rejected
Have You Felt Rejected?
20th Sunday Ordinary Time – Year A
Fr. Mark Gatto
Have you ever felt rejected by the church? Why did you feel rejected?
At times divorced Catholics might feel that way. LGBQ and Transgender Catholics might feel that way. Single parents may feel that way. Perhaps if you are a Catholic who is struggling with some teaching of the church. Some who today are choosing MAID may feel rejected by the church. Maybe just a bad experience with a priest made you feel that way. Sometimes young people when they question things and get a judgemental response from parents or teachers.
As a pastor of a Catholic parish it is my desire that no one would ever feel rejected or sent away by the church through our parish.
We saw in the Gospel today a Canaanite woman comes to Jesus looking for help. The disciples speak to Jesus and say, “Send her away, because she keeps shouting after us.” They want to send her away as she is not one of them. Canaanites were considered heretics, not belonging to the people of Israel.
Initially even Jesus does not want to receive her, he says, “I was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” In a sense we are seeing the vision of the early church expanding, to become broader in terms of how the church responds to people seen as outsiders. There is a growth in understanding. The church is becoming more universal right before our eyes within the gospels.
The Canaanite woman calls out, “Lord, help me.” Today in our parish, I see so many people of different ages, cultures, backgrounds who simply come off the street and are asking us for help. Many just looking for a community and place to be connected to God. They have faith like that Canaanite woman and hunger for the help of Jesus.
We Catholics, as disciples of Jesus, as priests, sometimes send people away. By our attitudes, when we are too narrow, fundamentalist, elitist, acting as though we are extra pure. In the way we speak, in the way we act, in the way we treat those who seem to be on the outside like the Canaanite woman. Each of us needs a conversion to broaden our vision. Who are we sending away?
If you were praying with this passage, you could imagine yourself in the place of the disciples or in the place of the Canaanite woman. If you imagine yourself in the place of the disciples, as we see them wanting to send the Canaanite woman away, we need to do a self examination. Who are the people that we might be sending away without even realizing it? Is there any person or groups of people that you wish to send away as the disciples did in this gospel? We need some honest self reflection.
If you imagine yourself in the place of the Canaanite woman, we see her faith that keeps her pursuing Jesus despite the experience of rejection. In what ways have you experienced being rejected by the church. Like the Canaanite woman do not let anyone send you away. With faith and perseverance you will be received by Jesus.
Praying honestly with a gospel passage like this should challenge your vision in one way or another. At times it might make us uncomfortable.
Listen!
14th Sunday In Ordinary Time
Fr. Mark Gatto
Preached: July 4, 2021
We think of God as strong, but we should think of God as weak. God chose to come among us in a human being. A regular human being like us. God became weak. This God became vulnerable. Even willing to risk being rejected. In Jesus we see God being rejected in his own home town. People who refused to even try to understand who he was and what he was doing. Jesus experienced being weak and rejected.
Paul also experienced weakness and rejection. He struggles with this weakness, but hears God speak to his heart saying, “My grace is sufficient for you. For power is made perfect in weakness.” Paul comes to understand that when he is weak then he is strong. In weakness the grace of God is able to come forth.
Today our Catholic Church is experiencing rejection, and a sense of great weakness in the face of opposition, criticism, attacks, hostility. I know that for many of us it can be very discouraging. But, like Paul, it is sometimes in that very weakness that God is able to work, the grace of God is able to come forth.
Like God, the church is not about control, not about domination. Not about being strong. It is about the grace of God. When the church has been powerful and strong, when the church has joined political power in order to impose its way on a society, it usually failed to be an instrument of God’s grace.
The residential schools are a good example of this. The church became tied in with the colonial power of the state. Imposing its will on a particular group of people. In this it failed to be an instrument of God’s grace.
Today among the indigenous people, the church is much more humble and chastened. Today the church approaches mission in a very different way. Not imposing on others but walking with and even learning from others.
The church today must be like Paul. “Content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, …” When I am weak I am strong. The church does not need to defend itself, rather we need to listen, face honestly this history, even when it is difficult.
We do not need to be afraid of being weak. This is an opportunity for us to become an instrument of God’s grace, but not through power, influence or control.
The people of the hometown of Jesus rejected him. They already had a vision in their head and were unwilling to listen, to pay attention, to come to know something deeper about him.
We people of Faith, as Christians, we can become just like those people. We have in our head an idea of Jesus, an idea of Catholic faith. So, we are no longer listening, no longer paying attention. It makes us afraid of any change, prevents us from going deeper in our faith, causes us at times to reject what new things God is doing in our midst. We want to keep things as they were or at least as I have always thought that they were.
One of the most important things that the church needs to do in this moment, and that each of us as members of the church need to do, is listen. Listen to people who are different, listen to the people who are on the margins, listen to what is happening in our society. Not avoid others, not just immediately reject those who are different.
Listen, because perhaps Jesus is among us in a new way, revealing something new and deeper. Watch that we are not rejecting Jesus like the people in his hometown because we are too comfortable with our way of seeing things.
Jesus experienced being rejected. People refusing even to try to understand who he was and what he was doing. Paul also experienced rejection and a sense of great weakness.
This moment in history calls for the Church to be weak. To be vulnerable. Like God who came among us weak and vulnerable. We need to be willing even to be rejected.
We need to become a church that listens carefully, to all people, to all among us. Listen so that we will not end up rejecting the presence of God in our midst. Especially we need to listen when it is not comfortable.