the reading from Romans. Sometimes we get the idea that the early church had things figured out. It must have been so exciting to live in the early church. Yes, sometimes they were being persecuted, but they were growing by leaps and bounds; people were noticing what they were doing, what God was doing through them. Everything was new and exciting. And maybe some of that’s true.
But the early church struggled with a lot of the same challenges we still struggle with today. They didn’t have aging buildings to maintain, but they had plenty of conflict, plenty of things they disagreed on. Much of the New Testament other than the Gospels is letters written to deal with church conflict.
Paul writes to the Corinthians, the church in Corinth, “For it has been made clear to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters.” A little later he writes to the church in Philippi, in Philippians chapter 4, “I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord.” Clearly, there was conflict.
In his letter to the Romans, one of the themes Paul addresses is the inclusion of both Jews and Gentiles in the church. Remember, Jesus was Jewish, and so were all his disciples. They’re part of God’s chosen people, the Hebrews (the Israelites), the people at the center of God’s story for thousands of years.
Even in today’s Gospel reading from Matthew 15, Jesus says he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But as Jesus’ ministry continues, and especially at Pentecost and some of the stories after Pentecost, it becomes very clear the Holy Spirit is expanding the circle of who’s included.
Before he ascends into heaven, Jesus tells his followers, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” In the great commission in Matthew 28, he says, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.”
Peter was one of the most skeptical about including Gentiles, or at least letting them become Christians without first becoming Jewish. But then in Acts chapter 10, God gives him an incredible vision where he’s offered animals that were unclean, not kosher, and God tells him, “Do not consider impure what God has made clean.”
Gentile foreigners are getting baptized, they’re receiving the Holy Spirit and sharing the Gospel, and it’s pretty clear they get to be part of the Body of Christ too. They’re included in what God is doing.
(And of course, as I’m saying “they get to be included” remember most of us are part of the “they.” If you had to be Jewish to be Christian, that’d be a problem for most of us in this room.)
In the Roman church specifically—the Christian community in Rome—there are both Jews and Gentiles, until the late 40’s, maybe in the year 49, when the Roman Emperor Claudius expels all Jews from the city (Bible Project has good background on this).
So then all that’s left in the Roman church are the Gentile Christians, until after about five years the Jewish people are allowed to return.
But they come back to a church that’s pretty thoroughly non-Jewish, and you can imagine with different customs, different practices, there’s some tension about what the right way is to worship, how to follow Jesus.
So a lot of what Paul’s writing in his letter to the Romans is to try to unify this divided church.
It seems a bit like a pendulum—first, the Jewish Christians were concerned about all these Gentiles coming into the church, and now the Gentiles aren’t too sure the Jewish Christians belong anymore.
So Paul writes in Romans 11, “I ask then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.”
We aren’t having this particular debate any more, at least not here in our community.
We understand—at least I hope we understand—that ethnic heritage is not a criteria for following Jesus. There are Christians in every country in the world, Christians of every skin color, race, and language.
But even knowing that, we’re still tempted to divide ourselves, to label people as in or out. The criteria we use is different. We’re more often tempted to put on labels of political party, or worship style, or how people pray. We wrestle with differences over sexual orientation, different jobs, wealth, or how people dress.
As Nancy Lammers Gross puts it, “If I am in the range of God’s love, given my theological, biblical, cultural, ecclesial, and political perspectives and behavior in life, then those people must not be in. Those people must be out.”
We make the same basic error as the Roman church: We assume God’s love is like pie.
In a pie, there’s a limited amount; it’s a zero sum game. If I take a piece, there’s one less piece left for you. If enough of you take a piece, there might not be a piece left for me.
But God’s love is not like pie. God has infinite capacity for love, for grace, for forgiveness.
In Isaiah 56, God says, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” God will gather the outcasts of Israel, and also “will gather others to them besides those already gathered.” Psalm 67 says, “Let all the peoples praise you…may all the ends of the earth stand in awe.”
We’re all in the same boat; we’re all sinners in need of God’s mercy. Paul writes to the church in Galatia, “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.” God’s mercy is big enough for all of us.
I think that’s part of what I take away from this uncomfortable Gospel reading. The first section, I like. Jesus explains that what matters is not how well you follow some legalistic rituals, but what comes out of your heart.
What matters is the fruit you bear, the results, not the letter of the law. God cares much more about what comes out of your mouth than about what goes into it, because what comes out of your mouth, how you act, the way you treat other people reflects the condition of your heart.
Another way of saying it might be it doesn’t matter how many times you read the Bible, or how much you go to church, if your life doesn’t reflect the love of God. Your life is your witness to God, your words, your actions.
I like that part. But then we keep going in Matthew 15, and Jesus has an encounter with a Canaanite woman, and this might be my least favorite story in all the Gospels.
This woman, who is an outsider, a Canaanite woman, comes to Jesus for help, and at first he rejects her. He says no, and I can’t explain that part. I don’t like this side of Jesus.
But then her argument convinces him. And he yields to her demands; he heals her daughter. This is one of those times where there are a bunch of cultural layers I don’t understand, and I’m not sure if I want to defend Jesus’ behavior here or if I want to argue with him (because Jesus of all people should know God’s love is not like pie), even though I have lots of questions about this story, it’s clear this story pushes Jesus’ ministry across a boundary. His mission expands to include outsiders.
As he said earlier, faith in a person’s heart is what’s important, not following certain purity laws or traditions. Now Jesus lives out that teaching.
I don’t like the idea of making this suffering woman into an object lesson, but I believe we’re meant to go with Jesus here. This story calls us to move from thinking some people are outside the boundaries, to realizing all people are created in the image of God. God’s love is bigger than the boundaries we draw.
This Canaanite mother is right when she insists all people are worthy of love, when she insists God’s mercy is for her and her daughter too. Everyone we meet, everyone we hear about on the news, everyone we are tempted to (or even told to) hate, to see as “other” is a beloved child of God.
And God’s love is big enough for them too. Not at our expense, but because God is far better at loving than we are. We are included, we are loved because God is good. Period. Not because of who we are, but because of who God is.
And if there’s room for us in God’s kingdom, then there’s room for them too. Thanks be to God.
Amen