Gospel: Mark 7: 24-30
In today's Gospel portion we find Jesus approached by a Gentile woman who asks him to remove a demon from her daughter. This conversation at first seems harsh as Jesus initially shows the traditional Jewish bias against foreigners. But he eventually relents at the woman's insistence and the daughter is relieved of her demon. At the same time, all of us are freed from a most ancient demon.
What demon is this that is dispelled here? It is the idea that God is only for a particular people, ethnicity, or religion. One does not have to belong to a particular race, social class, gender, or religion in order to access God and to be healed by God. What is more, in all these healing encounters with Jesus we do not see any litmus tests, no screening process. No one's faith is perfect, no one's righteousness is the key to accessing God. There is just the humble approach to God in all our reality and condition, or rather God's approach to us in our condition.
In these healing encounters we discover there is no such thing as a "faithful Christian" or "true believer." There is just a series of imperfect people, all sinners in need of God's presence in their lives. And God comes, or rather is already present but now realized by us, and we have a choice. We can accept God's mercy for us and for all, living lives of mercy and love. Or we can be Pharisees who cannot accept this openness of God for all and seek to keep God only for ourselves.
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