Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost; 20 August 2023; Proper 15A (RCL); Genesis 45:1-15; Psalm 133; Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32; Matthew 15:10-28.
I wish we weren’t skipping over so much of the story of Joseph in the Track 1 readings. Last week, Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery, and this week, everything is wonderful. The story of Joseph is really quite troubling. Joseph, acting for the Pharaoh, ends up buying his own people into slavery in exchange for grain. I suspect hidden in this story is some Northern Kingdom/Southern Kingdom antipathy, but that’s a story for another post.
We also skip over a big chunk of material in the eleventh chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans — the whole business about a remnant of Israel, and the wild olive branch being grafted on the domesticated olive root (I suspect that John gets his image of the vine from here, and from Isaiah 5 and elsewhere in the Old Testament). Paul is warning his Gentile audience not to make the same mistake he has laid at the feet of Israel, of thinking they are somehow more special than all other peoples.
Without those intervening verses, it is really easy to misunderstand the verses we do get. When Paul says, “God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all,” it’s easy to think he is speaking of individuals. God has imprisoned you and me in disobedience so that God may be merciful to you and me. That is not at all what Paul is saying. God has imprisoned the Gentiles in disobedience (see chapter 1) so that God may be merciful to Gentiles, and God has imprisoned Israel in disobedience (see chapter 2) so that God may be merciful to Israel.
Righteousness for Paul is a characteristic of communities — communities in which human flourishing is possible as God intended, and which care for creation as God intended when God created humanity. Of course, such righteousness requires faithfulness to God’s intentions, and that is where all communities fall short, so God is merciful, and draws all persons into righteous community through Jesus Christ. God is righteous, true to God’s own intentions, and none of this relies on any “specialness” we think we may have.
The two blocks of material in our Gospel reading this week make much the same point. Matthew softens Mark’s pungent joke about what goes in and what comes out. The scatological humor is much closer to the surface in Mark. Everybody poops, ergo, everybody is defiled. A good Cynic rejoinder. Mark adds the “moral,” which Matthew omits: thereby Jesus declared all foods clean. If you want to focus on what defiles, all humans are defiled.
And then the story of the Canaanite woman (in Mark, a Syro-phoenician woman, and Mark adds that she was a Gentile, just in case we missed the point). We are really uncomfortable with Jesus’ insult of her, as well we should be. I think this block of material (between the second sea-crossing, the walking on the water, with Jesus not in the boat, and the second feeding of a multitude in the wilderness, 4000 this time, not 5000) represents a post-resurrection account of the church’s struggle to include Gentiles in table fellowship. Peter withdrew from eating with Gentiles at Antioch, when certain men from James showed up (Galatians 2) — Jesus invited him to step out of the boat, but he sank when he saw the storm.
It was not an easy transition for the church to make, as Paul’s letters testify. This woman’s persistence, her faith(fulness), changed Jesus’/the church’s mind. Her response to Jesus is a good Cynic rejoinder as well. Jesus has insulted her by calling her a dog. She insults him by suggesting that he must be incredibly stingy if he won’t let the dogs eat what falls from their master’s table. Ouch.
The upshot of all this is that nothing that goes to make up our identity (ethnicity, gender, culture (the foods we eat) wealth, status, anything) either qualifies us or disqualifies us from living in righteous community. Any failure of righteousness is a failure on the part of community to include all, and any success at righteous community depends on God’s grace and God’s faithfulness to God’s promises as demonstrated in Jesus Christ. Only human community (sinful as it is) can exclude others. God’s grace extends to all.