From Rev’d Vicky Falvey
Readings for Sunday: Isaiah 56:1,6-8; Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32; Matthew 15:10-20,21-28
To hear Vicky’s sermon click on the arrow below.
The following is taken from the Parish Newsletter for Sunday 16th August 2026.
Remember the game operation? Carefully holding the tweezers, you try to remove the tiny plastic objects from the patient without touching the sides. One wrong move and the familiar buzzing sound tells everyone that you’ve made a mistake! It is a game all about what is happening inside the body. We can laugh at the ridiculous things hidden inside our patient, but the game also gives us a helpful way into the Gospel reading: what is going on inside our hearts?
In Matthew 15, Jesus challenges the idea that being clear or unclean is simply about what happens on the outside. He tells the crowd that what really matters is what comes from within: ‘out of the heart comes evil intentions’ and all the things that damage our relationships with God and with one another.
Jesus is concerned with more than appearances. We can look respectable, say the right things and follow all the expected rules, while still carrying attitudes of pride, resentment, prejudice or selfishness within us. Like the patient in Operation, there is much more going on beneath the surface than others can see.
Yet the Gospel then takes us somewhere unexpected. Jesus encounters a Canaanite woman who comes asking for healing for her daughter. She is an outsider, someone who would not naturally have been regarded as belonging within the religious community. Yet she approaches Jesus with courage and extraordinary faith. She refused to be discouraged and continues to trust in his mercy.
Her story connected powerfully with Isaiah 56. Through Isaiah, God declared that foreigners who love the Lord and hold fast to his covenant will be welcomed. God promises, ‘my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.’ The boundaries that human beings are tempted to draw around God’s people are much wider than we imagine.
Together, these passages invite us to examine our own hearts. If we could use the tweezers from Operation to take a look inside ourselves, what might we find? Perhaps the challenge this week is to let God do a little ‘operation’ on our hearts- not with a buzzer when we get it wrong, but with grace, mercy and love. What might God want to remove? And what might God want to put there instead?
May our hearts become more like the heart of Christ; open, compassionate and ready to make room for all. And may our churches truly become what Isaiah imagined – a house of prayer for all peoples. Amen.
Rev’d Vicky Falvey
Curate, St Mary’s Fairford
Updated 19th August 2026