Proper 15 A

Isaiah 56.1-8, Matthew 15.21-28

Isaiah 56 marks the beginning of what has become known as Third Isaiah, which is characterised by the kind of inclusivist vision we have here in the embrace of the eunuch and the foreigner. This embrace effectively counters the exclusions announced in Deuteronomy 23.1-8. Just as pointedly, the pairing of eunuch and foreigner raises questions about the nature of the Abrahamic promise of children and land that has so fundamentally defined the Judean identity.

One of the things I find utterly delightful about our sacred scriptures is this habit of undermining or at least re-interpreting their own tradition. Here in Isaiah 56 we have an earlier instance of the attitude Jesus expressed when he said, “You have heard it said, but I say….” What Third Isaiah is saying is further intensified when we see it against the background of Ezra and Nehemiah laying down strict boundaries for who is in and who is out. This, along with the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17-26) and the idea of a Promised Land, constituted the inheritance of exile, a time when Israel not only preserved but in large part created and codified its identity in hostile surroundings.

The inclusive vision of Isaiah 56 is an alternative response to exile that goes back to more fundamental roots, to a faith that is based on justice rather than inheritance and the maintenance of identity and ritual purity over and against what is “other”. The chapter begins with the appeal to maintain justice, and one of the ways of doing this is to keep the Sabbath, which according to Deuteronomy is a way of maintaining justice rooted in the experience of exodus. Sabbath rest is Sabbath freedom, release from oppression and drudgery, a redefinition of the human being who is no longer seen as a beast of burden. Such freedom is inherently a universal principle limited neither to ethnic identity nor to place, and, indeed, a gift specifically given to the stranger as a way of remembering a people’s estrangement in Egypt.

Sadly, what seems to me the more fundamental vision of my faith tends to be the minority position. The land question, for instance, is still in control of the Ezras and the Nehemiahs. In the Sojourner’s ‘Daily Digest’ I receive via email I read today that "In exchange for West Bank land that Israel would keep, Olmert proposed a 5.5 percent land swap giving the Palestinians a desert territory adjacent to the Gaza Strip. ... The land to be annexed to Israel would include the large settlement blocs, and the border would be similar to the present route of the separation fence." How long can such injustice prevail? Good old Bob Dylan used to say the answer to that is so obvious it is blowing in the wind and defining an imminent future. So much for 1960s counterculture prophecy. The dispossession of the "other" is even worse now than it was then, as bad now as it was when Israel first returned from exile to insist on (re)claiming land rights.

The gospel lesson raises the perennial question. What does it take to listen to the voice of the Canaanite woman? To the eunuch? To the asylum seeker or the homosexual? According to the story in Matthew even Jesus (read ‘Christianity’) wears the traditional blinders. Even Jesus can forget that his tradition is inherently inclusive, as, indeed, it proved so infectiously to be after his death. The Ezras and the Nehemiahs have made of the so-called “Great Commission” at the end of this Gospel a mandate for proselytising, for building an imperial Church. It seems to me if we are going to teach what Jesus taught and do what Jesus did we will be sent by these words to liberate and affirm people, Sabbath-style, maintaining justice. Such a vision may always be against the grain. It always seems to be, anyway, even within our own tradition. But that doesn’t make it any less the gospel imperative, one that Jesus carried all the way to the cross. And in today's time of tension and disagreement within religious communities, the Church needs to be doing its creative best to carry this imperative forward in an articulate, public and forceful manner.