GOD IS FOR ALL
Author: Fr. Michael Byron
August 16, 2020
Today’s readings put me in mind of a story that one of my
sisters remembers from the time that we were young children. She appeared
before our father one day, who, I believe, was reading the newspaper in his Easy
chair, and she was upset. Our Dad was both wise and humorous, and he was quick
on his feet in handling situations. My sister complained that “you like my
brother Mike better than me!” there was a long silence while Dad thought this
over, after which he responded, “Well yes. Yes, I do like him better.”
He recognized the nonsense for what it was, and he replied with
the most disarming statement possible. What’s a kid supposed to do in the face
of that? A child psychologist may disagree, but it seems like a brilliant
response to me. And since we both laugh
about it 50 years later, I guess there was no lasting injury done.
I mentioned that it is today’s Scriptures that reminded me
of that episode, because all of them address the enduring and ancient – and wrong
– religious question of who God loves better – or the most. It took the people
of Israel a very long time to recognize that this was and is a fundamentally
misguided question. And it has taken the Christian Church just as long to come
to the same conclusion. And some of us still aren’t there yet.
The ancient Israelites understood themselves – correctly –
to be a chosen people, a holy nation, with a particular destiny and mission in
the world. But many of them understood – incorrectly – that this honor meant
that God didn’t or couldn’t love anybody else – that divine love is a zero sum
game, a limit on affection and care to be carefully rationed.
But God doesn’t operate like that. People often do, but that’s
why we need to let God tell us who and how he is, rather than the other way
around. The fact that God has drawn near to us in love does not in any way
require – or even suggest – that God hasn’t done that for others as well. All of
the readings today remind us of this.
In the book of the prophet Isaiah we learn explicitly that “the
foreigners” will join themselves to the Lord, worshiping him, loving him, serving
him. It is God who says through the prophet that those “foreigners” will be
welcomed to the house of prayer, made joyful, their offerings acceptable. These
are not the sentiments of some other religion or philosophy – these are the
scriptures our religion. This is the God whom we worship.
In today’s second reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans,
it is useful to note that it is from the eleventh chapter – maybe the most
blatantly ignored New Testament chapter in Christian history. Read it for yourselves
at home if you can.
Paul is often invoked in religious polemics as being that
preacher who excludes everybody from God’s love who does not explicitly profess
the preferred religion of the day, whether Jewish or Christian. But both last
week and today we hear him saying exactly the opposite. Paul, the Jew-convert,
is expressly telling the non-Jews in his audience that they have welcome access
to the very same promises and mercy that God has always offered to everyone –
and they don’t have to be Jewish for that!
God’s care is never – and has never been – siphoned through
one specific, narrow religious channel in order to reach us, or reach anybody. A
lot of self-described religious people would be somewhat shaken to hear that. And
again, this is not the preaching of secular humanism. This is St. Paul!
And in today’s Gospel of Matthew, the question is put at the
feet of Jesus bluntly: Does God’s care and healing compassion extend only as
far as the boundaries of Jewish religion? Or not? (Recall that there wasn’t yet
any Christian religion at the time.) The disciples certainly though so. They told
Jesus to send this pagan woman away because she was a bother – no matter that
her daughter was suffering.
The whole story raises a lot of questions. Like, what were
Jesus and his friends doing there in the first place? Tyre and Sidon were not
in Israel. They were pagan places. Who exactly did they expect to encounter
there? And why did Jesus respond to that woman as he did? First he was rudely
dismissive of her, and then he was full of praise for her great faith in him. Did
he actually change his mind? Or was he using this as a teaching moment bot the
for the disciples and for this distressed mother? We’ll never know for sure,
but it doesn’t much matter. Because to the bigger questions of whether God’s
compassion extends to anyone and everyone, the answer is an emphatic “yes.” Our
own faith tells us that anyone or anything who God doesn’t care for would, for
that reason, not be here in the first place. That which God puts into our lives
is that for which God has concern and compassion. And when we struggle to
understand how that can be, that is – in fact – our struggle, and not our
excuse to be uncaring or indifferent or judging.
“Lord,” says the women, “even the dogs eat the scraps that
fall from the table of the master.” Even the ones whom we are inclined to
dismiss as unworthy have a claim on God’s mercy, and therefore on ours as well,
if we are the disciples who we claim to be.
So to put it bluntly, we’re not allowed to:
- Ignore the immigrant or
- Hate the Muslim or
- Despise that other race or
- Pass by the person who suffers or
- Post that deliberately demeaning comment on social media or
- Limit our concern only for our own preferred people
These are our own scriptures speaking here. Not always easy,
but right.
As my father knew, there’s no such category as “the ones I love
more.”
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