A house of prayer for all people

 

Matthew 15: 21-28
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
August 16, 2026

Photo of the Milky Way galaxy. A center cloud of white, gold, pink, and dark purple, surrounded by a ring of blue, indigo, and dark purple clouds against a star-studded midnight blue background.

Even though Jesus wasn’t White, in this story he behaves like a privileged White racist, not unlike how some Whites behave on Indian reservations or in other non-White spaces. First of all, Jesus and his disciples went to the district of Tyre and Sidon of their own accord; no one forced them there. Tyre and Sidon are north of Galilee on the Mediterranean coast, where Canaanites had originally been living long before the Israelites came to conquer and live in the land God promised them.



So, some history is warranted here, all the way back to Noah. After Noah and his family had survived their long ordeal at sea, after the flood waters had receded, Noah planted a vineyard, made some wine, and after having too much to drink, passed out naked in his tent. His youngest son, Ham, the father of Canaan, witnessed this and told his brothers, who covered up their father without seeing him naked. Noah awoke from his drunken stupor and having found out what Ham had done, Noah cursed Canaan to be enslaved by his father’s brothers.



Once again, scripture is being descriptive rather than prescriptive because this is exactly what happened when the Israelites came to conquer and live in the land of Canaan. Canaan was less of a land and more of a region, encompassing Palestine and Syria, including Tyre and Sidon. Canaan was comprised of city-states that were populated by several peoples who were primarily Semitic. When the Israelites conquered a certain area of Canaan, the people that remained were put into forced labor.



The Canaanites also worshipped other gods and goddesses, which were called ba’als, a Semitic word for “owner” or “lord”, essentially a rival to YHWH. When the Israelites settled in Canaan, they shifted their religious practice to include these foreign deities. You can imagine how YHWH felt about that, after all that God had done to bring the people out of Egypt. The Israelites also intermarried with the Canaanites, effectively marrying their long-distant cousins.



So for Jesus to have this superior attitude seems out of character for him but not for Matthew’s audience. I like to think that Matthew is using Jesus as a fall guy to represent the current mindset regarding foreigners—those outside the covenant between YHWH and Israel. Matthew’s audience was mainly comprised of Jewish followers of Jesus and they were probably coming to grips with those who wanted to join the Jesus movement but were not circumcised, did not follow the laws of Moses or the Levitical code. Not only that but there were also Jews who did not acknowledge Jesus as Christ. The writings of the prophets made it plain: God will destroy those who worship false gods.



It is an all-too human dynamic that sadly continues to play out to this day. What is true belief and what is false? Is there one right way to live? How do we determine if someone is worthy? Must we not prove somehow that we are worthy of goodness, community, and love? Why do we withhold from one another what we need to live, to be whole? How long will we not forgive? Why do we thirst for punishment and revenge rather than justice and restoration? Human beings share roughly 99.9% of the same genetic information. We are 99% related. Only .1% accounts for our differences, but we make the most of them.



Take for instance the Puritans who came to this land seeking religious freedom. We tend to think of them as an oppressed minority when in actuality they were religious extremists, striving for what they thought was the purest form of Christianity while excluding all others. They were Calvinists, and Calvin taught that God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked in this life. That view is hard-wired into our American ethos. We see it currently with immigrants, the poor, those without homes or healthcare, the disabled, and our LGBTQIA+ family and friends and how they are treated by those with power, privilege, and wealth.



The deeply painful irony is that the more we separate ourselves from one another, the more we try to create homogeneity, the more trauma and harm we do to ourselves. Human beings are complex creatures. That .1% of diversity is our evolutionary superpower. Performance artist and poet Alok Vaid-Menon, who is gender non-conforming and whose heritage is Malaysian and Punjabi says this about our complexity: “The backlash to trans people [and anyone who is different from the dominant culture] is a cohort of people who are fighting for the right to remain unfree. They are fighting for the right to remain ideologically, intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally separated from the complexity of the world.”



Palestinians and Israelis living together and sharing the same land is terribly complex. Giving land back to the original indigenous people of Turtle Island is complex. Reparations to descendants of people who were enslaved and brought here against their will is complex. The biological reality of more than two genders is complex. Building a safe, accessible world for everyone is complex. Housing first for those with no place to live is complex. Living interdependently with each other and with all the earth’s creatures and with the land and seas is complex. A house of prayer for all people is complex. So complex for our still-evolving species that we continue to resort to violence as a means of resisting that complexity. So that we can remain unfree.



Again, more deeply painful irony, that there are Christians who use Jesus so they can hate, so they can remain unfree, separated from the complexity of this world. Which is impossible, absolutely futile, and maybe that’s the realization that Jesus came to. When people who embrace their complexity stand up for themselves, when they tire of settling for the crumbs off of our privileged tables, the complexity of this world becomes impossible to ignore and we realize it’s either evolve and enjoy or shrivel and die.



I think that’s where we can find some hope, that it’s futile to fight to remain unfree, that resisting complexity is a losing battle that only leads to a shriveled humanity, and the story doesn’t have to end there. We can choose differently. We can be a part of helping people choose differently by embracing and celebrating our complexity, each other’s complexity. This whole earth is a house of prayer for all people, each of us praying and living in our own unique way and we all have something to learn from each other, especially from those who struggle against injustice. Our growth depends on mutual transformation. That’s how we get free, my friends. That’s the good news. That’s where our faith is needed. May it be so. Amen.

Benediction – enfleshed.com


When everything starts to look and feel the same
When truth is made narrow and histories are flattened
When power is monopolized and faith grows stale
May we remember the Mystery that surrounds us
The Love that holds millions and millions of species of life
Plant, animal, fungus. Humans. Water. Earth. Galaxies known and unknown.
Our perspectives can grow small, but Divinity will not be contained
Be encouraged. The wild, unruly, and peculiar presence of God goes with us.