Proper
15 :: Isaiah 56: 1, 6–8 / Psalm 133 / Romans 11: 1-2a, 29–32 / Matthew 15: 10–28
This
is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene Tucker
on Sunday, August 16, 2020.
“HOW BIG IS OUR VISION?”
(Homily texts: Isaiah
& Matthew 15: 10–28)
One of the ways in which we grow into full maturity
in our walk with God is to come to understand and know God’s will. This process
takes shape in a number of ways.
One of the ways in which we adopt God’s
understanding has to do with the scope of God’s work and will in the world.
Connected to this question is the matter of just what group of human beings God
seems to be concerned with. We can pose the question this way: Is God concerned with only one group of
people, or is God concerned with all peoples everywhere?
If we look at the conditions that seem to have been
common during the time of our Lord’s earthly ministry, we’d have to conclude
that God’s chosen people thought that God was concerned only with them, and
with no one else. Everyone else was outside of God’s concern, attention and
care.
I think that’s a fair assessment of the situation
that Jesus encountered as He went about teaching, healing and caring for
people. After all, God’s people in those days were living under the brutal
conditions imposed by the Roman occupation. When such conditions prevail, human
beings tend to “hunker down” in an attempt to preserve their heritage and their
history. (We shouldn’t be too hard on God’s people, living in that day and time
and circumstance.)
Such an attitude runs counter to the vision that
was articulated by the prophet Isaiah. In our Old Testament reading, heard this
morning, he reminds God’s people that God’s house is to be a “house of prayer
for all people”, not just Jews. Isaiah’s sentiment echoes many other statements
we read in the pages of the Old Testament, for reminders there deal with how
God’s people are to deal with and to treat sojourners and foreigners. In the Psalms,
we read that peoples everywhere will stream to Jerusalem and to Mt. Zion.
In times of difficulty and distress (not unlike
what many are experiencing these days), the human tendency is to “hunker down”.
That’s what the Jews of 2,000 years ago did, and that’s what human beings in
various times and places do.
But Jesus’ encounter with the Canaanite woman,
somewhere in the Gentile territory of Tyre and Sidon, presages the
understanding that the Good News of God’s concern and care extends to all
people, everywhere. In time, Jesus will articulate this vision as He instructs
His disciples to go “into all the world”. (Matthew 28: 16–20)
In the Church, we have to admit that the conditions
we find ourselves in culturally these days might encourage us to “hunker down”,
and to adopt an attitude that suggests that God is concerned only with us, or
with others who are like us.
As a result, we fall in love with our smallness.
We risk forgetting that God’s vision for the spread
of the Good News (Gospel) is all-encompassing. God’s vision mandates that we
adopt that same attitude, working to aid God’s work in the world by our words
and by our actions. Being comfortable with our smallness, or with the idea
that, because we are getting what we want out of our time in church, that’s all
that is necessary, isn’t an option. AMEN.
