Different

 Genesis 45:1-15; Matthew 15:21-28

The Canaanite woman. This story has always bothered me. Jesus refuses to heal someone for the first time and it is all because of her ethnicity. I can't imagine Jesus doing this to anyone. Yet in seminary you learn it's for us to learn our prejudices are not God's. God doesn't see with the same eyes. Commentators still debate whether Jesus is learning something from this woman though. Learning about the fullness of God's love and mercy. Learning it extends beyond what is our limitations.

I guess this is the question for us. Do we limit God's love. We all do it. There is someone right now you can think of who you don't love, don't like, and don't think God does either. When I read the prophets it's so much more expansive. Take our story of Joseph today. This is the end of a long saga. If anyone has a right to hold a grudge it's Joseph. Taken and sold into slavery by his brothers. I mean if you really read the story they were sick and tired of Joseph telling of his own self-importance, his own favoritism in the family of Jacob.

Here we are at the end of this story. Joseph doesn't punish, doesn't hold them in prison, doesn't make them pay. No, Joseph loves his lost brothers. He cries, he cries so loud those he sent out of the room hear it. He gathers them together in love and they come to receive. Letting all the past hurts and sibling rivalry go. It is an ending of great healing.

Imagine if we did this as the Christian community. Imagine if we saw our connection to one another. This is the story of the Canaanite woman. She is connected even if it is as the dog getting the crumbs from the table. In this reminder of connection Jesus heals her daughter. Maybe this story is a parable for all of us. Remember we are all connected. We are all desiring of someone to love us fully, unconditionally, in spite of all we have done. We desire to be connected to the source of that love. 

Unfortunately Christians have sometimes not displayed this love well. We forget. We get wrapped up into political ideologies and have lost Jesus' example of connection. Even to the ones we despise and it should bother us. It should make us want to do better, to do more to recognize the fragile lines which make us brothers and sisters, God's family.

The table we meet at tells this story. It tells of a betrayer among the disciples who receives the last supper, the last meal, right along with the rest of them because he is still loved by Jesus, by God. Even when we lose our way Jesus pursues us. Jesus wants us to know and share this love which is shared by the divine Trinity. A display of the way things should be. 

So let us try to remember when it is hard that we are all a part of the bigger family of God. Yes, there is betrayal, scheming, liars, ones we wouldn't want to recognize, and they are all welcome at the table. Even us, ourselves who don't always get it right. God, Jesus welcomes us to display this fullness to the world, so it may spill out and infect those who need this love most. So love ridiculously, audaciously, expansively and see where it goes next.