20th Sunday of Ordinary Time – Gospel: Matthew 15: 21-28- Fr. Chris Heller Homily So, the question pops up again: is Jesus a racist? Well, did you hear what the Gospel says? 1st Jesus ignores the Syrophoenician woman, a woman from a group of people that Jews were NOT at all friends with. THEN, Jesus calls the woman a dog, & then He seems to change his mind. Is Jesus racist? NO, of course not!!
From our hearing of the Scriptures all these years, we KNOW Jesus is NOT a racist. You may remember a few events proving Jesus was NOT racist: 1) Jesus healed MANY Gentile (non-Jewish) people; 2) The Infant Jesus welcomed the Magi (aka “The Wise Men”) who are gentiles at His birth; & 3) even the Gospel on Ascension Thursday says: “ go and make disciples of all nations.” Clearly, Jesus is NOT racist.
And HERE’S one Scripture we might have forgotten: the 1st time Jesus multiplied the loaves & the fishes, it was for the Jewish people; THE SECOND time it was for the Gentiles, and on Gentile land. So while it’s true that the children of Israel eat FIRST – as God’s first Chosen People, the Gentiles are fed too. Those who are NOT God’s 1st chosen people, referred to as “dogs” in this Scripture, receive bread to eat as well.
Why did Jesus use the word “dogs” in reference to a nationality of people? For two reasons: first, Jesus is creating a way to explain out loud the priorities of His ministry, AND to teach lessons to both the woman, AND to his apostles who are listening to Jesus’ teaching being taught. It’s true that in Jesus’ day, Jews sometimes referred to Gentiles as “dogs.” That’s just a fact. Jesus’ lesson: His duty was first to reform the People of Israel, not to the Gentiles, and NOT to create new religions. & here’s the DOG metaphor at work: if Jesus took his attention from feeding the people of Israel, in violation of his sacred and specific mission from God, it would be like a father taking food from his children, and throwing it to their pets.
Simply put, Jesus HAD to start SOMEWHERE in his ministry to the whole world; he started with Jewish people: 12 Jewish apostles & 72 disciples: the first level. Jesus healed & fed both Jews & non-Jews to SHOW he was sent to save ALL peoples. Eventually, after Saul’s conversion to become St. Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, the church’s mission widened fully to its next stage, where the Gospel became spoken in all nations.
For Roman Catholic Christians, we know Jesus forbids racism. In faith, we know that Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist is the ENEMY of racism, since Jesus came to unite us in all our colorful glory. Let us pray & work to live in communion with our Shepherd and Provider, Jesus Christ. [end of homily in church]
Father Chris Heller – Some Post-Homily Thoughts:
If we want to point fingers somewhere about racism, despite what some historians are trying to do today to rewrite history, it’s clear that most churches and most leaders did not condemn slavery until the 17th century. And unlike some leaders who today say slavery was beneficial for teaching enslaved people skills for later life, we DO admit slavery was an institutional evil. In fact, there were some Christian groups who refused to allow black people to be buried in Christian cemeteries. If we needed another American example, we could also observe that our country at one time restricted bathrooms and water fountains by race, and refused to serve black people who wanted to sit and have lunch at a counter in a Woolworth’s department store. We know how that was resolved.
Further, it took a LOT of courage for people to NAME the race elephant in the room, & to urge people to STOP dividing us and START uniting us. Those of you who are old enough: I invite you to recall with me the 1960s through which we lived. Most pop music by that time was divided by race: white singers and bands on white radio stations, and black singers/bands on black radio stations. Then a man named Alan Freed, whose father was a Russian-Jewish immigrant and whose mother was a Welsh-American woman, who broadcast on a New York AM radio station called WINS 1010 broke the barrier. Alan said, “Some people call music sung by black singers race music, but I call it rock and roll.” If your memory is that long, you’ll also remember on TV seeing black & white teenagers dancing to ALL styles of music on a stage in a TV studio, when it was broadcast as “Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.”
Question: do you see examples of racism (the valuing/lifting up of one race as superior in one or more ways to another race) in our world? our church? Our country? What solutions would you propose to defeat it publically and permanently? Is there anything that you personally would do differently, as a way of contributing to the positive movement of healing peoples of the curse of racism?
Fr. Chris Heller
