All our readings this week share the message about the inclusiveness of God. The recognition that God calls all people, all races, all nations, to his holy mountain can sometimes be one of the most difficult things to accept in the revelation we have received.
We have such a strong instinct that our relationship with God makes us, each of us individually, somehow special and sets apart from others. When we are loved, by anyone, it does make us feel special. Feeling special is part of the foundation of any longstanding relationship. But when that feeling becomes a basis for exclusion of others it becomes dangerous. No matter how often a parent might say “you are all my favorite children” there is a part of us that wants to feel “yes, but I’m the favoritist”.
As with all our feelings, battling against them, or pretending we don’t have them, is rarely successful. Better to acknowledge them and then work to avoid them determining our actions. We cannot control our feelings, but we can control our actions. Recognizing that feeling special can turn into feeling superior and then into dismissing others as inferior and unworthy is the common background for what we hear today from Isaiah (Isaiah 56:1, 6-7), from Paul (Romans 11:13-15, 29-32), from Matthew (Matthew 15:21-28), and even in the Responsorial Psalm (Psalm 67:2-3, 5, 6, 8).
In Matthew’s telling of Jesus’ interaction with the Canaanite woman asking for help for a sick daughter we hear this scenario played out with total clarity. Jesus displays the normal reactions to those considered inferior – first to ignore them, then to push them away, with increasing violence. The violence Jesus exhibits isn’t physical, but the verbal aggression is shocking in its intensity.
In doing this Jesus is teaching us, asking us to observe our own reactions under such circumstances – the way that our feelings can lead to behavior which is contrary to the promise of the Kingdom. There is no exclusion in the Kingdom. Faced with the abject obeisance of the excluded woman, even the hardest heart might recognize that our behavior towards her is ungodly. In calling out her faith Jesus calls us to reject the temptation to exclude others, and to understand that God does love all his children equally.
Love is not something to be guarded or protected, it grows the more that it is given. We are all imperfect – God knows that very well – but, as Paul puts it, he “delivered all to disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all.”