Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year A
August 16, 2026 – 10:30 AM
Saint Cecilia Catholic Community
Rev. David Justin Lynch
Isaiah 56:1, 6–7 | Psalm 67:2-3, 5-6,8
Romans 11:13–15, 29–32 | Matthew 15:21–28
+In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
We live in a world obsessed with labels.
Liberal or conservative. Republican or Democrat. Gay or straight. Male or female. Black or white. Citizen or immigrant. Roman Catholic, Anglican Catholic, Orthodox Catholic, or Old Catholic. We classify ourselves, and then we classify everybody else,
Sometimes labels are useful. They can tell us something about a person’s experience, history, or perspective. But labels become dangerous when they cease to describe people and begin to define their worth.
That is where identity politics becomes spiritually destructive. We stop seeing human beings and start seeing categories. We divide the world into us and them. We decide who belongs and who does not, who is acceptable and who is unacceptable, who deserves to be heard and who can safely be ignored.
But today’s Scriptures tell us that God does not think that way.
Isaiah imagines God’s house as “a house of prayer for all peoples.” Saint Paul insists that “the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.” And in the Gospel, Jesus meets a woman who crosses almost every imaginable social boundary.
She is a Canaanite.
For Jewish contemporaries of Jesus, that designation carried centuries of religious and cultural hostility. She was not merely a foreigner. She belonged to a people whom Israel had historically regarded as outsiders and religious enemies.
And she was a woman in an intensely patriarchal society.
So, before she ever opened her mouth, society had already placed two labels on her: Canaanite and woman.
In the eyes of many people around Jesus, that should have been enough to dismiss her.
The disciples apparently thought so. They wanted Jesus to send her away.
But she refused to disappear.
She cried out, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David. My daughter is tormented by a demon.”
Notice what she calls him: Lord, Son of David.
This outsider recognizes something about Jesus that many insiders do not recognize. She sees in him the possibility of God’s saving presence.
At first Jesus says nothing.
Then he tells her, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
She persists.
“Lord, help me.”
And then comes perhaps one of the most uncomfortable statements Jesus makes anywhere in the Gospels:
“It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.”
Whatever interpretation we place on that sentence, Matthew wants us to feel its harshness. The conventional boundary between Jew and Gentile has been placed squarely in front of this woman.
But she does something extraordinary.
She refuses to allow the insult to silence her.
“Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”
What courage!
She argues her case before Jesus.
She refuses the role society has assigned to her. She refuses to accept that her ethnicity, her religion, or her gender places her beyond the reach of God’s mercy.
And Jesus responds:
“Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”
Her daughter is healed.
That moment is much larger than one miraculous healing.
A boundary has been crossed.
A woman whom religious society regarded as an outsider has become an example of faith.
The disciples wanted Jesus to send her away.
But Jesus listened to her.
That should make every Christian—and especially every member of the clergy—uncomfortable from time to time.
Because sometimes the person standing outside our religious institution sees something about God that those of us inside it have missed.
Sometimes laypeople understand what bishops, priests, and deacons do not understand.
Sometimes people whom churches have pushed to the margins demonstrate extraordinary faith.
Sometimes God speaks through the very person whom religious people have already decided does not belong.
Today’s Gospel therefore asks every Christian a difficult question:
Whom are we still trying to send away?
Who are our Canaanites?
Who are the people we have decided are unacceptable to us before we have even heard their story?
The divorced?
The LGBTQ person?
The immigrant?
The person from another denomination?
The person who votes differently from us?
The poor person?
The homeless person?
The person struggling with addiction?
The person whose life does not fit neatly into our moral expectations?
Whenever we reduce another human being to a label, we risk doing exactly what the disciples did: “Send her away.”
Jesus does something different.
He encounters her as a person.
And that is the great moral challenge of today’s Gospel.
Your ultimate identity does not come from your race, your nationality, your sex, your sexual orientation, your political affiliation, your economic status, or your ecclesiastical jurisdiction.
Your ultimate identity comes from God.
Genesis tells us that human beings are created in the image and likeness of God.
Saint Paul tells us that in Christ there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus.
Isaiah tells us that God’s house is intended to become a house of prayer for all peoples.
Not some people.
Not the right people.
Not respectable people.
Not people who look like us, vote like us, worship like us, love like us, or think like us.
All people.
That must be the mission of the Church.
Here at Saint Cecilia Catholic Community, when we say “All Sacraments for Everyone,” that is be merely a slogan. It describes the kind of community we are becoming.
It means that everyone who walks through our doors must encounter not a tribunal waiting to classify them, but a community prepared to welcome them.
It does not mean we will always agree with one another.
Christian unity has never required uniformity.
The Church is supposed to be a body, and bodies contain different members. Mosaics have different colors. A tapestry contains different threads. Diversity does not weaken the Body of Christ. Diversity is part of what makes it a body rather than a collection of identical parts.
The tragedy is that Christians themselves have often forgotten this.
We divide ourselves into competing jurisdictions, denominations, theological camps, and ideological factions. We become more interested in being Roman Catholic, Anglican Catholic, Orthodox Catholic, progressive Catholic, or traditional Catholic than simply being Catholic in the deepest meaning of that word: universal.
Christ has only one Body.
And Christ’s Body is larger than the boundaries we draw around it.
Today’s Gospel tells us that God’s mercy has an astonishing habit of crossing the borders we construct.
The disciples say, “Send her away.”
Jesus says, “Great is your faith.”
And that contrast should haunt the Church.
Because whenever Christians tell someone, “You do not belong,” we had better be very certain that Jesus is not standing beside that person saying, “Great is your faith.”
The world desperately needs a Church that demonstrates another way of living together.
A Church in which rich and poor worship together.
Gay and straight worship together.
Conservative and progressive worship together.
Young and old worship together.
People of different races, cultures, nationalities, and backgrounds gather around one altar and receive one bread from one table.
That is what Catholic means.
That is what the Body of Christ looks like.
And that is why identity politics and Jesus ultimately do not mix.
Identity politics asks, “Which group are you part of?”
Jesus asks, “Where is your faith?”
Identity politics asks, “Are you one of us?”
Jesus asks, “Do you trust me?”
Identity politics builds walls.
Jesus crosses them.
Identity politics tells the Canaanite woman to know her place.
Jesus tells her, “Great is your faith.”
So let the Church become what Isaiah imagined: a joyful house of prayer for all people.
Let us become a community where nobody is reduced to a label.
Let us listen to those whom society tells us to ignore.
Let us welcome those whom religion has sometimes taught us to exclude.
Let us recognize Jesus in people who are different from us.
Because whether we are rich or poor, healthy or sick, successful or unsuccessful, gay or straight, conservative or progressive, citizen or immigrant, sinner or saint, we stand equally in need of God’s mercy.
And by God’s grace, we are being gathered into one Body.
One faith.
One people of God.
One holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.
Not because we are all alike.
But because we all belong to God.
Amen.