Jeremiah 31:1-7; Matthew 15:21-28
Sin is Exile from God: Love is Reversed Exile
Having started the week (Sunday) with the reality of God, instead of “vanity of vanity,” seeing that miracles are the manifestations of God (Monday), yesterday (Tuesday) we saw God’s presence in every storm, today (Wednesday), we are going to reflect on how to stay close to God. This is the sole duty of every child of God, and the ardent desire of God for all his children. “Love” is the key to this closeness.
Now, virtually every Christian knows John 3:16 by rote: “for God so loved the world that he gave his only son . . .” Today, we journey into the preparation for this love, of which John speaks. This love of God was promised long ago. Hear what Jeremiah says in today’s first reading, “With an everlasting love I have loved you; so I have kept my mercy toward you.” “Love” is nothing without both sacrifice and a beneficiary of an act of love. In reality, love needs to be made visible for it to be love. God loves by acting, he gave his Son as savior of the world. In the Old Testament, God showed his love for his people by delivering them from their troubles. Through acts of love, our invisible God becomes visible to all recipients of gestures of love and kindness. No wonder John says, “God is love!”
Still dwelling with our first reading and the revelation of God through love, a corollary to love is the worship of God. “Worship” is the human response to the divine, according to a famous definition. As a sign of appreciation for the love experienced and enjoyed, human beings worship God in thanksgiving. It follows that Jeremiah underscores the importance of love and worship in our first reading today. The reason he did, is to point out that even negative human experiences, like the Babylonian exile, reveal God, when we learn to count our blessings, even in tough times.
One way of experiencing God is through adversity, especially when we give God the benefit of the doubt that whatever happens is purposeful and meaningful. A pessimist and cynic only sees the negative, and not the positive. A Christian is an optimist because there is something positive and good in everything that happens to us and our friends; the optimist and Christian is like God at creation: “and God saw that everything was good.”
A lot of people question the possibility that Jesus uttered the sentence attributed to him in today’s gospel: “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” Is Jesus calling this woman a dog? Perhaps today the image of dogs have substantially appreciated, since some westerners do will their wealth to their dogs, when they die. Nevertheless, the shock and awe of this statement speaks volumes! The paradox of that statement is intentional: in order to praise the faith of a woman, who was not an Israelite, “O woman, great is your faith!,” there was a need for a commensurate scandal or display of faith.
Just imagine what every child of God has to put up with as temptation or Cross to carry. If that is the way of the world or living on earth, the choice of expression in Matthew’s gospel prepares every Christian for a rough life, but without being ruffled by life. This is liturgically the case in comparison with the scandal of the deportation of Judah to Babylon. At the root of every exile is sin, sin is the human divorce from God, and reconciliation is made possible and accessible by love. Prophets (see the first reading of Monday) and kings were divided about the scandal of God’s people going into exile, it was a scandal around which they could not rap their brains, a monumental insult! Yet, God was doing something novel, great plan to unite humanity as his children.
The obstacle toward the enjoyment of the presence of God, according to our gospel, is the foreign body, the demon, possessing a little girl. The place of God was usurped and had to be regained. A mother’s love, putting up with name-calling, assured the health of her daughter; in fact, Jesus praised her great faith. God, in his everlasting love for human beings, goes into Babylon to bring his people back from slavery. What more, he took non-Jewish people back with him, increasing the number of his people, while extending the frontiers of his people to embrace everyone. Ordinarily, a Canaanite woman, who did not belong among God’s people, God works miracles for her, to show that God’s love knows no boundaries. As a matter of fact, it was Jesus who went into a non-Jewish territory, Tyre and Sidon, in order to offer salvation to them too, beginning with the healing of a Canaanite woman’s daughter. For, in God, there are no outsiders, all are insiders!
Today, God asks me to return to him from the exile of sin that separates me from him; to bridge the gap of exile that makes me to consider sinners and non-Catholics as not children of God; to promote a divine love that sees everyone as a child of God; and, to do my best to display love and faith, even in the context of insults and scandals of faith!
May God bless you!