Loving the Stranger, the Outsider, the Strange

The story of the Canaanite woman (Matthew 15.21-28) is a stark reminder that the Christian vocation is to embrace xenophilia (love of the stranger, the outsider, the strange) rather than its life-denying opposite xenophobia (fear of the stranger, the outsider, the strange). This non-Jewish, foreign woman is the first person in Matthew's gospel to call Jesus 'Lord'.