DIRECT TO JESUS

Each of us is learning and adjusting to changing circumstances, large and small, every day; indeed every moment of our lives. That is what human life well lived is about. In Jesus we have both fully human and fully divine natures. Though fully God, the second person of the Trinity has deigned to become fully human in order to experience life as a human and to model for humans the nature of God’s love and the human quest for God.  

Fully human, Jesus spends a lifetime growing, learning and adapting. A product of his time and place, he is a Jew who culturally despises Canaanites. Losing this debate with the determined Canaanite woman (Matt 15:21-28), changes his perspective on the despised non-Jews and reveals the universal nature of the Kingdom of God. Rather than being converted by Jesus, the woman converts Jesus who “has to enlarge the boundaries of his mission to encompass the outsider: it is not the case that the outsider comes into Jesus’ pre-set mission boundaries.”  (Sacred Space, SJIT).

We flatter ourselves that we are open and welcoming to outsiders and hopefully we are. But our end game often is to encourage outsiders to fit the structure and parameters of our group; to live by our rules and behaviour. There is no suggestion of the Canaanite woman being anything other than what she presented to Jesus: a Canaanite woman in pain imploring Jesus to help her daughter. To meet her where she is at. And so, he does. Her wish is granted and her daughter is well again. 

She teaches us that we have much to learn from outsiders. Rather than going out to teach them about God, sometimes we need to be open to learning about God from them. Her well placed faith is focussed on Jesus alone, teaching us to bare ourselves honestly and directly to Jesus, who hears us. 

Deacon Mark Kelly