Some of the great Catholic theologians of the Middle Ages had a strong opinion about why God couldn’t ever change. And here was roughly the way their reasoning went. God, by definition, is greater than any category of anything we can think of. Therefore God is so vast, that it’s really impossible for us to say that there’s anything that God is not. And if there’s nothing that God is not, then how could God ever change? Because by definition, if you change, you become something you weren’t before. That would mean God wasn’t complete to start with. So therefore, by logic, God can’t change. QED, as they said in math class.
On the surface, this is very logical. And far be it from me to take on St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Anselm and critique their logic. But part of me does picture God, that God who is greater and beyond our ability to picture him, smiling just a bit at this rock-solid proof, and thinking, so they think there’s something I can’t possibly do? I guess I’ll have to show them.
We have two scripture readings today that are about change, and maybe they’re even about God changing, or maybe they’re about humans changing, or maybe it’s both. Let’s take that first reading from the prophet Isaiah. This is from the third part of that great book, where suddenly there is a big expansion of how the prophet sees where the future of the people of Israel is heading. It’s headed towards a world not where the people of Israel are God’s only chosen people, but a world where all people have somehow gathered into one house of prayer, seemingly no matter where they came from or what they did in the past, whether they were Israel’s enemies or not. Jews and Gentiles, all in one community of God. Now this was a big change for the people of Israel, a new vision of the future that saw one house of prayer for strangers and foreigners and everyone who desires to follow the one God.
And then let’s take this very difficult gospel reading, where we start off by encountering what seems like a very rigid and unfeeling Jesus. This seems to be the only time in any of the gospels where Jesus refuses someone who comes to him for help. He even insults this Canaanite woman, someone who came from the people who were one of Israel’s oldest enemies, first he won’t say a word to her, then calls her a dog, saying sorry, I wasn’t sent here to be present to people like you. I am only here for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But after she pushes back Jesus seems to change his mind. Does he change his mind just based on her persistence? Or did the words of the prophet Isaiah suddenly come back to him, reminding him that the lost sheep of the house of Israel weren’t the only people who mattered for the future. That she was not an alien or an enemy or a problem, but just someone on the outside looking in, needing Jesus to save her and her daughter. This is a turning point in the gospel, and a new and difficult challenge for the disciples and the community hearing this gospel, a much bigger view of who they were called to be.
So what is here for us in these two readings about change? Leaving aside just for a moment about whether God changed in these stories, whether Jesus changed, what we do know is that God often wants us to change, to change our minds about the way we see God, and about the way we see other people. And it’s us that these stories are for.
People are good at drawing lines about who exactly is worthy of their compassion and their welcome. But it’s hard not to see today’s readings calling us to be aware of when that happens, and they’re pushing back on our very human instinct to have firm boundaries. Every time we feel ourselves drawing a line and saying no, not those people, I’m suspicious of their motivations, I don’t trust them, this is beyond the pale, that’s when maybe this divine vision of mercy always expanding, the house of prayer for everyone, ought to get our attention. It’s not that everyone in the world is always right, and that there aren’t boundaries on anything, but the message here is that God’s mercy doesn’t draw lines where humans tend to, and there just aren’t as many strings attached to God’s mercy as there are with ours. I don’t need to give you a lot of examples of how we all draw circular boundaries around ourselves or around our church, because we all do it a little differently, we all have people and whole categories of people who for us are outside the circle of people we feel deserve help, deserve welcome, deserve a seat at the table equal to ours.
I don’t know if you read any of the coverage of World Youth Day that took place a couple of weeks ago in Lisbon. At the final mass, Pope Francis gave the huge crowd a reminder of the kind of church that the gospel is pushing us towards: “There is space for everyone,” he said, “and when there isn’t, please, let’s work so that there is — also for the one who makes mistakes, for the one who falls, for the one who is difficult.” He asked the crowd to chant, “Everyone, everyone, everyone!”
Extending love and mercy to everyone is a tall order. It’s the kind of change that comes with difficulty. But it seems to be the kind of change that God really desires, and God can change anything, even us.