How good it is when brothers and sisters live together in unity! Today's Psalm celebrates the best of human society, but leaves out the essential question about who is accepted as family. One of the unfortunate characteristics of religious and ethnic groups is that, the stronger the sense of family, the greater sense there is that others do not belong.
In today's reading from the letter to the Romans, St. Paul continues agonising about the proper places of Jew and Gentile in God's eternal plan. A modern Christian reader might well wonder why he felt that it was such a complicated question, but our sense of ease about belonging in an ethnically diverse church is partly his gift to us. Perhaps other traditions need to identify their St. Pauls (plenty to discuss there).
Two other people are agonising about the same question in today's gospel. One of them is a gentile woman asking for Jesus' help, unable to see any sense in being categorised and treated as an outsider. The other is Jesus himself. The gospel writer clearly wants his readers to get the point that nobody is outside God's community. Perhaps this was the occasion upon which it became clear to Jesus.
Joseph's reconciliation with his brothers is a marvellous story of recognition and acceptance. What we don't know, of course, is the extent to which the Israelites were ever accepted in Egypt. My guess is that they were tolerated until employment and resources became scarce, then treated as undesirable aliens. How very contemporary.
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