We are told in scripture that Jesus changes his mind only a handful of times
and each time, he changes his mind, at hand of a woman.
And most often that woman is his mother Mary, the Mother of God.
But in today’s reading, it is a Canaanite woman,
a Canaanite foreigner as the scriptures would put it.
This is striking.
In fact, this gospel passage is quite perturbing in lots of ways.
We have to ask the question,
“Why would the evangelist put into scripture,
that Jesus, the Son of God, changes his mind?
Why would that be important?”
There has been lots of speculation by biblical scholars
but we have to actually really take a closer at it,
to really understand this passage.
There are always layers of meaning in the gospel
and we have to pull it apart to get the best understanding of it.
And then we have to take that into context of today’s other readings.
First of all, the greater context here is
that Jesus completed some other ministry that he was condemned for.
He has already being condemned by the local Jews.
He is in confrontation with the Jewish leaders.
This is the motif of the gospel of Matthew
from whom we are reading each Sunday.
The gospel of Matthew was aimed primarily
at a Jewish audience with Gentiles in it.
They were constantly trying to justify that Jesus
was the fulfillment of the Old Testament.
That is the other context of the gospel itself.
Now this particular section of the gospel
that we see has to be understood in direct context as well.
A Canaanite would have been the arch enemy of the Jewish people.
As a Canaanite woman she would never have been allowed
to speak to a man like in this manner.
She has two strikes against her before she does anything.
She is a man and she is a foreigner and an enemy of the people.
We have the immediate response of Jesus
and we have to take this first at face value
just to sort of understand the layers.
Jesus first of all ignores her and remains silent.
Then the disciples plead with him to do what would have been common;
tell her to go away as she shouldn’t be talking to us.
And Jesus says, “You’re right.
I’m not here am I for the people other than Israel.”
And then she comes again and pleads with him
and he does what would have been done.
He gave a racial slur calling her a dog.
Now, there is no nice way of packaging that in this gospel.
This is a racial slur.
It would have been a common slur.
But it would have been a pretty nasty slur.
And she persists yet again.
Why is this so important?
Because on the one hand, we could say well,
the evangelist could have just skipped over it
as it would have been rather embarrassing
to see the Son of God ignore and then condemn and then give a slur.
But there is a message both from the evangelist
and from Jesus himself here and we need to see it and hear it.
He was fighting the Jews and
he did exactly what his disciples would have him do,
which was ignore and then send her away with a slur.
Condemn her and put her down.
And what happens is critical.
She she responds graciously with faith.
And then he does something that is so uncommon.
He changes his mind and says,
“Go. Your faith is great. Your daughter is saved.”
In other words, a foreign woman changed Jesus’ mind
about the way things were.
That holds up for us a model
and that is what I think the evangelist Matthew is trying to do.
He is holding up a model to us
that just because we have always done things a certain way
does not make them right.
No matter how pious and no matter how religious we are,
we have to understand that sometimes
we need to have our eyes opened and our minds opened.
Sometimes that is done by somebody
who is in a position of least authority.
A woman, a foreigner, an immigrant or a refugee.
The question then for us is
“Oh, that’s all great, that is a lovely explanation,
Fr. Brendan, but how does that apply to us?”
I don’t know about you but I am constantly coming across things
that I find myself having to open my eyes again,
open my mind again.
It is like I thought I had all the facts.
I thought I had all the information.
And then I realized, well,
I have heard a different perspective now
and then I see things differently.
And I change my mind;
or at least I am called to change my mind
because sometimes changing my mind can be quite hard.
We have been through a whole lot as a community
and as a society; as a nation and as a world.
Just in these last five months,
we have been inundated with dealing with
the Coronavirus and the COVID-19.
There is so much information coming at us.
They are conflicting constantly.
And it is hard to make sense of that;
and in the midst of all of this,
we have this horrible incident and murder of George Floyd.
Then up rises these protests, which were confusing for many of us.
What is this about?
The incident itself was deplorable.
But the uprise seemed to touch a nerve.
I believe, and I am sure you do too,
that I am not a racist in any way
but it just seemed to me that if I was white,
I was going to be a racist and I didn’t understand that;
and I had to look at things again.
I am not American born, right?
I was born in Ireland.
I am a citizen of the United States but I grew up in Ireland.
We have hardly any black people at all.
I had no black friends growing up.
I had no experience of that.
When I came to Silicon Valley,
there is a tiny percentage of our population even here.
I do have some black friends now,
one who was a great friend of mine through the YMCA.
We did some great camps and work together.
I understood only a tiny fraction of what Black America has experienced.
I really did not understand it.
I asked some of my Black friends.
And they said, “Look Brendan, go educate yourself.
Don’t ask us to educate you.
Educate yourself.
Here are some of the things you ought to read
about the history of our country.”
So I started to read.
Wow! It’s changed my mind.
And then I am starting to read and
watch different movies of different times
to understand a different perspective of how
they have experienced our country; our world; our society.
And it has completely changed my mind.
And opened my mind.
We have to understand there is definitely racism.
Maybe there always will be racism in our country.
But the experience is so guttural and visceral.
I mean we need to listen.
And we need to understand how all is not the same.
The message of Christ Jesus today is echoed
in the other two readings,
which was the message of God;
the love of God; the grace of God; the mercy of God
is open to all nations and all people.
All ethnic backgrounds.
All skin colors.
All creeds.
There is no difference;
not necessarily that everyone is going to accept it
but God’s mercy and God’s love is open to all
and that requires every one of us as disciples to open our minds;
and open our hearts in a sense to change our minds.
At the end of the day, if Jesus, who is the Son of God
can have his mind changed by
a woman, a foreigner, an immigrant and a refugee
then maybe you and I can look again
and listen again and have our minds changed
by maybe an immigrant, a foreigner and a woman,
whose experience is far different from ours.
Today’s gospel and the readings are powerfully challenging to us
and requires of us to be humble and
to recognize that we may need to change our mind
when it comes to certain matters.
Today, may we do as Jesus did and
allow our minds to be changed for the better.
