Isaiah 55 has one of the most expansive invitations to the people of the earth to serve the one God. The prophet who proclaimed so firmly the oneness of the One God, also realized that the One God had to be God for all people, and not a national god as the Israelites had thought in earlier years when they had received special deliverances. The prophet affirms that God’s “house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” (Is. 55: 7)

One of the most important themes in the epistles of St. Paul is the unity of Jew and Gentile, which is to say, the unity of all people. He spends the three chapters of Romans 9–11 wrestling with the rejection of Jesus as the Messiah by his own people while forging his way to the hope that “all Israel will be saved” (Rom 11: 26) and then moves to the vision that all people, Jew and Gentile, will be converted from their disobedience so as to be shown Mercy. (Rom 11: 32)

On a much smaller scale, but with equally cosmic dimensions, we have the story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman, as Matthew calls her. (Mark more properly calls her the Syro-Phoenician woman.) At first Jesus denies the woman’s plea to deliver her daughter of a demon because he thought he had come only for the lost sheep of Israel, but a bold response from the woman changes his mind and he frees the girl of the demon, apparently realizing that, like his fellow Israelites, Syro-Phoenicians also have demons that need to be cast out.

All three passages of scripture make clear that God wills the unity of all people in the One God. And yet there are many people actively trying to pull people apart. I don’t mean people honestly disagreeing about one thing or another, or people finding themselves at enmity with others even while they try to do better. I mean people who preach segregation, the separation of people as a matter of principle. We see this separatism most often today in racist doctrines. Many bright minds today use their intelligence to push these racist principles, so it isn’t a matter of becoming smart; it is a matter of the human heart. So that is where I will look for a response to this separatism.

Racist attitudes and all other ethnic tensions have to do with a tendency to fear people who are perceived as different. Difference in skin color is just one marker of difference, but a big matter in today’s world. In any case, when one perceives difference, there is a tendency to exaggerate it. It’s true enough that people are different and human cultures are different. It can be threatening, but it can also be broadening to be exposed to what a different culture has to offer. The thing is, when one gets to know another culture well, one also perceives the common humanity of the other. The other isn’t so other after all. Sometimes recognizing ourselves in what we thought was other is what terrifies us the most.

When it comes to God, God is Other in an absolute way. And yet, we are made in God’s image, which means that our own depths respond to the mysterious depths of God. Accepting God’s profound Otherness helps give us the personal resources to accept both the otherness and common humanity of other people. If we don’t come to terms with God’s Otherness, we are apt to project our own prejudices onto god.

And what about the otherness within? It is significant that Matthew places the story of the “Canaanite” woman right after Jesus’ words about defilement. Although we tend to think we are defiled by others, Jesus tells us that it is the “evil intentions” from the heart that really defile us. (Mt. 15: 19) That is to say, we are strangers to ourselves. Could it be that the stranger within causes us to fear the stranger without?

The universalistic vision of Isaiah came after Israel’s centuries long struggle to come to terms with other peoples. Before his conversion, Paul seems to have been focused only on his own people, that is, the need to keep his own people pure from heresy. Jesus’ breaking into his life broadened him to horizons way beyond what they had been. Jesus himself seems to have struggled with his own peoples’ hatred of Syro-Phoenicians, going back to struggles with the Canaanites. This shows that a long history of tension and atrocities committed between peoples can make reconciliation and acceptance all the harder. The bitterness caused by atrocities of others is severe, but committing atrocities makes it even harder to reconcile. It is actions such as enslavement and lynching coming from within that defile us. When wronged, one can forgive. But what if we have committed the wrong? Coming to terms with what we have done is an even harder task. Then we have to accept forgiveness, the deepest mystery of God who is totally Other, and the scourge that burns away all that comes out of us to defile us..