Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jan 15 2025

God’s Ever-Expanding Table

A woman has a daughter tormented by a demon. She hears about Jesus, seeks him out, and pleads with him to pity her child. Who could turn away? Yet Jesus dismisses her, saying dogs do not get the children’s food. Is Jesus really comparing her to a dog begging at table? Is he turning away because his mission to the house of Israel limits who benefits from his healing power? What was Jesus thinking?

Three things can be said here.

First of all, it is probable he was not literally calling her a dog any more than we are when we say about someone, “Every dog has its day.” Second, it is possible that at this time Jesus understood his mission as taking care of his own people first. We are told he grew in wisdom. Would this not include a growth in fully understanding his Father’s will and how far it went? Third, is it not even possible that this was a moment of growth, that the woman’s faith pushed him further along in widening his mission, and in recognizing that everyone was welcome at the table of the kingdom, and that his work was to respond wherever he found faith?

Isaiah reminds his Jewish listeners that God will bring the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord to his holy mountain, where they will worship. Paul reminds his Gentile listeners that God’s gifts and call to the Jews are irreversible. In a word, everyone has a place at the table.

Consider/Discuss

Do I believe that Jesus grew in wisdom and strength and favor?
Are there any groups that I tend to see as not belonging at the table of the Lord?
Do I take seriously the power of faith, my faith?

Responding to the Word

We pray to look beyond categories of nationality, ethnicity, class, gender, or any other arbitrary dividing line we put up to exclude others from the mercy of God and from being treated with justice, compassion, and forgiveness. We ask for the grace to respond to others as we would have God respond to us.

Jan 15 2025

Scripture Study for

Israel’s primary ethical obligation was social responsibility. Righteousness, which describes the quality of the relationship with God, is really a divine characteristic. Human beings only appropriate it when they are in right relationship with God. In response to the people’s fidelity, they are encouraged to proceed to God’s holy mountain. Even faithful foreigners will be allowed to rejoice here as members of the praying community. The temple is now designated as a house of prayer for all people, not merely a national shrine reserved for the elect. Now God is accessible to all, not merely to those of the bloodline of Israel.

Lest Gentile Christians think that their acceptance of Christ has made them superior to Jews, Paul emphasizes Israelite privilege. They were God’s special people, and it was to them that God granted extraordinary gifts. Paul argues that if he turned to the Gentiles because some Jews would not listen to him, now Jews will be jealous because Gentiles have accepted his message and will be converted. If the Jews’ rejection of the gospel brought reconciliation with God to the rest of the world, how much more will their acceptance of the gospel affect them? Gentiles have no reason to feel superior, for they too were sinners, and God granted them divine mercy.

The story of the Canaanite woman addresses several important and interrelated issues: crossing territorial and cultural boundaries, public social exchange of women and men, the Christian mission to the Gentiles, and the issue of faith. First, despite the belief that to cross into pagan territory was to leave God’s holy land, Jesus deliberately crosses into Gentile territory. In addition, the woman was unattended, a fact that threatened Jesus’ respectability. However, Jesus disregards the factors of gender, ethnic/religious background, and questionable lifestyle in order to reconcile to God a person who was marginalized by society.

Jan 12 2025

A Tale of a Healer

The sun shone as she sat stroking a puppy on the step. The others gathered around. They wanted to hear her story again. “Tell us about when the Master came here to Tyre.” The growing Christian community hungered for stories about Jesus.

“The difficulty started when I was four—my arms and legs began to twitch. Sometimes, I blacked out. My mother began to moan, ‘Oh no, the demon wants her!’ My older brother had writhed and died when that same demon had arrived. I was scared.

“One day, my mother saw a group of Jewish men visiting the city. She glimpsed Jesus the healer. She called out to him, ‘Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon.’ The men ignored her. She knew that she didn’t belong there. But she really loved me. Her heart ached from the grief that she might lose me, too. ‘Send her away,’ a man grunted. Jesus didn’t. At that moment, my mother said her heart swelled with hope. Maybe? Could the mercy of the God of Israel extend even north of the border?

“Hope and love made my mother persist. She would not give up. She fell to her knees and cried out, ‘Help me, sir!’

