The 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sunday, August 16, 2026
St. James Cathedral

 
My friends, that gospel passage we just heard could cause some difficulties for us. It is hard to hear Jesus compare this Gentile woman to dogs. But, a closer look at this passage can show us how boundless is God’s mercy and love. For our world has a tendency to put people in categories of insiders and outsiders. The reign of God does not place such boundaries around people.
 
In the culture in which Jesus lived, such categories of insider and outsider were pervasive. The insiders were those who shared the Jewish faith, that is, the faith that Jesus claimed as his own. The outsiders were everyone else. And even within this faith of the Chosen People of God, it seems that for some there were insiders and outsiders.
 
Jesus was breaking boundaries and including people as insiders that the religious authorities of his day were very uncomfortable with. A few weeks ago we had the parable of the wheat and the weeds and Jesus cautions his disciples not to judge who is in and who is out - who the wheat and the weeds are - because if we just go and pull what we perceive to be the weeds, we might pull the wheat along with it. We can be mistaken in our judgment and it is best to leave the judgment to God regarding insiders and outsiders.
 
We also heard Jesus say to us in a gospel passage earlier in the summer (Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time), as he sends the twelve out on mission to not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town, but to “go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” It seems that Jesus saw his own community of faith as the place to start his ministry of announcing the reign of God. We hear Jesus say the same thing in today’s passage. There were clear insiders and outsiders, and the people of Samaria, and the regions outside of Israel were the outsiders. He sent the twelve to the insiders first.
 
It is clear that his ministry has shifted as we read at the beginning of today’s passage that “Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon.” It is there, in pagan territory that a pagan woman, a Canaanite, approaches Jesus with a plea for her daughter. She is not of the house of Israel he says to her. That’s where his mission should be focused. But she approaches Jesus anyway and, St. Matthew tells us, did him homage, “saying, ‘Lord, help me.”
 
This outsider is pleading with Jesus for her daughter who is tormented by a demon, and showing him great respect, says “Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David!” Then Jesus delivers that line that is so hard to hear, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” We don’t expect such language from Jesus directed toward another human being. Our cultural distance from first century Palestine makes this response sound worse than it would have in Jesus’ time.
 
The woman does not seem offended, and she is also not deterred as she responds using his comparison, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.” The outsider has broken through the boundary and Jesus recognizes her as an insider. “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”
 
What does this mean for you and me? How does this story help us in our journey of faith? We still live in a world and a church that tends to divide people into  insiders and outsiders. And like Jesus’ caution about the weeds and the wheat, we need to be very careful about buying into that way of looking at people. We also have to be careful about buying into that way of looking at ourselves.
 
In last week’s gospel Jesus says to the ultimate insider, Peter, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” And today Jesus says to the ultimate outsider, the Canaanite woman, “O woman, great is your faith!”
 
In God’s reign, the reign that Jesus brings, there are no insiders and outsiders. There are just people God wants to bring into an embrace of love and healing and life. Jesus did not let Peter drown because of his doubt and he did not refuse the Canaanite woman because of her nationality.
 
You and I live in a time when it seems putting people into categories of insiders and outsiders is practically a cultural and religious requirement. The outsiders in our culture can be those people who do not share our political party, or who have come to our country without proper documentation, or who are elderly, or young, or not yet born, or poor, or unhoused, or imprisoned.
 
The outsiders in our Church can be those who do not share our particular view of the Church, or who are divorced and remarried outside of the Church, or are gay, lesbian or transgender, or are women who feel disempowered by some of the teachings of our Church.
 
These are only a few examples of how we divide people into categories of insiders and outsiders in our culture and in our Church.
 
We also know that this identity as an insider or outsider can exist in each of us. Peter, though an insider on the surface must have felt very much like an outsider that night on the sea when Jesus said to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” The Canaanite woman that day must have felt very much like an outsider when Jesus said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
 
But neither was an outsider at the end of the story. Jesus did not let Peter drown because of his doubt and that Canaanite woman was praised for her great faith. The movement of God’s reign of love and justice and peace is always toward the truth that everyone is included. There are no outsiders. As Pope Francis said often, “Todos, todos, todos!” Everyone!
 
And so my friends, whether our struggle is within our culture, or our Church, or inside ourselves, the Lord tells us loud and clear today that the reign of God’s love and mercy is boundary breaking. There are no outsiders in God’s kingdom.
 
May our communion with the Lord and with each other today empower us to be instruments of God’s reconciling love in the world and in our Church. May our lives give hope to the outsiders among us and in us. 

Father Gary F. Lazzeroni