Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 12 – Gen 45 1-15, Ps 133, Rom 11 13-36, Matt 15 21-28

Our readings and prayers today challenge the awful politics of grievance. Its demonising and dehumanisation attack the world’s social cohesion, and mean crimes against humanity can proliferate. The politics of grievance ‘creates’ an enemy – an ‘other’. It names groups or people, and falsely makes a scapegoat of them to blame for things we don’t like about our life together. It demonises and dehumanises that ‘other’, so people won’t oppose the confected enemy being attacked in the most shocking ways – even to the point of genocide. The politics of grievance is driven by a desire for power, wealth and influence; it is murderous selfishness on a mass scale.

Our readings and prayers call us to model an answer to this scourge. They call us to live in unity and to embrace reconciliation at a personal level; to show the world that God’s justice and God’s gift of liberty are intended to bless everyone. It’s our job to meet lies with truth, to counter self-centredness with compassion, and most particularly, to disempower feuding by choosing forgiveness. The sentence of the day says that God’s people are to maintain justice, and do what is right. The prayer of the day fine-tunes that. We pray for grace to dedicate our freedom to God’s service so that all people may know the glorious liberty of the children of God.

So with the sentence and prayer giving us a focus on maintaining justice, on doing right, and on dedicating our freedom to helping others know God’s liberty, what do we see in today’s readings?

The reunion of Joseph and his brothers sets the tone. Last week, we watched his brothers sell him into slavery in Egypt. The chapters we’ve missed between then and today tell of his rise to power as the Pharaoh’s right-hand bureaucrat. Because of Joseph, Egypt was the only land to prosper during a seven-year regional famine. Now his brothers have come to Egypt, cap in hand, to buy food. And who do they have to ask for help but Joseph. He chooses reconciliation with his brothers, even though they’d sold him down the river. We are here because of Joseph’s choice!

The Psalmist sings that reconciliation like this is the stuff of eternal life – ⁴For [in this harmony] the Lord has commanded his blessing: which is life for evermore.

But it’s hard work. In his letter to the Church in Rome, Paul brings home the fact that freedom, truth and reconciliation need just as much vigilance within the Church as they do in the wider world. He’s writing to Rome some time after the death of the Emperor Claudius. Claudius had decreed that all Jews must be banished from Rome. He made no distinction between different groups of Jews. So Jewish Christians got exiled as well.

This meant the Church in Rome, which had been a mixture of Jewish and Gentile converts, suddenly became a Gentile-only body. Abruptly, all decisions fell to this group, and the Church’s culture shifted away from its Jewish origins. Can you picture this happening here? Imagine that we share this building with Lutherans, and suddenly, one day, all Anglicans are banned from Adelaide. Off we go, and only five years later, when the anti-Anglican regime has been replaced, we return in dribs and drabs to our beloved churches. But things have changed. If we want to worship here, now we have to sit down for the hymns and stand up for the prayers, and communion only happens every few months.

Paul is writing as Jewish Christians return to find a church which they barely recognise. It seems from this passage that each group is running the other down in a power-struggle to control the Church culture. Paul’s message to them is that a power struggle over control of the Church is ridiculous. At the end of the day, only God’s grace counts. If God loves someone, who are we to exclude them, or their lifestyle, or the way they offer their worship to God? Paul’s letters to churches are often written to settle disputes. Reconciliation is a major theme of his writing.

And the story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman. As far as we know, Matthew’s community was based to the north of the Holy Land (Syrian Antioch). And so they have heard this story as one of hope for them and their mission. Ulrich Luz says they’d hear this story from within their own experiences of discouragement and illness; from their own context of separation from Israel. They’d hear it speak to them as a faith community amongst Gentiles. This story told them of the power of prayer and faith from the woman’s perspective; that Jesus was there for such as them.

This story also told them Jesus’s influence was not confined within the borders of Israel. His power was as present to them and their Gentile neighbours as it had been in distant Galilee. This was an encouragement to them in their task of living out and telling the Gospel among their Gentile neighbours. So while we’re scandalised about how exclusive the children’s food to the dogs metaphor sounds, for Matthew’s community, it’s a story full of the hope of reconciliation, freedom and truth. We just have to learn to hear it from that different cultural perspective.

So where might the rubber hit the road for us right now? Today, our community is called to model a tangible alternative to the growing cancel-culture of grievance, demonising and dehumanising. The greed and selfishness at the heart of this culture will eventually be exposed. But our commitment to compassion, reconciliation and forgiveness will reveal the glorious liberty of the children of God. That’s our calling. So may God give us grace to dedicate our freedom to that mission. Amen