The Lost Sheep of Israel

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” These words are striking in their context because of the obvious persistence of the Gentile lady pleading with the Lord and the apparent perplexity of the disciples who were privy to the conversation. But it is striking also because it echoes directly what the Lord had already said to the disciples when He sent them out to preach the Gospel of the kingdom (Matthew 10:6). Two questions that arise in both instances are ‘Why did the Lord put this restriction on His mission, as shared with His disciples?’ and ‘What did he mean by “the lost sheep of Israel”?’ And, flowing from both, ‘What relevance, if any, does this have for the Church and her mission through the ages?’

A cursory reading of this passage may lead to an uncomfortable shallow interpretation. Our Lord Jesus seems to have been led by a pagan, a Canaanite woman, to revisit some of His prejudiced and preconceived notions of His mission - from a narrow vision which focused only on the “lost sheep of the House of Israel” to a broader vision which encompasses the Gentiles too. Based on such a humanistic interpretation, it would seem that the woman was more broad-minded than the Lord Himself and was responsible for leading Him to a personal epiphany and turning point in His ministry. By confining His mission to a particular group of people whilst excluding others seems very un-Jesus like. But was this a eureka moment for the Lord, the Word Incarnate, who came to reveal the Father’s loving will to the world? Or is the Lord the One who is trying to reveal something about His mission and that of the Church to us?

To get to the bottom of this mystery, let us consider the category of persons mentioned by the Lord - “the lost sheep of the House of Israel”. Who were they? This is not the first time the Lord made reference to this group of persons. Earlier in Chapter 10, as the Lord was sending out the Twelve, He specifically defined their mission as being confined to this same category of persons: “Do not go in the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter any city of the Samaritans; but rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 10:6).

The reference to the House of Israel is strange. Israel no longer exists as a political entity during the time of Jesus. Its denizens are now living in the diaspora. The former kingdom of Israel had been divided, then conquered and now redistributed into various client states of the Roman Empire. These states look nothing like the Israel of old. In fact, Israel has been exiled from the land that was promised to them. Under the dominion of pagan empires, some Israelites have somewhat sort of returned to the land, but she is also scattered across the nations. While Jerusalem is still the centre of her identity, Israel does not rule the land or in possession of it, either. In a way, one could rightly describe the people of the House of Israel as “lost”, they had lost their homeland, yearning to return to it and see it being restored to her past glory.

But there is also a spiritual sense to the description of being “lost sheep.” These people once belonged to God, and He to them. But now the nation that is supposed to be a shining beacon to all the others, showing to the nations of the earth what it looks like to be a new creation of people serving the God who made the heavens and the earth, had become just like everyone else. God’s treasured possession had been lost. The image of the common people of Israel as “lost sheep” is a big part of the Old Testament prophetic indictment. The image is especially common in Jeremiah, reaching a fever pitch in Jeremiah 23.

In a sense, all of us are lost. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way.” (Isaiah 53:6). Yet in another sense, there were also lost sheep that were abused and neglected by their spiritual shepherds, the scribes, priests, and Pharisees. This is the sense of Jeremiah: 50:6 “My people have been lost sheep. Their shepherds have led them astray”. In the third book of the prophet Isaiah, which we had just heard in the first reading, the hope and desire of every “lost sheep” is that God would come in search of them and bring them home. But God will not only confine His action of restoration and reunification to the House of Israel. Even in the Old Testament, we see a fervent expectation that He will lead all nations to His Holy Mountain so that they can offer worship to Him in His “house of prayer” which is to be a “house of prayer for all the peoples” and not just for the Israelites.

So, the words of our Lord to the Canaanite woman is not meant to limit His mission to a particular group nor are they intended to exclude her and others. Rather, our Lord is actually telling her that He is fulfilling the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah and that this Canaanite woman is going to be one of the first beneficiaries of His mission because she fits the criteria set out by Isaiah in the first reading: “Foreigners who have attached themselves to the Lord to serve him and to love his name and be his servants – all who observe the sabbath, not profaning it, and cling to my covenant – these I will bring to my holy mountain.” Her reverence for the Lord is expressed by her action - she alone is recorded as “kneeling at His feet.”

Instead of seeing Jesus’ messianic mindset in terms of either or, one ought to see His mission as to Israel on behalf of the nations. In other words, in narrowing His focus to Israel, our Lord Jesus does the work necessary for the entire world to be blessed. That is why He specifically called twelve disciples to be with Him and to share in His mission. The number twelve is not accidental. It is deliberate. Our Lord is reconstituting Israel in the form of the Church built on the foundation of these twelve men as how God had made Israel a nation through the foundation of the twelve tribes. But then our Lord is reminding His Church, the new Israel, as well as the old, that they have been constituted not for some exclusive self-serving purpose. Israel is meant to draw all nations to God and to lead them to worship Him on His Holy Mountain.

The mission to the Gentiles was not at the expense of the mission to Israel, nor was it merely an extension. Instead, Israel was to be the catalyst through which God would accomplish His promises to the world. Mission to the nations depends upon Jesus’ accomplishment of His mission to Israel. This was the conviction of St Paul which we heard in the second reading. He tells the Romans that He is an apostle to the pagans so that the Jews may grow envious of this mission and be the catalyst of bringing some of them to embrace this new faith. The faith of the nations will in time convince Israel that the God of all peoples has been revealed in Jesus Christ. The mission inaugurated by Christ will then come full circle.