Pastor Ray only read the portion of today's Gospel that deals with a Gentile woman of Syrophoenician origin.” In other words, she is implicitly impure because of her origin. She lived outside of the land of Israel. She lived outside of the law of Moses. She was a descendant of the ancient enemies of Israel. She initiated a conversation with Jesus, a Jew and a stranger to her -- another taboo transgressed.
On top of that her child was possessed by a demon. Pastor Ray preached about the many different speculations as to why Jesus first responds to her request by saying "Let the children be fed first". He might have been testing her faith. He may have been responding as to what his listener's might have expected his answer to be only to surprise them with his true answer.
I came in with another Bible passage in my head. I am currently reading Genesis with a group devoted to a Year of Contemplating the Word. The intention is to read through the entire Bible in a year.
The spiritual gulf between the Old Testament and the New Testament has become very clear to me. Today I was reading yet another genealogy, and I thought they acted like unneeded markers of the passage of time. These detailed family lines stopped what I considered the forward motion in the stories and I often skipped past them in prior readings.
However they must have moved the narrative forward for scriptural followers at that time when the first covenant was in effect. Each inclusion of a parent's name was a link of God's promise to another family line. God's promise kept expanded to more and more of God's people as they read these passages.
God's relationship with humankind expressed in the new covenant changes all this. As emphasized in today's Gospel lesson, the link to God's promise by family or tribe is superseded by the relationship to God mediated by Jesus. For those who live with the new covenant these genealogies actually slip us backwards. Declaring to be among a chosen people by birthright or action is now a temptation to be avoided.
Many Christians are on different, strange journeys at this time in America and the world. One is a concerted effort to move beyond national origins by some. Another is to fully embrace them for others. As America gradually loses a majority white population (labeled the browning of America) some feel fear.
Tucker Carlson said this on Fox News this week (after feeling brow-beaten by people saying America's diversity is it's strength):How, precisely, is diversity our strength? Since you have made this our new national motto, please be specific as you explain it. Can you think, for example, of other institutions such as, I don’t know, marriage or military units in which the less people have in common, the more cohesive they are?
Do you get along better with your neighbors, your co-workers if you can’t understand each other or share no common values? Please be honest as you answer this question.
And if diversity is our strength, why is it okay for the rest of us to surrender one of our central rights, freedom of speech, to just a handful of tech monopolies? And by the way, if your ideas are so obviously true, why does anyone who question them need to be shamed, silenced and fired?
He obviously feels people who treasure diversity are likely to give dishonest and inarticulate answers. Oddly he points to the military which is constantly striving to be diverse. Perhaps not so oddly because Carlson is appealing here to identities we fall back on when we are afraid - nationalism and birthright. Non-white skin appears to be an unacceptable color to him, although hiding this apparent racism in an appeal to upholding shared cultural norms of the "American" tribe.
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OS - Use an unacceptable color
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