15th Sunday After Pentecost B

Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost - B

1. The readings today deal with the problem of inclusion: should foreigners (Gentiles) be
welcomed or rejected? Should the poor be as welcome as the rich?
Surprise, surprise, the same things are being debated in our day and age in the US and in Europe:
should foreigners be welcome or rejected? Do the poor have the same rights as the rich?
a. Here in the US, the presidential campaign is under way. Our country faces all sort of problems:
unchecked gun violence, terrorism, an economy that leaves millions unable to provide for their families, a
deeply divided government paralyzed and incapable of providing leadership, failing schools, crumbling
infrastructure, global warming, high taxes
.Yet, all the candidates talk about is how to stop Mexican murderers and rapists from entering the country.
Nothing unites people like resentment against outsiders, particularly if they have a darker skin.
.We are a nation of immigrants, and some are now talking about changing the constitution to deny
citizenship to children of illegal immigrants who were born in this country. If we make that retroactive the
only people who will be left will be those in Indian reservations
b. Europe has a much worse immigration problem than the US. Countries on the Mediterranean like Greece,
and Italy are overwhelmed by the flow of immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East, who are
desperately trying to escape war and famine. Only last week they found a truck with 71 corpses of illegal
immigrants in Austria, they were packed like sardines and died. 3,500 have drowned in 2014 trying to
cross the Mediterranean to reach southern Europe. That is not even news anymore.
.The US, England and France dont not want these refugees Hungary is building a wall to keep the out.
The European union is failing to deal with the problem and nationalist parties in many European countries
like Italy, my home country, are stirring up xenophobism: the fear and hatred of foreigners. These poor
migrants are just trying to stay alive, but are treated worse than animals.
.I could not help thinking about these situations, as I was reading the story of the Syrophoenician woman in
todays Gospel: she was a different nationality, and was treated like a dog.
.The relationship between Jews and their neighbors had always been contentious. According to their ritual
purity laws, the Jews, Gods chosen people, were not allowed to have any contact with non-Jews or they
would be contaminated. This desperate woman seeking a cure fort her daughter was a foreign dog.

Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost - B

3. The early Church was made up entirely of Jews, and struggled with the idea of accepting
non-Jewish members: they had to convert to Judaism before receiving baptism.
The Apostle Paul fought all of his life against this idea and eventually succeeded in changing the position
of the Church and welcoming Gentile into Christianity. His argument was, that: 1) faith is a gift from God,
2) the non-Jews asking to be admitted to the church already had the gift of faith, so, 3) since God had
already accepted them, how could they be denied membership in the Christian community?
However, other leaders of the church, including our own St. James, were not convinced and opposed Pauls
ideas. Eventually a compromised was reached: Paul would be allowed to baptize non-Jews in exchange for
agreeing to raise funds to help the financially impoverished church of Jerusalem.
In todays Gospel, these tensions and conflicts of the early Church about the inclusion of foreigners are
evident in the episode of the Syrophoenician woman.
Dont assume that these are Jesus own words. No one recorded Jesus exact words and Mark Gospel was
written 40 years after Jesus death. In this episode we see the prejudices of the early Church against
foreigners and the resolution of these prejudices through the inclusiveness that Jesus had taught them.
Some in the early church believed that non-Jews were sub-humans, and this is obvious as this foreign
woman was called a dog, but then the church, moved by Holy Spirit, remembered Jesus teachings and
accepted the Gentiles as equals.
The US Declaration of Independence states that all all men are created equal. 17 centuries before that,
Paul wrote that, in the eyes of God there is no distinction between master and slave, men and women,
Gentiles and Jews Back then it was an extremely radical idea, and is still is

4. The second readings from the letter of James talks about the inclusion of the poor.
Poverty is a fact, even in this country: look around you, some of the people here have lost their jobs, some
have lost their home to foreclosure, and many of us are struggling to make ends meet.
The early Christian communities included slaves, middle class folks, and even some wealthy people. When
a master and slave of the same household joined the church, they did not stop being master and slave.
Even at the Eucharistic meal, slaves served their masters first, and then ate the leftovers, if there were
leftovers. Both St. James and St. Paul took a dim view of this situation and denounced it. Eventually Paul
would write that in the eyes of God there is no difference between masters and slaves, men and women,
Gentiles and Jews.

Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost - B

This passage from the letter of James challenges the differential treatment given to the wealthy in some
Christian communities, and asks, how can you persist in favoring the rich when God himself has favored the
poor by giving them the gift of faith? Who are the rich anyway? They are the ones who oppress everyone
else.
Then James goes on to focus on the relationship between faith and real life. If we believe in Jesus, then we
must be ready to imitate Jesus in our daily life. The letter of James goes on to make one of the most
controversial statements in the whole Bible, faith, by itself, if it has no works is dead
During the Reformation, Luther tried to get the letter of James yanked out of the Bible, and eventually
accepted it very reluctantly saying that Paul's letter to the Romans was gold, and James letter was straw
Pauls letter to the Romans states that faith is a gift from God and that we are saved by faith. James says
that it is not enough to believe, we must act as Jesus did. When we see a brother or a sister hungry or
naked, or in need, our faith must propel us to help them, as Jesus did. If we ignore the needy, then we are
not followers of Jesus: our faith is dead.
In the Middle Ages, works was taken to mean giving money to the Church. Those who gave large sums to
the Church were given indulgences that were believed to assure them entry into Paradise. The poor, on the
other hand, who could not afford the works believed that they would be condemned to spend a long time
in Purgatory to expiate for their sins. This is why Luther objected vehemently to the idea that we need
works
Oddly enough this interpretation of works is exactly what James in condemning in his letter when he
denounces the inequity of favoring the rich over the poor. The proper interpretation of works is that our
faith should inspire us to be coherent with our belief: Jesus said, when you helped my brother in need you
helped me Then, if we believe that, we need to translate our faith into action and take care of the poor
and of the suffering. Faith and works are the two sides of the same coin.
James warning is a slap in the face of the hypocrites who call themselves Christian and defenders of
Christian values, while rejecting the poor, the foreigners and the oppressed. The Gospel story is a slap in
the face to Christians who discriminate on the basis of race or national origin.
Christianity is about inclusion: If we reject those who are different from us, the poor, the stranger, the
needy, then we are rejecting Jesus himself and our faith is dead.
Faith and and action must go hand in hand: preach the Gospel always, use words if you must.