Recognize yourself in he and she who are not like you and me

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.” ― Franklin D. Roosevelt

Gospel text (Mk 7,24-30):
Jesus went to the district of Tyre.
He entered a house and wanted no one to know about it,
but he could not escape notice.
Soon a woman whose daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him.
She came and fell at his feet.
The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth,
and she begged him to drive the demon out of her daughter.
He said to her, "Let the children be fed first.
For it is not right to take the food of the children
and throw it to the dogs."
She replied and said to him,
"Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children's scraps."
Then he said to her, "For saying this, you may go.
The demon has gone out of your daughter."
When the woman went home, she found the child lying in bed
and the demon gone.

Today’s Gospel tells the story of the woman who seeks healing for her daughter, who had been entered by a demon, though she is not a Jew. Christ’s first response: “Let the children be fed first. For it is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” She replied with a feisty, “Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.” That mother was a pagan, but her pain and love for her child brought her to insistently beg, ignoring scorn, delays or indignities. And she gets what she is asking for, she «went home, and she found her child lying in bed and the demon gone» (Mk 7:30).

We can learn much from watching Jesus in action here. For one, He tests the woman by making her persevere in her request. Second, He does not discriminate. This woman was not a Jew and in Jesus’ time the Jewish people were not to associate with the non-Jewish population of Israel, never mind help them. But as we see in our story, Jesus ignores these cultural stigmas and helps the woman anyway.

Now how does this gospel reading apply to us today in 2012?

When we are faced with the “illegal” immigrant, the homeless person , or the politician from the Dark Side (whatever that side may be), how are we to respond as apostles of Christ? We are people who go by the name, Christian, who claim to want to spread the Good News, and who yearn for greater integrity in our lives?

Is this a risky endeavor? Perhaps. It may require that we have to give up long-held opinions or comfortable judgments.

Can we chance it? To paraphrase what Jesus Himself said in another part of the Gospel, “Come in; the water’s fine.”