Where do you come from?

Sermon - 20th Sunday A - "Ask for something" 16.8.2020

It is not easy to ask others for something or to ask for something. I do not mean questions that are part of normal communication ("How are you?" or "How was your vacation?") or requests that do not cost anything ("Please tell me what time it is."). I mean questions like these, where we ask out of a real need. The other person is free to react. These questions are difficult because I have to acknowledge my own limitations. I cannot do everything alone I am dependent on the other.

For example, when an older person asks "Would you please help me with the shopping?" or when a younger person asks, "Would you please help me to find a job?” To a friend “Would you go on holiday with me?" "Would you take care of my pet?" - Everyone has experienced situations in life where he or she has had to ask others for something without knowing what the answer will be. The other person can say yes or no. I can experience rejection or acceptance, I can be humiliated by a condescending answer or I can be accepted and even receive more than what I asked for. Such questions require humility. I must admit that I do not have the power to decide. Therefore, in such situations I make myself vulnerable.

The formation in the Jesuit Order includes a period of pilgrimage, a month on foot and without money. I can still remember my own pilgrimage; I went to Taizé from Germany with a younger Jesuit brother. On the way, we had to ask for food and a place to sleep, we had to beg. It was a great effort, especially at the beginning; I was not used to that. We often experienced rejection: "We give nothing!" Sometimes we found people who gave us generously. Certainly, we knew that we could survive it; that we could call home in case of emergency. Nevertheless, it was a very impressive experience to have nothing and be in need.

Now I live with other Jesuits at the Kleiner Michel. Together we have an account and the vow of poverty, which means that I have to ask my superior beforehand if I have larger expenses, for example, if I want to buy clothes or a new electronic device. I still find this difficult even after years in the Society; although I know, it is good.

Can you understand why? It is a question of freedom! My freedom and the freedom of others! When I ask someone else for something, the freedom and responsibility given to people from God becomes visible.

This is exactly what happens here in the story: the woman asks Jesus to help her. She cries out after Jesus, she presses him, because she has a great need and worry: her daughter is tormented by a demon. Above all - and the disciples apparently do not see this at first - she opens herself to Jesus and speaks to him about his freedom. She calls Jesus "Lord, Son of David" - it is a short confession of faith. The woman has heard about Jesus, she trusts him; she hands over her power to him and hopes for healing from him.

At first, Jesus reacts very sharply to the woman's request. It seems to us like an insult, perhaps even racism, when he compares the Canaanite woman to a domestic dog and the people of Israel to the children of the house. Why this violent reaction of Jesus? I will go into this in a moment.

Please note the change in the history: In the end, Jesus recognizes the woman's faith, grants her the request, and gives her healing "Let it be done for you as you wish.”

When we hear the gospel, we can identify with this woman. She can be an example for us and help us on our path of faith for two reasons:

a. In our attitude towards Jesus in prayer.

She is persistent and clear, she has courage. And she is open, full of trust in Jesus; even if she does not know much about Jesus yet - she calls him Lord, Messiah. She does not rely on power and claim ("I have a right to it", "that is due to me"). She knows that she can bring nothing to Jesus but her faith and trust. She asks him and she is not afraid.

b. In our attitude towards our own faith - What does it mean to “have” faith?

The woman came from the Phoenicians, who called themselves Canaanites. They lived in the same area as the people of Israel, on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, but they did not belong to the people of the Jews. They believed in other gods, they did not know the scriptures and the law. The Phoenicians were merchants and sailors, the cities of Tyre and Sidon were rich and proud seaports. However, they did not belong to Israel, to the chosen people of God, whom he had freed from slavery and whom he loved especially, although they were unfaithful from time to time.

Jesus himself lived as a Jew, he was brought up as a Jew, he kept the Jewish law and read the Holy Scriptures, and he lived for the Jewish people and proclaimed to the Jews the message of the near Kingdom of God. He understood his mission himself in such a way that he was "sent to the lost sheep of Israel" - that is historically correct, what Matthew writes there.

Yet there was a great change through the resurrection of Christ. Not only those Christians who had previously been Jews came to believe in Jesus Christ, but also the so-called Gentiles; that means people who did not follow all the Jewish rules. May these people also belong to the Christian community, even if they obviously do not belong to the chosen people? The church where Matthew lived discussed those questions because it is precisely with them that the message of Jesus, the Christ, has found faith. Therefore, I think it is just as much the intention in Matthew that the Gentile listeners should be able to identify with the Canaanite woman. They belong to the chosen people, although in a different way.

This is what we heard in the reading from Isaiah: the foreigners from the different peoples who join themselves to the Lord will worship the Lord together with the chosen people: "My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples”. This vision of Isaiah is already becoming a reality among Christians!

Also with Paul: "God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all." This means that the Gentiles will take part in God's promise to his people. God has made a new covenant through Christ. The Gentiles are included through Christ in the covenant of God with his people, while the old covenant has never been revoked (John Paul II, 1980): "The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” Through the new covenant, the Gentiles also belong to it - like adopted children, so to speak.

Paul has an even more beautiful image: that of the noble olive tree, in which some branches are broken out to graft the branches of a wild olive tree onto it. He writes in the same letter to the church in Rome "You do not support the root, but the root supports you.”

All of us who are here today do not belong to the Jewish people and do not observe the rules of faith of the Jewish law. We are all, biblically spoken, Gentiles - no matter whether we come from (England, the US, India, the Philippines, Uganda or Tanzania, from Ireland or Germany)

The gospel invites us to adopt this attitude in faith, no matter where we come from: We all came to be a part of. Faith is given to us. It is not a claim, not a power that we have, no heritage, but grace and encounter in freedom.

Thus, what seemed to be violent, racist reaction of Jesus, becomes an argument or a fundament against racism: we are all foreigners and taken up in communion with the people of God - through Christ and his life, death and resurrection.

In communion of faith no one has all the truth, no owners, no power, but we all live entirely from trust in God, Jesus Christ is the truth and wants to meet us in this celebration. He is at the centre. Him we ask and praise. Amen.