Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time “A”.   August 14, 2005.  Our Lady of Grace, 7:00,  11:30, 6PM.  Isaiah 56:1, 6-7.  Romans 11:13-15, 29-32.  Matthew 15:21-28.

I have in my hand one of my most precious possessions, an American Passport.  It is proof that I am a citizen of the United States with all the privileges and protections that American citizenship involves.  This past week I used my passport to visit Russian for the third time in my life.  My father came to the United States from Russia when he was five or six years old.  His family had nothing.  They were very poor.  My father worked in the stockyards in South St. Paul to support his father’s large family after his father died as a relatively young man.  My father was a very hard worker.  All of his six children have prospered in this land.  Five of his children are college graduates, some with advanced degrees.  I would like to say that my father earned everything that he got in life.  Having visited Russia again I know that this is not entirely true.  There are many hard working people in Russia.  Without the opportunities that my father found in the United States, their hard work often accomplishes very little.   My father and his family came to the United States almost as beggars.  They asked and worked for what they needed.  There were good people in this land who heard them and helped them to succeed.

I sat at the table in my brother and sister-in-law’s home when one of my teenage nephews was telling his parents about his rights and his privileges, and all that he was suffering because his rights and privileges, in his mind, where being denied.  I thought to myself that this child doesn’t realize how much he has cost his parents.  He didn’t see what I saw from the moment that he was born.  His parents made a free decision to give him life.  In doing so they limited their own freedom, their ability to think about themselves first, and the way that they would spend their financial resources.  He was and is a very good human being, but he was too ready to give himself credit for who he was and what he was accomplishing and very much out of touch with how much had been given him by his parents and others as a free gift.

The God who has created the vast and mysterious universe that we inhabit has invited us to call him “Father”.  We are not merely creatures or the products of an evolutionary process, we are children of God. Our baptism into Christ and the privileges we have in knowing God, sharing God’s life, and being and acting as God’s children is a gift – it is purely and simply a gift and a privilege, not something that we deserve or have achieved for ourselves.  There are people who do not share in a personal relationship with God.  Their vision of themselves, the purpose of life and belief in life after death is all different because they do not share the gift of faith.  My journey through Scandinavia these past two weeks helped me to see that Christian faith and the Christian vision of reality is no longer shared by the majority of people in much of Europe.  Seeing ourselves as Children of God is a gift and a privilege that changes and enriches every aspect of our lives.  We have no right to the gift of faith.  If God had not given us the gift, we could do nothing to gain it on our own.  Sometimes we take our privileges and gifts for granted.   They become so routine and ordinary that they no longer enrich our lives.

Among all the peoples of the earth, the Jewish People were blessed to receive both the revelation of God’s presence through Abraham, Moses and the prophets, and also the gift of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, made human in our midst.  It was a privilege and a gift – yet it was also something that they began to take for granted or simply to ignore – as we often do ourselves.  When people take their gifts and privileges for granted they cease to have power in their lives.  Today’s gospel is meant to wake us up to who were are and the miraculous powers of wisdom and grace that are available to people who truly believe.

As Jesus walked along one day, a non-Jewish, pagan Canaanite woman called out to him, “Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon.”  She expected to be heard because Jesus was known to be a good man with great powers – but Jesus answered her not even one word.  His refusal to speak to her was the kind of an insult that we have all experienced when someone we have greeted just looks the other way.  The disciples of Jesus asked him to send the woman away because she was bothering them.  Jesus said, “I have nothing to do with her.  I was sent only to Jewish People, to the lost sheep of Israel.”  While she had no privileges to depend on, the woman would not be put off by insults.  She pushed her way toward Jesus and fell on her knees before him.  She said, “Lord, help me.”   Instead of helping her, Jesus insulted her one more time.  He said, “It is not right to take the food of God’s children and throw it to pagan dogs.”   Because she had no privileges or status to rely on, the woman knew that she had nothing coming.  All she could do was beg.  She said, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.”   The heart of Jesus melted before the woman’s humility and her simple faith.  Jesus said, “Woman, great is your faith!” Let it be done f or you as you wish.”   Her daughter was healed at that very moment.

We are a privileged people.  We have been given many gifts.   Unless we receive our gifts with humility, gratitude and faith they will no longer be blessings for us.   A passport is more than a statement of our rights; it is a gift that calls me to great generosity and goodness as a citizen of this land.  Belonging to a family is more than a fortunate accident to be cashed in on.  Belonging to a family is a gift we are to receive with humility and share with generosity.   Being a child of God is much more than a baptismal certificate, or a set of rituals and obligations.  Being a child of God is a gift that brings us great wisdom and miraculous powers if we receive it with humility, gratitude and faith. 

Throughout history people with privileges have often forgotten the gifts they have received and acted as self-centered people entitled to their rights.  For the outsiders, the so called pagans, and the simple people who remind us that privilege without humility leads to blindness and eventually to the loss of the gifts we claim as our right, we give God thanks and praise.