HOMILY FOR TWENTIETH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME (A)

Fr Billy Swan

Dear friends. A flag is a powerful symbol. Flags can bring our great emotional extremes: from sheer joy and pride as the national flags of athletes are being raised as they receive medals at the Olympic Games; to the national flag of some countries being burned in public as a sign of hatred.  The problem with flags arises when an identity of one group is not shared by another. This difference then can become so great that it blinds us to the human needs of the other. We cannot see beyond our own flag.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is in foreign territory, away from his own Jewish people on a visit to Tyre and Sidon, a known pagan district. It is no surprise then that he meets a person who is different from him. She is a foreigner, not a Jew and so is represented by a different flag, so to speak.

At the beginning, the woman makes a request of him, namely to cure her daughter. Jesus is unusually silent and then surprises us even more with his response to her. He seems to refuse her request because she is not Jewish. The intervention of his disciples is not very impressive either. They plead with Jesus to give her what she wants for she is a nuisance: giving her something would get rid of her and keep her quiet. This of course is not compassion at all. We all could ask ourselves the question: have we ever given to people out of a desire to get rid of them and move them out of our space as quickly as possible? Have I ever done this and been blind to what they really needed?

But the woman in the story is not for giving up easily. She may have been different to Jesus and his disciples, but she believes in him and his ability to cure her daughter. In her situation of need, it doesn’t matter that Jesus is different from her, from a different country and with a different flag. All she wants is for daughter to get better. With a heartfelt cry she says to him: ‘Lord, help me’. And help her he did, for the moment Jesus said ‘Woman you have great faith, let your wish be granted’, her daughter was well again. Here is the first sign in Jesus’ ministry that the salvation he came to bring us was not just meant for the Jews but for all, which is what St Paul talks also about in the second reading.

The story is about a compassionate response to a human need and how faith carries us across every boundary of nationality, race, colour or religion in order to respond to human needs that come first. In the Gospel, Jesus meets a foreigner but while the differences between him and the woman are acknowledged, they are not barriers to him responding to what the woman really needs which is help for her daughter. Human needs and compassion come first. So many modern conflicts are caused by the inability of people and countries to see beyond their own flag and worlds. When this happens, human needs get lost sight of. Lives from one country are considered to be worth more than others. Yet, we all fall into this trap in smaller ways. We are blinded to human need by the labels we put on people and the boxes we make for them in our minds.

In the Gospel, Jesus gives to the woman but also receives from her. She has taught him that what he has to offer is not for some but for all. She is different from him but one with him in faith.

In the same way, I believe that we are placed here in this world, for each other, not against each other. Everything comes from an understanding that you are a gift in my life, whoever you are, whatever our differences. Differences are not intended to separate or to alienate. We are different in order to realise our need for one another. Therefore, the flag that matters most and unites us, is that of our common humanity and common faith.

We notice how the Gospel story is foretold in the first reading where Isaiah prophesises that God’s house will be a house for all the peoples and will be united as ‘a house of prayer’. So the next time you or I struggle with people who are different from us, when both of us turn together to God in prayer, both of us end up closer to God but also to one another.

Today we rejoice in being part of the Church which is the house of all the peoples across the world and a family that is held together by faith and prayer. May our shared life of faith that we live in the Church, be a sign of a new humanity where differences and flags distinguish us but never divide us but rather unite us in the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ as brothers and sisters of him and children of our common Father. Amen.