In the Fall of 1980, I had the great opportunity of taking an independent study on scriptural exegesis with Fr. Mike Joncas. Scriptural exegesis is a very involved and exact process of studying scripture to better understand what a scripture passage is saying. When he wasn’t composing hymns like “On Eagles Wings”, Mike is a professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas.
Mike had given me today’s Gospel as an assignment. After doing all the exegetical work on this Gospel, I handed Mike my paper on it. After reading the paper, he asked me two questions. Did Jesus initially refuse to heal the woman’s daughter because in being raised Jewish he had learned from his culture not to associate with people who were not Jewish? Or, did Jesus initially refuse to heal the woman’s daughter to test the woman’s faith? I told Mike, that Jesus was probably testing the woman’s faith.
Mike replied that many scripture scholars believe that because Jesus was raised in the Jewish culture of his time, and as a good practicing Jew, he was following the teachings of his religion to avoid people who were not Jewish. This is evident in the behavior of the apostles advising Jesus not to engage with this pagan woman. And, initially, Jesus ignores the pleas of the woman. The pagan woman’s faith challenged this bias that Jesus had learned from his religion. As he listened to her and discovered her deep faith, he realized that what he was taught by his religion was wrong and he cured the woman’s daughter. Jesus had to unlearn the cultural bias taught to him by his Jewish culture. From that moment onward Jesus began to widen his mission to include both Jewish and non-Jewish people.
In reflecting on what I heard from Mike Joncas that day, I began to examine my own prejudices and biases. I remembered a time when, as a college student riding the Snelling Bus to St. Thomas College, how uncomfortable and uneasy I became when at the intersection of University Ave and Snelling Ave the color of the bus changed from primarily white to primarily black. Where I had I learned this prejudice against people of color?
I was not taught this prejudice from my parents. My parents would not tolerate any religious or racial prejudice at home because they themselves had experienced religious prejudice as Catholics. My father was a mechanical engineer, but many United States businesses would not offer him a job precisely because he was Polish and Catholic. My grandfather told my dad to change his last name to something more Protestant sounding. So, my dad legally changed his last name from the Polish Catholic Wojnar to the more Protestant German sounding Wagner, and, was subsequently hired by Westinghouse Air Brake Company as a mechanical engineer. My mother, a highly degreed home economics teacher lost her job teaching poor children in the inner city Pittsburgh public schools for the reason of being Catholic.
Where I had learned to be racially prejudice? It was from my culture. In high school, it was made very clear that when a person drove in the Selby-Dale area of St. Paul, you rolled up your windows and locked the doors. Why? because that neighborhood was populated only by black people and was considered dangerous. It was a load of hogwash. It was just as dangerous to ride through German neighborhood on Rice Street in St. Paul, where Ruthie lived, as it was to drive through Selby-Dale. It took that uneasiness I experienced riding the Snelling bus for me to become self-aware of my own racism and to begin to “unlearn” the lies I had been taught at school.
Today’s Gospel forces us to examine the racial and religious prejudices we have been taught and have accepted. It forces us to engage, as Jesus did, with those we have been taught to fear and to hate by our culture and perhaps by our family. This Gospel forces us to acknowledge that to God there is no such thing as different races or cultures. God’s mercy and God’s love is extended to all people. Whether we are black, white, Asian, Native American, Latino; whether our names are Ole and Lena, George and Gracie, Emil and Ludmilla, Ezechial and Sophie, Maria y Jose, we are all made in the image and likeness of God. We all have God’s DNA in us. We belong to only one race and that is the human race.
To overcome our prejudices and biases we must, as Jesus did, listen and talk with one another. We will find that we all possess the same heartache, the same love, the same joys and the same sorrows. There was a time when Germans from Union Hill or Heidelberg would never marry a Czechs from New Prague. There was a time when the Irish from St. Patrick, St. Catherine or St. Thomas would never consider marrying a German or a Czech. Somewhere along time our grandparents discovered that national prejudices were false and ridiculous.
Unlike the movies, and many television mini-series that portray Jesus as a Northern European man with long brown hair, blue eyes, and a British accent, Jesus was a brown skinned, dark haired, brown eyed Palestinian Jewish man who spoke Aramaic. Jesus mission as St. Paul vividly points out in the second reading was not just to the Jewish people but to all people. Jesus’ death and resurrection brought salvation to not just a select few, but to all people of the world, who are sons and daughters of God. May we, who possess the DNA of God, who are the Body of Christ made flesh in our world, continue his salvific mission by serving the image and the likeness of God in all people.
