Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

the Rev. Michael Lemaire Rather than defending Jesus’ harsh treatment of the Canaanite woman, the sermon asks whether the encounter actually changed Jesus. The woman crosses cultural, religious, and gender boundaries to seek healing for her daughter. Jesus initially rejects her, describing his mission as limited to Israel and comparing outsiders to dogs who should not receive the children’s food. But the woman brilliantly turns Jesus’ image around: even dogs receive crumbs from the master's table. Her persistence and love expose the abundance of the grace Jesus carries and challenge the limits he has placed around his mission. Jesus listens, changes his response, and heals her daughter. The sermon suggests that this may reveal something profound about divine love: genuine love means being open enough to be moved and changed by others. Perhaps encounters like this helped Jesus understand that his mission extended beyond Israel to all people. Even more provocatively, this mother’s willingness to risk humiliation and rejection for someone she loved may have offered Jesus an example of the self-giving love he would ultimately embody on the cross.