Isaiah 56:8

Isaiah 56:8

Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those already gathered.


God gathers the outcasts.

Sunday's lectionary readings had a lot to say about the outsider - the foreigner, the other - the outcast.

An unnamed Canaanite woman stood today for all the outcasts of the world.  She stood as one with courage and determination and faith.  One who dared to remind Jesus that God calls the outcasts.

We are still a world full of outcasts.  Sometimes, as this week in Ferguson, we see how fear of the other - the outcast - can lead to violence and death.  Years after the civil rights movement began, we - whites - still show fear of the other with deadly consequences.

In Gaza, fear of the other has led to the slaughter of civilians.

On the Texas border, fear of the other has led to to citizen "militia" groups, tormenting and terrorizing children who have come thousands of miles with just the hope and dream of safety. 

The opposite of love, I have read, is not hate.  Instead it is fear.  So much of the violence and vile directed toward the "other" or the outcast in our world comes from fear.

Fear, and perhaps, inertia.  Inertia I think is also the opposite of love.

So much of the news lately has moved me to tears.  I'm not afraid of the "other," I tell myself.  And I hate what is happening!

Yet if inertia is stopping me from doing something to reach out to the other, to be a presence of good and light in their lives, then what good am I to them?

The Canaanite woman called Jesus on his dismissal of her as an outsider and he repented.  Repentance is a complete change of mind and heart.  It is to "think differently after."

God gathers the outcasts and Jesus remembered that and the rest, as they say, is history.

How can we remember to gather the outcasts?  What is needed to change minds and hearts?


God of the outcast, move me from my safe place to stand with the outsider in love and companionship. Amen.