(~) God's Outreaching Love


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Topic: Religions > Bible
User: "• Ninure Saunders"
Date: 09 Aug 2005 06:15:16 PM
Object: (~) God's Outreaching Love
(~) God's Outreaching Love
August 14, 2005
Isaiah 56:1, 6-8
Psalm 67
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
Matthew 15:[10-20] 21-28
God's Outreaching
Love
It may be hard to find a more poignant outcry than that of the disciples
in the Gospel reading from Matthew 15:21-28,
Send her away!
She is following us and
making all this noise! (15.23, GNT)
The subtext here is that the woman is seen as "not one of us." She is a
Canaanite, and the implied question is: why should we be bothered with
her? Curiously, Jesus' first two responses to her pleas are strictly
pro-forma. He seems to be supporting the narrow tradition of the scope of
God's kingdom. But in the end, Jesus affirms this Canaanite woman's great
faith and, in so doing, affirms also the universal scope of God's love and
concern for human beings over against the cramped kind of "us/them"
parochialism shown here by the weary disciples.
All three of this week's readings address this theme, which is such a
helpful corrective whenever Christians fall into the trap of the "us/them"
mentality, of foolishly thinking that our particular group within the
whole body of Christ has a corner on God, so to speak. God, in loving all
human beings created in the image of God, does not discriminate against
persons, regardless of class, race, power,
credentials, status, achievements, or even denominational
affiliations.
The prophet Isaiah makes God's message clear to the people of God that in
the time of the restored temple, in the renewed worship after the Exile,
the breadth of God's universal love will be apparent. Using the examples
of foreigners (i.e., resident aliens or guest workers) and eunuchs, who
in the past had been unwelcome (Deuteronomy 23:1-3), Isaiah declares God's
word that in the future reality God's salvation and favor will extend to
all who "do what is just and right" (56:1, GNT), irrespective of whether
they are eunuchs, foreigners, outcasts, or Israelites (56:3-4). In 56:7,
speaking for God, Isaiah declares further:
For my house shall be called
a house of
prayer for all peoples. (NAB)
God's love goes out to all people equally. God's people help to radiate
that love by their own words and deeds. But to label and categorize, to
exclude and marginalize, is to put obstacles in the way of God's
outreaching love. Is there any difference in saying: send her away, she's
a Canaanite (foreigner); or, send her away, she's got a criminal record;
or, her piety or
belief is not up to our level?
This story about Jesus and the Canaanite woman must have been told often
in the early days of the Church when outreach to Gentiles had to be
earnestly defended against those who saw that as illegitimate. This story
must have served as a significant paradigm for the early outreach. Jesus
himself set the model, reaching out to a Canaanite woman. God's people
today, as ever, are challenged by this model to share the universal
dimensions of God's love, rather than our own exclusive preferences.
This week's Reflection was prepared by David G. Burke, Ph.D., retired Dean
of the American Bible Society's Nida Institute for Biblical Scholarship
and an ordained minister with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in
America.
+ + +
Pax Christi,
• Ninure Saunders aka Rainbow Christian
Jesus is my Shepherd and He knows I'm Gay
http://Ninure-Saunders.tk
My Yahoo Group
http://Ninure.tk
Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches
http://www.MCCchurch.org
The Bible Site - help provide free scripture
http://www.thebiblesite.org
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