12TH Sunday after Pentecost 2026

Sermon: 12TH Sunday after Pentecost 2026

Texts: Isaiah 56:1,6-8; Matthew 15:21-28

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Today’s Gospel is a challenging one. But it reflects a change, that if we take it seriously, then it is the seed of the challenging transformation from a closed and guarded humanity, to a new humanity that embraces all. Of course, we expect no less, for this is the Lord of All, Jesus Christ, we are talking about. The vision of God is expansive: His house will be a house of prayer for all peoples.

Throughout history, human beings have had a hard time of recognizing the humanity of outsiders. We are drawn to what is the same or similar to our home environment. We feel more compassion for those inside than those who are not a part of our inner circle. Be it for reasons of safety, comfortability, the awkwardness of interacting with what is unknown, outsiders test our virtues, and trigger our defensiveness and prejudice. Our brokenness often provokes us to cast away outsiders, for it is definitely easier to not have to deal with those we don’t know, or those that do not contribute to our own circle. In a world of limited resources, people often justify lack of compassion for outsiders because, like our previous reading of the feeding of the 5,000, we only have enough to feed ourselves. This worldly thinking creates hierarchies, or scales of priorities that are often enforced through violences of many kinds. This logic leads us to the darkest corners of human history, where that scourge we often call dehumanization happens. Dehumanization can be defined as the following: “to deprive [someone or something] of human qualities, personality, or dignity: such as (a) to subject someone, such as a prisoner] to inhuman or degrading conditions or treatment; (b) to address or portray [someone] in a way that obscures or

demeans that person’s humanity or individuality; (c) to remove or reduce human involvement or interaction in [something, such as a process or place]”. Dehumanization is one of the greatest signs of our human brokenness, when we refuse to see in the outsider another human being with the same concerns and sufferings that we go through. We could possibly enumerate many examples of dehumanization in the past, but much harder is to name the dehumanization that happens in our own time. To call this brokenness out and to commit to repair and tend to this wound often puts us at odds with our own inner circle. It puts us in confrontation with our neighbors. It especially puts us in confrontation with those in power who benefit from dehumanization of outsiders, those that the American bard Bob Dylan called “The Masters of War”.

To resist dehumanization, often also leaves the resistor exposed to being dehumanized. One becomes a stumbling block for those conspiring against those they consider inferior or a nuisance. In history, we have many examples: in the United States, we know that during the period of slavery, when black people were systemically dehumanized and abused, abolitionists who promoted equality and freedom were scorned and even beaten for seeking to change the system. We know that during the Civil Rights era, when segregation was being challenged, someone like Jonathan Daniels, the 26- year old white Episcopal Seminarian and martyr, was shot and killed in Alabama by getting in the way of a racist attack against the 17-year old Ruby Sales, who then became a civil rights advocate and theologian. During World War 2, we know that many were persecuted for their defense of Jewish people in Nazi

Germany. We have in our church the image of one who gave his life in resisting dehumanization, Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Today, we venerate these people. Yet, even with their example, how difficult it is today to follow in their footsteps. We would like to think we have overcome all prejudice, that we have progressed with the awareness of history and time, yet it sticks to us like a sinful lump. How difficult it is to stand up for the dehumanized of today, the outsiders of our normalcies; how difficult it is to stand up for Palestinians, to stand up for immigrants, to stand up for the poor, to stand up for those of marginalized communities. To resist dehumanization and the violence it carries, is to identify and become one with the dehumanized. Did not Christ become one with our suffering and the dehumanization of the poor, by taking the cross of our condition, and paying the ultimate price of solidarity and love? At the center of our faith, is the resistance to dehumanization, and the embodiment of a change, the change of worldview that embraces the outsider as one’s very own. Our faith hinges powerfully on this work of God, and it is for us good news, that God takes the side of a just humanity, by embracing the dehumanized.

Our Gospel today offers to us a very interesting, although perhaps disconcerting story, of Jesus and the Canaanite Woman. This story could very well serve us as an example of how the gap between outsider and insider is bridged and summoning a new community in the place of divisions. The story is even more interesting, for in this telling, the Canaanite Woman is not the only one who changes, in a sense, even before she arrives at the scene, she is committed to bridging the gap as an outsider in Jewish society. Remarkably, it is Jesus Himself, who at the persistence of the Canaanite

woman for the sake of her daughter, also undergoes a change, notwithstanding the presupposition that perhaps Jesus knew He would cure the Canaanite Woman’s daughter as a sign of the Kingdom come.

