Worship this Sunday will be rooted in Matthew 15.21-28. Writing about this passage, David Lose calls our attention to this summary by Jim Boyce:
So stretch your imaginations to entertain the scene. Gathered in one corner are those familiar disciples, for Matthew the true blue representatives of the faithful lost sheep of Israel, now leaping into the fray like so many ravenous beasts, as it were self-styled guarantors of the holy tradition, on their guard lest the mercies of God be wasted on the unworthy. Like a gang of watchdogs at the door they are about the checking of IDs and keeping out the non-pedigreed riffraff. On the other side of the gate stands this outsider, a woman no less, one lone representative of the dogs of religion, now become as it were a lost sheep plaintively pleading for the mercy of the master shepherd. No English translation can capture Matthew’s careful orchestration of the painful choral refrain. “Lord, have mercy,” the dog’s solo bleating cry. “Get rid of her,” the “lost-sheep chorus” barks back in reply.”
And into this fray strides the shepherd, who…welcomes this newest and most unlikely of disciples…
What do you imagine the disciples were thinking or feeling as they watched this scene? Where are the places where our faith community is being called to make such a radical break with the limitations of the cultural canopies under which we have lived and operated?
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