GOD OF ALL, GOD FOR ALL.

August 16, 2020

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time - A

READINGs:  Is 56:1, 6-7; Ps 67:2-3, 5, 6, 8; Rom 11:13-15, 29-32; Mt 15:21-28.

A Bambara proverb says, “United we are a rock, divided we are sand.” And a Moroccan proverb adds, “The world of humans is divided by lines, but the mind knows no limits, the heart no barriers.”

The love of God makes no distinction between rich and poor, big and small, black, white, yellow, red… For, God knows no foreigner, no stranger, no Alien. We all belong to Him. Even though we have our differences, he makes of us one people.

Today’s liturgy, Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time – A, comes to tell us that the categories and terminologies such as aliens or foreigners do not apply to God’s relationship with us. With Him, we are not Aliens, nor foreigners. All are called and welcomed into his love. He welcomes Jews as well as non-Jews or Pagans. The only requirement to experience his goodness and compassion is faith.

Through the Prophet Isaiah, in the first reading, the Lord God announces that he will bring foreigners to his holy mountain. He exhorts his people in these words, “Observe what is right, do what is just; for my salvation is about to come, my justice, about to be revealed.” God makes no difference of origins, races, cultures, languages, or colors, in calling into his love. He is just for he who is just and punishes the evil of evildoers. He says clearly, “my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” Our Churches have no color and should not have. They should be no discrimination or distinction among us.

These sayings, however, are the ideals and even so much idealistic that they look a kind of utopia and irrealistics. For, the ideal, oftentimes, does not match to the reality and the practices under some skies. I once heard of the stories of some priests, pastors, men, and women of God being victims of discrimination in some places where they were assigned either due to the color of their skin, or to their language, or culture, or origin. In some places, regionalism and ethnocentrism are transported until even in the Church. There are also times, where, it is the men or women of God who instigate discriminations and divisions among their parishioners and faithful, based on what we listed ahead (culture, language, origin, color, region…) The Lord God says, “my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” He has not said that it will be a house for specific or classified groups, but rather, for all peoples. Therefore, he who pretends to be a believer but acts for segregation or division must know that division comes not from God, but the devil. He is the ‘Diabolos’, the one who ‘slanderer’ connected to the Greek word ‘diabolous’, which means "divider". By advocating division and discrimination toward others, one makes himself a disciple of this ‘diabolos’.

Jesus, in the Gospel, gives us to see the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah. He worked a miracle for a Canaanite woman because of her great faith. Though the Lord stated at the start that he was sent only for the people of Israel, because of the faith of the woman and her inflexibility, he gave a favorable answer to her plea. Faith has no color. Faith makes no difference. Instead, it is what unites us into one congregation, regardless of our provenances, diversities.

St. Paul agrees on the fact that God’s gifts were first directed to the children of Israel. However, because they refused to believe in Jesus Christ, and for the rejection they opposed to his words, this good news of God’s salvation was opened to all the nations. In Jesus, all barriers of divisions and discriminations are torn down.

Brethren, we should evaluate our realities, the life of our Christian communities, and see to it that we do not make discriminations, distinctions, or segregations based on color, casts, origins, languages… For, we cannot dream of equal rights, justice, and equity in our societies, and countries, and in the world, if we do not start advocating those values in the Church and among us believers and Christ-followers. Christians’ discrimination is the weapon the devil uses to wound Christ Body that is the Church. Churches, parishes, or Congregations and associations where people are separated by regionalism, ethnocentrism, racism, Christ can no longer be found there. If in some societies, Christians persecution is a severe evil, the discrimination among Christians is a more severe pain Christians themselves inflict to each other and the Body of Christ.  

Discrimination is one of the most painful plagues that infects and affects our world. Countless are the modules and sources of discrimination and they often lead to inhuman and bestializing crimes. A few months ago, while the whole world was fighting, and still until today, the Corona Virus with its COVID-19 Pandemic, the USA added another battle to the sanitarian suffering, the #Blacklivematter movement. This was consecutive to the barbarian and heartless assassination of a black man by a white cop. A crime based on the element of racial difference. We all saw what have been and are the consequences of that crime. For, discrimination is a transgression with huge and hardly healing consequences.

Unfortunately, whether you are Christians or non-Christians, in one way or another, we abuse the rights of others, we discriminate them and think ourselves superior to them. White thinks that blacks are subhuman; black people think whites are inhuman or heartless. The yellows think they are superior to the reds. Reds think yellows are immoral... Thinking of all this, I can't help but sing this lyric of Lucky Dube: Different colors, one people.

Our world will be a better place to live only when we will get to realize our interdependence, and that we are one people, the people of God. This Pandemic, in some ways, becomes a more beautiful lesson on that unity. For, we speak of COVID in the Northern Pole with its lot of affected people and death. We say COVID in the Southern Pole with the same consequences. From the East to the West, passing through the Center, no one is exempted. It shows that there is no difference between us. So, if the virus of death makes no difference between us, how much more should we find a reason to unite to fight all our battles together as one... Besides, the love of God and our faith are the substantial elements that must unite us and we should not let our petty interests and accidental gears such as color, language, and so on divide us. Different colors, different languages, different cultures, different regions... but one people.