God blows away human expectations. In a sense, God is revolutionary in His goodness.
In
Numbers the Israelites check out the land they are to inherit. They come back scared, thinking it
would be impossible to take that land as the men there were bigger, stronger
and more numerous. Yet they
eventually did.
In
the Gospel, a non-Jewish Canaanite woman approaches Jesus, begging him to heal
her daughter. Jesus seems cold, if
not mean, in his response. At
first “he did not say a word in answer to
her” and when he did respond he said, “I
was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel…It is not right to take
the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” And to call this woman a dog! Dogs were not domesticated in Israel—when
we hear this we shouldn’t think of a cute puppy, but a large varmint.
Yet
we know Jesus never sinned. Jesus
is not insulting this woman—simply receiving her presence was already breaking
Jewish law—rather, he is providing an avenue for her to express her faith. She did and her daughter was healed.
God
continues to work in revolutionary ways beyond our human conceptions today,
especially through His Church. Many
think we are old-fashioned or even bigots. Yet Christ’s Church does nothing less than revolutionize the
world. Imagine finding someone on
the street and telling them, “I just received Jesus’ Body and Blood in what
looked like bread and wine.” That
would blow their mind! Or consider
the high divorce rate in our country.
Some complain, “What? The
Church teaches I must be faithful until death! No divorce?” Or
remember that our Church for 2000 years has been the biggest supporter of the
poor, hungry, homeless, sick and weak in the entire world. We go against societies that leave such
people behind and treat them like Christ.
God
wants to revolutionize our world today.
We must have faith—like Joshua, Caleb and the Canaanite woman—in God and
in our Church to do this.
No comments:
Post a Comment