Matthew 15:10–28
When Love Crosses the Line
Practicing Resurrection at the Boundaries
“To live outside the law, you must be honest.”
— Bob Dylan, Absolutely Sweet Marie
I have long been curious about what Dylan meant by that line.
Placed alongside the song’s images of railroad crossings, locked doors, missing keys, prisons, and boundaries, it suggests something deeper than lawlessness. It points toward those moments when honesty requires us to look beyond rules, customs, and expectations and ask a more difficult question:
What is love asking of us now?
Scripture repeatedly places encounters with God at precisely such boundaries. Moses meets God in the wilderness. Jacob wrestles with the Holy One beside the Jabbok. Bethlehem lies in occupied territory. Golgotha stands outside the city wall. Again and again, God appears where our familiar maps begin to fail.
Jesus lives within this tradition. He eats with sinners, touches those considered unclean, crosses ethnic and religious boundaries, and challenges the human structures that have accumulated around God’s law until they obscure its deepest purpose: mercy, justice, and love.
Isaiah makes this startlingly clear: “Maintain justice, and do what is right.” Then comes an extraordinary expansion of Israel’s imagination: foreigners will be welcomed to God’s holy mountain, “for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”
Israel’s experience of exile—of becoming strangers themselves—had enlarged their understanding of God.
Their experience had become revelation.
Then Jesus travels to the region of Tyre and Sidon, where a Canaanite woman approaches him seeking healing for her daughter.
She crosses every line.
She is a woman approaching a male teacher. She is ethnically and religiously outside Jesus’ community. She risks rejection and humiliation. Yet her love for her daughter is stronger than her fear.
But there is another risk in this story.
Jesus stays in the conversation.
He listens. He allows himself to be encountered. He allows the persistence and courage of this remarkable woman to become part of the unfolding revelation of God’s kingdom.
That matters because genuine encounter always carries risk.
Whenever we truly listen to another person, we risk having our assumptions challenged. Whenever we accompany someone whose life is different from ours, we risk discovering that God’s grace was already there before we arrived. Whenever we open ourselves to love deeply, we risk being changed.
The Gospel is not merely about believing the right things. It is about becoming people willing to cross boundaries in order to love.
And that brings this ancient story uncomfortably close to home.
Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance offers a disturbing mirror for what unfolded in Saint Paul this past week. During India’s Emergency, Ishvar and Om watch as their settlement is bulldozed under a government “beautification” program. Poverty becomes something to remove from public sight rather than a human crisis demanding justice.
The parallel with Saint Paul’s August 5 closure of the Pig’s Eye Park encampment is not exact. The city reports outreach and serious safety concerns. Yet the moral question remains:
Are we ending homelessness, or are we moving homeless people somewhere else?
A compassionate city cannot measure success simply by whether tents disappear. We must ask whether the people who lived in them have somewhere safe and dignified to go.
Perhaps this is where Isaiah, the Canaanite woman, Dylan, and our own city meet.
Our traditions, laws, institutions, and boundaries matter. But Scripture continually asks whether they are helping us love more deeply—or whether they have become walls that keep love out.
Jesus does not abolish the law. He reveals its heart.
And the resurrection becomes the ultimate crossing of the boundaries fear has drawn. To follow the risen Christ is therefore to practice resurrection: to cross boundaries, practice justice, accompany those pushed to the margins, and risk being changed by the people we encounter.
Perhaps that is what Dylan was reaching toward.
To live outside the law is not to live without accountability. It is to discover that rules alone are never enough. Love becomes our deepest covenant. Or, as BB King preaches...
I was there when they crucified my Lord
I held the scabbard when the soldier drew his sword
I threw the dice when they pierced his side
But I've seen love conquer the great divide
When love comes to town, I'm gonna catch that train
Maybe I was wrong to ever let you down
But I did what I did before love came to town
That is where the Church is called—not at the center of comfort, but at the edges where strangers become neighbors, enemies become friends, and fear gives way to beloved community.
Every time love crosses another line, the reign of God becomes visible. Every time we allow ourselves to be transformed by such an encounter, we are practicing resurrection.
The Reverend Rex McKee is a Deacon in The Episcopal Church in Minnesota, serving at Saint John the Baptist. He is a co-leader of ECMN Immigration Caucus, MWD Task Force, Caucus and Episcopal Migration Response Network. Rex describes himself as an aging radical hippie beat poet theologian philosopher peacemaker; “If I start from a place of love, more times than not I will find what is "right," but if I start from a position of "right" I will rarely find love.” You can find more of his writings on Substack: https://rexmckee.substack.com/