Justice is for everyone
When Jesus finally responds to the Canaanite woman in today’s passage from Matthew, when he chooses to heal her daughter, he brings them not only healing, but also justice. The woman is a foreigner and Jesus’ first response was to say that his work does not include her. But the woman pushes him to consider that including her doesn’t mean choosing between his work and her request, but only expanding it. In other words, she reminds him that he can do both, he can feed the children and the dogs. He can minister to the lost sheep of Israel and to the other nations. God’s grace is not limited, not in short supply. When Jesus heals her daughter, he opens a door that was closed to her and all her people, breaking down the barriers between groups and disrupting the assumptions about who is beloved by God. Jesus brings both healing, or salvation, and justice. This was always the work he came to do.
Mary knew this. Remember that when she was pregnant, she proclaimed the coming of God’s justice when she said, “His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” The justice here doesn’t come from the inversion of rich and poor, it comes from the recognition that the lowly, the hungry, the most vulnerable are worthy in the eyes of God, that taking advantage of them, oppressing them, is not God’s plan.
I know this depiction of Jesus describing his work so narrowly to the Canaanite woman can be a difficult one for many of us, and the language I am using takes Jesus literally. It assumes that he meant what he said the first time, and that he allowed this woman to change his mind. I think that’s possible. Jesus was fully human, and in this moment he is doing something we all can find ourselves doing: closing ranks, leaving someone out, assuming that there is not enough time or energy for everyone.
But another view of this is that Jesus was using the moment to set an example, that he insulted her only to demonstrate how broad God’s grace is, by appearing to need to change his mind and so attend to her. I don’t think we need to get too tied up in what is actually happening here, because the result is the same. Whether he meant to do it all along, or he changed his mind to respond to her, Jesus spoke to a Gentile woman in a Gentile area of the world, and proclaimed that her faith is great. That was a monumental thing to do. It’s not a compliment we ever hear him say to the disciples; in fact, we often hear the opposite, and we just did, a few verses prior to this. Jesus’ words and actions make it clear that all the things we as humans do to demonstrate who’s in and who’s out, who is deserving of grace and who isn’t, these things are irrelevant to God. Salvation is for everyone. Justice is for everyone.
As a church, or as individuals, we can often forget this. We live in a world that tells us there is never enough. Not enough resources, not enough love, not enough justice, not enough salvation to go around. We may tend to hoard these things, to hold onto them, to keep them to ourselves. The history of the church is full of examples of this, of excluding populations of people, until, like Jesus, our actual interactions with individuals from these groups allow us to truly see their faith as the blessing that it is.
I want to share one other biblical example of this expansive view of God’s call. In our lectionary readings, we have been following track 1, but I want to share with you what we would have heard this morning, instead of the story of Joseph, if we were using track 2. From Isaiah 56, verses 1 and 6 to 8, we hear:
Thus says the Lord:
Maintain justice, and do what is right,
for soon my salvation will come,
and my deliverance be revealed.
And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord,
to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord,
and to be his servants,
all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it,
and hold fast my covenant--
these I will bring to my holy mountain,
and make them joyful in my house of prayer;
their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar;
for my house shall be called a house of prayer
for all peoples.Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel,
I will gather others to them
besides those already gathered.
“Maintain justice and do what is right, for soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance be revealed….for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” Isaiah is talking about the return from Exile and the building of community between the Judeans and the foreigners who attached themselves to them, likely through conversion. Just like with the Canaanite woman, we see justice and salvation woven together, we are reminded that there is enough for everyone, and we are given an image of God breaking through divisions, gathering all people of faith together.
Hearing both of these readings today, we have an opportunity to notice that God’s work always includes justice, and in this we all have a role to play. Justice means remembering that there is always more than enough, it means noticing those around us who are also beloved children of God, challenging our assumptions that would exclude them, and always, always expanding the work of the church. We do this not only because it is the right thing to do, but because it is another way that God blesses us. As we go out into the world today, I invite all of us to see with new eyes, the work we may have neglected, the people we have dismissed. If Jesus can “change his mind”, so can we. And while we may never really know where God’s call will take us, we can know that it will always be a blessing to us. Amen.