Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
There are all kinds of groups, teams, and organizations people belong to throughout their lives. Some might be rather temporary, like a team in a pickup game of basketball. Others might have a more long-lasting impact, like a group of soldiers who served together in the military. Whatever the context, we usually feel a sense of belonging that those outside the group wouldn’t feel or might not even understand.
In Jesus’ time, this dynamic was found between the Jewish people who were God’s “chosen people”, and the Gentiles. And this was more than just a Yankees-Red Sox rivalry; God had made a covenant with the Jewish people and had a unique relationship with them. With this religious and cultural backdrop, we see Jesus encounter a Canaanite woman (an outsider) in this Sunday’s Gospel.
Even the disciples asked Jesus if he wanted them to send her away. It might sound odd to us, but as far as they were concerned, Jesus had more important things to do and people to talk to, namely those who were already part of the covenant. Jesus himself even says to her that he came for the “lost sheep of Israel.” She persists in her plea for her daughter’s healing, and Jesus commends her for her great faith and her daughter is healed.
This must have been pretty mind-blowing for the disciples, that God was now at work in the lives of more than just the people of the covenant. They’d see plenty more examples of this, culminating in Jesus’ “Great Commission”, where right before he ascends into Heaven, he sends them to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”. Good thing no Christians over the past 2,000 years since then have gone back to the insider/outsider mentality. Oh wait.
There are a lot of ways we might reflect on where we might have an insider/outsider mentality in our lives and whether or not we should. Let’s focus on for the moment on who we try to reach out to and share our faith with, and who we don’t and probably should. Maybe you find it easy to invite a friend to a youth ministry event who also goes to the Parish, but it wouldn’t occur to you to invite your atheist friend to come make sandwiches for the homeless. Why is that? That service event might be the starting point for them on a journey toward God.
Maybe you have some friends from soccer that you’re close with and whom you genuinely care about, but you’ve compartmentalized your friendships and you don’t want to bring them into your “Church” circle. Maybe some of them have gotten into some trouble and you feel like your community of Catholic friends is really for the “good” kids. Here too, these “outsiders” might need this community of faith even more than those who are already there.
So this week, think about the “outsiders” in your life that you’ve overlooked, especially when it comes to faith. You may think they wouldn’t be interested or receptive, but your invitation might be a game changer for them spiritually, and like the Canaanite woman, they too might come to a place of great faith!
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