The story is simple enough, He is going from town to town, in the borderlands between Palestine and Syria, and as He walks among those who are foreigners to His Jewish culture, a foreign woman reaches out to Him, in the desperation of her need to save her daughter. The text says that she shouts to get His attention: “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” We are accustomed to think that Jesus would immediately tend to a person who asks for mercy, for it is God’s proper and desired work on our behalf, yet this story leaves us dangling, if perhaps disconcerted, that Jesus would refuse to help this woman, as we heard further in the text, simply for the fact of not being an Israelite, for being a foreigner. He does not immediately refuse, He simply does not answer her plea, but the story seems to tease a refusal. To which the disciples then speak almost as a chorus of this resistance to help an outsider: “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” It’s almost as if we are witnessing Jesus at the moment of decision, and bearing on Him are the learned prejudices, the social and religious qualms of His people, to send away this needy foreigner, for who are they to receive from what belongs and is promised to Israel? “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” This is the initial response that Jesus gives. His mission, He says, is to gather the remnants of the scattered Israelites, those who are living in the promise of God restoring them to wholeness again after exile and great suffering under the sword of empires. The concerns of those outside were secondary. But this woman would not give up on the

One whom she knew could help her. “Lord, help me” she cries again. Such a direct prayer, appealing to the very core of the heart of Jesus, that heart flaming with love and compassion. As we read last Sunday, when Jesus lifts up Peter from sinking in the water, the prayer that is at the heart of Jesus’ ministry: “Lord, save me/ help me!” This Canaanite Woman knows what Jesus is truly about, showing more faith than even Peter on the stormy waters. But the story has not reached it breaking point yet, Jesus lets her know the limits even more strongly: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Jesus uses a proverbial comparison, for dogs in ancient Jewish culture were scavengers, considered unclean, impure and of low status. As part of ancient prejudices, many Jewish folk could have used the term for outsiders. It is a testament to the exclusionary lines built in societies, dehumanizing language has been part of every human culture, and thus has also been the challenge to overcome it.

If this was a story of social exclusion, then perhaps it would end there. If this was written to keep the lines of division, prejudice, and hatred, then the story would have ended right at that insult. But thanks be to God, the mission is greater than what Jesus lets on initially. One thing I appreciate about this moment, is it’s social realism. It does not hide away the fact that dehumanization and division exist. It does not hide the fact that people are at odds, and they refuse to recognize each other in loving bonds of fellowship due to the many reasons one could easily conjure to keep strangers and outsiders at bay. To overcome dehumanization, we need to be persistent. The walls of prejudice do not come tumbling down easily, they are well

fortified. We need the persistence and the daring of this Canaanite Woman, to ask God to bend the arch of justice and liberation towards all.

The Canaanite woman does not remain silent to Jesus’ proverbial riposte. She, in a sense, outwits Jesus by turning the proverb on its head: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Surely God’s overwhelming blessing is so abundant, that even what is meant to shower over His people will fall also into those around them. She will not let her blessing go away, she is like Jacob, wrestling with God until she is blessed. And this story very much plays out that same way: to struggle with life’s challenges alongside God. She preaches back to Jesus, that God IS more merciful, more compassionate, more loving, more embracing, there are no borders to God’s love. Surely, God’s mercy will not stop at the lines drawn by human beings. Surely, God’s Kingdom Come is greater and wider than the confines of Israel. Leaving the hierarchies aside, everyone is a human being, and every heart and cry of need is heard and tended by God as one of the children at the table.

I’d like to think, that Jesus’ final response to her was given with a smile or smirk of recognition: “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed. Indeed, great is the faith that breaks down the walls of prejudice. Great is the faith that cries out with the heart and is not afraid to leap over the chasms of our divisions. Great is the faith that makes friends out of outsiders. The Kingdom that Jesus preaches spills over the borders and limits, washes them away, the blessing of belonging can no longer be contained to one place. God is moved by the cry of the human heart, His mercy is His essence. The promises are abundant for all peoples. This moment in the Gospel lets us know that it is not easy to overcome

our mutual dehumanization, but the reward is great for those who take up the challenge. This Canaanite woman, this former outsider of great faith, took it up. And Jesus Himself will be lifted up on the cross, for taking the same challenge head on, undertaking the sin and brokenness of the world and breaking humanity free from it’s grasp. Great is this faith that sees beyond the limited imaginations that we inherited from our worldly dwellings. Greater is the new world of God’s Kingdom, that wants to make us brothers and sisters to all peoples.

So Beloved, exercise the Church’s great faith. See beyond the limits, and pray for God to bless all of us with His love and mercy. Think daringly about God’s grace, cast your trust on Him, for He has done it. If you think you stand at the margins of God’s call, think again. He calls you to belong. But let us never forget, He calls all of us too. He calls your neighbor, He calls the stranger, He calls the outsider. God’s mercy is wider than we can see, it stretches like the sea over the horizon, endless to our sight. Let the old histories of dehumanization be cast into its burial, let us rise with Christ to the new life of universal love for all people. Let us then pray: