This may come as a surprise to some...
but if you're looking for really good news,
this is it:
A while back I read A Spacious Heart: Essays on Identity and Belonging by Judith M. Gundry-Volf and Miroslav Volf. In one of Judith's essays, she suggested that Jesus' sense of mission might have evolved (viz., broadened) over time and that his encounter with the Syrophoenician woman had influenced this (see Matthew 15:21 - 28 and Mark 7:25 - 30).
This cartoon is playing off of that idea, to suggest that Jesus progressively learned that he was giving his life for "his own people" and for everyone, including tribes that were not formally known of in his time. He came to understand that, in fact, "his own people" were everyone in this world his father had made.
Sadly, it would seem that since that Jesus ascended into heaven, our understanding of whom he gave his life for has devolved, narrowed, to include only those who fit our ideas of who is acceptable....
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