Read Matthew 15:10-28 with your family.

Today’s Bible readings give us two stories of frustrations and challenges. First a Pharisee challenges Jesus and his followers for not washing their hands properly before they ate and how that made their meal ‘unclean’. The second story is Jesus being challenged by a mother from Canaan who wanted her daughter healed, and this time Jesus was the one who was unreasonable.

Often we teach that Jesus was perfect, that he couldn’t make a mistake, and that he knew everything about a conversation before it started. Thinking about Jesus like that means we have a hard time relating, because people are always making mistakes. So it’s time to forget about ‘perfect’ Jesus, and start to see him as a regular person who sometimes said and did the wrong things.

But… Jesus was a person who could quickly learn. He learned from the Canaanite mother that God’s love and hope was for everyone, not just the Hebrew people.

With his own followers he reminded them that there was no good food or bad food, that it was the things that come out of our body that cause problems, not the things we put into our body. If we lie, steal, and hurt people we are ‘unclean’. Jesus taught us that was not the way to live.

We are to love others always… even strangers.