[RCL] Genesis 45:1-15; Psalm 133; Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32; Matthew 15: (10-20), 21-28 In our Gospel lesson for today, we have one of the most amazing stories in all of the New Testament. It is the profound and troubling and ultimately transformative story of Jesus’ encounter with the Canaanite woman. It is also a story that…

[RCL]: Genesis 45:1-15; Psalm 133; Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32; Matthew 15: (10-20), 21-28 Do you remember the children’s puzzle game called What’s Wrong with This Picture? Hearing the odd confrontation between Jesus and the woman in today’s gospel reading might well provoke us to ask, “What’s wrong with this picture?” Jesus and his disciples went into…

In today’s passages we encounter the prickly theme of “choseness.” Does God have favorites? Is there really a chosen nation, a chosen people? If God is the Creator of us all, how can this be? Not easy questions to confront or to answer. Not when we now know what terrible acts have been perpetrated by…

Try as we may, we do not always find ourselves comfortable when we are among people we don’t know. Visiting a new church can be nerve wracking, unless we are among the extroverted class. Even within our own country we find cultural and ethnic differences that may challenge the best of us. Traveling abroad may…

Let us prefer nothing to the love of Christ;and may he bring us all to everlasting life. In today’s Gospel we hear the remarkable story of a Canaanite woman who comes to Jesus seeking healing for her daughter. “Canaanite” signified “pagan” to the Jews of Jesus’ time. The area of Tyre and Sidon, on the…

Mother Teresa of Calcutta, a modern day Saint, tiny though she is, perhaps wields the most power of any living person. This is done through humbly serving the most destitute and rejected children of God. In an interview, Mother Teresa once said, “I am but a little pencil in the hand of God as He…