Are Some Not Planted By God?

This coming Sunday's Gospel lesson(s) (?) is (are) a doozy. I write it that way because there is more than one story present in Matthew 15:10-28. At least on the surface a multitude of stories exist within this passage of God's Good News.

First, Jesus tells the crowd a parable about inner purity outweighing laws regarding how or what one eats. His disciples cannot quite wrap their minds around their teacher's words. At some point the setting shifts and it is just Jesus and his disciples.

As the disciples wonder about what Jesus said they bring some Pharisees' complaints to Jesus. This detail seems like a strange one worth returning to at some point, as it speaks to passive-aggressive triangulation putting the disciples between Jesus and the Pharisees. Jesus' reply to the disciples appears cryptic and threatening: "Every plant that my Heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted." Here a question gets raised that seems to resound through the rest of this lengthy passage: are some not planted by God? Then, Jesus lays on another layer of insult to the religious elite of the day: "They are blind guides of the blind."  Non-visionary leadership such as this then and today leads to fruitless squandering, withering, and injury of all souls involved. 

Next, Peter asks Jesus to explain the parable that was told to the crowds. Elsewhere in Matthew Jesus kindly opened up other challenging stories to give his disciples a clearer view of the Kingdom of God, and yet here he seems frustrated. "Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles." For Jesus and for us who follow him, living in God's realm requires more than lip service or following the religious rules. We must allow Christ to reign in our hearts and let his love overflow from there.

As the story continues, the setting shifts to Tyre and Sidon. Worth noting the framers of the Revised Common Lectionary allow for the story to begin here instead of with Jesus speaking to the crowds. As Jesus entered Tyre and Sidon a Canaanite woman began shouting at him, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon." Soon the disciples thought she was the demon torturing them. In this critical moment for the woman something strange transpired.

When the woman kept shouting, Jesus did not pay her any attention. His disciples meanwhile just wanted the woman to go away; however she persisted. When Jesus said he only came to save the people of Israel to the disciples, yet within earshot of her, the woman knelt before Jesus. Even when Jesus referred to her and her people as dogs, she quick-wittedly questioned Jesus: "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." The question from earlier bubbles back up to the surface: are some not planted by God? When Jesus was challenged by this woman's faithfulness he swiftly brings healing to this woman's daughter and perhaps even more he showed to us that God's planting of seeds expands to the furtherest reaches of God's Creation. May we remember this expansive diversity is God's reality as Jesus initiated and exemplified.