She said that she’ll never forget how gently Jesus said, ‘It is not right to take the children’s bread and give it to the puppies.’ She felt the Holy Spirit swell up within her: “Even the little dogs eat the scraps under the table!” Jesus was astonished. His face shone as he looked her in the eye. At that moment I was healed! Until the day she died, she told everyone about God’s mercy toward me. And she seemed to take in every stray puppy in the city.”

Consider/Discuss

Think of a time when you persisted in prayer. What was it that made you keep asking?
How is the mercy of God greater than any of our expectations? Where have you experienced that mercy?

Living and Praying with the Word

God of mercy, be gracious to us. We know that none of us deserve your love. Yet we hope in you. You gather people from all over the world to rejoice in you. In solidarity with the scared and the forlorn, the outcast and the refugee, we praise you for always loving us. Together, bring us to your holy mountain and reconcile this world that you have made.

Jan 12 2025

Scripture Study for

The final chapters of Isaiah come from the post-exilic period, a time of struggle, in which God’s promises of restoration were slow in coming to fruition. The prophetic exhortation encourages continued hope in God’s salvation and justice. The promises now extend not just to ethnic Israel, but to all who come to God’s “holy mountain” (the temple in Jerusalem) to worship God and to abide by the covenant. This passage is one of several that appear in the post exilic period that refer to God’s larger plan to bring “all peoples” into relationship through Israel. Those who would join themselves to God will also be expected to love, serve, and obey.

Paul has been grappling with the question of Israel’s role within God’s plan, in light of the fact that so many Jews have not accepted Jesus as the Messiah (Romans 9–11). Knowing that God has not rejected the chosen (11:1), he suggests this (temporary) rejection was part of the plan to carry salvation beyond Israel. Those Gentiles who have accepted Christ should not judge Jews who have not, for their own salvation is only possible because they have been “grafted” onto Israel and received the benefits of their covenant relationship with God. Paul’s hope is that Israel has been allowed to disobey so that, like the Gentiles, they too can receive God’s mercy.

While in Gentile territory, Jesus encounters a woman who calls him “Lord” and “Son of David,” terms one would expect only from Jews who recognized him as Messiah. Uncharacteristically, Jesus ignores her. Yet when his disciples ask him to send her away, he doesn’t; he simply says he was not sent to the Gentiles. Perhaps recognizing that this objection does not constitute an outright refusal, the woman persists. Once again Jesus merely offers an objection: what is meant for the children (Israel) should not be given to the dogs (Gentiles). She persists, pointing out that there is enough of his salvific power to go around. This insightful retort wins the day. Jesus rewards her persistence, a sign of her faith.

Jan 06 2025

Focus, Focus, Focus

Losing focus can be dangerous to your health. A man recalled in an interview how he had taken his eyes off the road for only three seconds to check his cell phone, when he smashed into the car in front of him. An expert on the addictive nature of digital technology suggested that when driving, cell phone owners should throw it out of reach in the back seat of the car. Cell phones are a danger to our focus on the road.

Jesus shifts how we usually focus on him today—not as preaching or teaching or healing or shepherding, but as casting fire on the earth; not as peacemaker but as divider. This might not make us too happy. Who wants an incendiary Jesus torching the land, or Jesus the homebreaker causing trouble in our family relationships? But Luke’s focus on Jesus cannot be tossed aside

Like Jeremiah, Jesus had to tell people what they didn’t want to hear: that Jerusalem was going to be destroyed, that it wasn’t enough to think God would protect the citizens simply because they laid claim to the temple, the law, or the Sabbath. Laying claims didn’t matter if you didn’t live them. Laying claim to Jesus means living as a disciple of Jesus, keeping your eyes on Jesus as our “leader and perfecter of faith.” Faith ties, not blood ties, are what matter. Jesus came to bring into being a new family through his saving death and resurrection. That’s the faith focus.

Consider/Discuss

Have you ever had an experience of losing focus when navigating, or being called to, the digital world (cell phone, Internet, texting)?
What is Jesus calling our attention to, when he says he has come to set the earth on fire, or to bring division, not peace?

Responding to the Word

Jesus, you came to enlighten the eyes of our hearts so that we might see you as our leader, hear you as the very Word of God, and follow you along the way you have led. Do not let us grow weary and lose heart, but set our spirits afire with your life-giving Spirit.