For this Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, we continue our journey with Jesus and his disciples through the Gospel of Matthew and respond to Jesus’ call to discipleship. In today’s reading from Isaiah we hear that God’s house shall be a house of prayer for all people and that God will gather the outcasts of Israel. The Canaanite woman in today’s reading from Matthew is a Gentile, an outsider, who is unflinching in her request that Jesus heal her daughter. As Jesus commends her bold faith, how might our church extend its mission and ministries to those on the margins of society? Through word and sacrament, along with community, we receive strength to be signs of comfort, healing, and justice for all people.