“The Wideness of God’s Mercy”
August 16, 2026
Rev. Rebecca Migliore
There are so many hymns that I love that talk about the wideness of God’s mercy. “O Love, how deep, how broad, how high…”, or “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy…” or “Morning by morning, new mercies I see (from Great is Thy Faithfulness)…” or one of my favorites “God is working God’s purpose out as year succeeds to year/ God is working God’s purpose out and the time is drawing near,/ nearer and nearer draws the time, the time that shall surely be,/ when the earth will be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.” (As a Biblical trivia point, that last verse “when the earth will be filled…” is a quote straight from the prophet Habbakuk).
And although we all give lip service to understanding the breadth and height and depth of God’s love, God’s mercy, and God’s grace, it is something that we each have to work on, in our mind and our heart and our soul, each and every day. This is part of what it means to be human. You can see this in the Apostle Paul’s exhortation in the letter written to the Ephesians, “I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge---that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:18-19)
It is no easy task, this understanding the wideness of God’s mercy. Even if we see hints of it in the Scriptures that Jesus would have known, like the passage from Isaiah that we read this morning. When God talks about gathering the faithful on the holy mountain, it isn’t just the faithful of Israel, but also the outcasts (those who got themselves put out by human hands) AND “others.” Who are these others? Well, probably they are people who are faithful in their own way, who God sees, but we sometimes gloss over because they don’t fit our definition of faithful. Maybe they are the ones Jesus is talking about in the gospel of John when in his passage about being a good shepherd he says, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” (John 10:16) So, how do we continue to learn about the wideness of God’s mercy?
Is there a story, a parable that we can concentrate on? Well, yes, I think there is. And it is a shocking story, a message found in the gospels of Matthew and Mark (and also revealed to the disciples in the second part of Luke—the acts of the apostles). And this story gets to the core of the good news. Who is the good news to go to? Up until this point in the gospel according to Matthew (even though we had kings from afar at the manger) Jesus sees himself as sent to the “lost” of the house of Israel—or in other words, he has a (mostly) Jews-only policy (although he does heal a centurion’s servant because of his great faith in Matthew 8.)
So when he travels to Tyre and Sidon, Jesus is leaving Galilee, leaving Israel, and going into a Gentile area (maybe to minister to the “lost” Jews in that region). But, instead, God sends a Canaanite woman to plead for her daughter. We have to remember that this woman has three strikes against her. One, she’s a Canaanite—those Gentiles abhorred more than any others by the Jews. Two, she is a woman, and shouldn’t be talking to Jesus or the disciples, and she is shouting at them! Three, she is an unaccompanied woman, she doesn’t have a man at her side (like she is supposed to). This is a flaming feminist unbeliever! And Jesus ignores her plea, and the disciples ask whether they can “get rid of her.”
Ah, the wideness of God’s mercy. Let’s take another look at this woman. Yes, she is a Canaanite (although I’m not sure how they would have known this—was there a look? An accent? A dress code?). And yes, she is shouting. But what does she shout? “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David. My daughter is tormented by a demon.” Who is this woman who knows Jesus, who calls him Lord, who knows he is the Son of David (and thus the Messiah?—remember this is before Peter’s confession in Matthew’s gospel).
Jesus still doesn’t answer her. In fact, he reiterates that he is only there for the lost sheep of Israel. If we don’t try to squirm our way out of this, we are faced with an uncomfortable picture of Jesus—one that we don’t always think about. A human Jesus. A Jesus that doesn’t seem to know fully what God intends for him at this point. A Jesus who is going to have to learn that God’s love is deeper and wider and higher than he thought.
And, we can imagine that Matthew knows we, the hearers of this gospel, in ancient times and in the present, are also human, also not yet fully aware and needing to learn more about the wideness of God’s mercy, love, and grace.
And our woman, our flaming feminist Gentile, comes closer (GASP), and kneels before Jesus, and says, “Lord, help me.” And this is when Jesus acts in a very human but not very “What would Jesus do” way. He says basically, “I can’t help you. I was sent to help Jews. It’s not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Yikes! If I was that woman, I’d be hurt, I’d be furious, and I might have made an inappropriate gesture. But, this flaming feminist was a mother. A desperate mother. She would do anything to help her daughter. And she believed Jesus could do that. His biting remark was NOT going to get in her way.
She says (is she still on her knees before him?), she says once again, “Yes, Lord” (Yes Lord? Yes I know you are here to help the Jews and I know that you (and every other Jew) thinks that my kind is a dog, a creature not worthy of being fed the people-food. Yes, Lord?) Remember, flaming feminist mother. Yes, Lord, YET even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their lord’s table.” (I’ll let you know that if we were reading this in Greek there is a complicated word play between Lord and Dog—but we don’t need to delve into that).
This Flaming Feminist Mother has spoken common knowledge. Don’t we let the other animals, the dogs, the birds, the mice, eat the crumbs that fall to the floor and we consider not edible anymore. Our woman is pleading with Jesus to let her have the scraps. You don’t have to give me the premium treatment, just let me have the left-overs. She somehow knows that when Jesus is there, 5 loaves and 2 fish will feed thousands. So why can’t she have a little of the “left-over” for her daughter. And Jesus, just as he does with the Gentile centurion, praises her faith. And grants her wish. Her daughter was healed.
What Matthew doesn’t say, because he is slowly unveiling a huge lesson, is that this story is going to lead the followers of Jesus, and Jesus himself, away from their Jewish-only roots, towards a kin-dom of heaven that will more fully embody the true wideness of God’s mercy. So that by the end of the gospel, the resurrected Jesus sends his followers out, saying “go therefore and make disciples of all nations…”
Huh. And what are we to take from that? It seems that none of us, not even Jesus, always comprehends the breadth and depth and height and length of God’s mercy. And if that is true, then we might want to be on the look-out for the outlandish outsiders who make us uncomfortable, who might even be screaming, but who, if we take a moment to really listen, might teach us a thing or two. I think this story is a reminder that we all can get trapped in our own vision of what God wants, of who God calls, of how God is working in our world.
In this world of so many tribes and parties and peoples and divisions, we sometimes want to circle the wagons and be safe. We want to narrow our vision, our calling, because it is easier, it is more in tune with the niche marketing idea. But God’s love is so over the top, that it is like the waters of the sea, when they come crashing over the shoreline, leaving everything in their wake, wet, and reordered. God’s love is so unfathomable that there is abundance in left-overs. God’s love is so powerful that the wind and the waves obey, because God’s love is what brought everything into being in the first place.
Maybe we are to be open to BE the Flaming Feminist Mother in the face of good people who haven’t fully understood they are to be wide enough to follow in God’s incredible grace. Maybe we are to be humble enough to accept that we have to do the difficult work of encompassing more of our world in our bubble. Maybe we are to be shocked at how all of us can stumble into using language about others that is demeaning and does not show us in our best moment—and commit to doing a better job in what words come out of our mouths.
Maybe we are to take this story as an incredible example of what truly “defiles” a person—which Matthew has Jesus and the Pharisees discussing just before this reading. Jesus teaches that it is not what goes into the mouth (it is not what is outside of us) that defiles—but actually what comes out of the mouth (what comes from us, what we say, what we do, what we are), this is what can make us lesser.
This is a story that we can work on every day. Are we following in the expansive way of God’s mercy and love and grace? Are we becoming more like Jesus inside? Do we have eyes to see, and ears to hear, and hearts to love? Are we building the kin-dom of heaven that is filled with the glory of God—so big and high and wide and deep, that it is like the waters that cover the sea? -- May it be so, Alleluia, Amen.