Proper 15 (Pentecost 9), August 20, 2023

Believing Your Way Through Life

Matthew 14, 21-28

Our text begins on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee in Gennesaret. It is the place to which the disciples traveled after the storm they encountered on the lake, in last Sunday's Gospel. Jesus had been drawing opposition from unbelieving Pharisees and scribes who were jealous of all the attention the crowd had been giving Jesus. So Jesus responds by taking his ministry to the northwest part of Israel to the Canaanite coastal cities of Tyre and Sidon.

The Epistle lesson underscores the idea here in the beginning of the Gospel text. The Jews had rejected Jesus as their Messiah. Paul made much of his ministry to non-Jews, in the hope of making his fellow Jews jealous enough to investigate the claims of Jesus. They didn't listen to Paul either. So too, in the gospel, Jesus goes to the Canaanites. If the Jews don't want to hear the message perhaps the Canaanites will.

The Canaanites were descendants of Ham's son Canaan. You will remember they had been cursed as a result of Ham's behavior in Gen. 9:5. When the sin of the Canaanites reached its full measure (Gen 15:16), the children of Israel entered the promised land, bringing God's judgment upon their unbelief.(Duet 20:16-18). But the Israelites did not totally possess the land to the north as they had been instructed by God. They did not carry out the covenant stipulations to annihilate the Canaanites. Instead, they settled into an uneasy partnership with them and their gods.

This is the background of the Canaanite woman who comes to Jesus, crying out her profession of faith in him. What a contrast there is between the "holiest," or supposedly the "holiest", of the covenant people, the Pharisees who come from Jerusalem who attack the message of the Messiah, and the Canaanite woman of pagan background. This is a woman who should have been annihilated by the covenant people, they were enemies of the Jews. This is the woman who professes faith in Jesus and prostrates herself to implore his rescue and healing. Christ came first to his own, but they did not receive him. Yet all who believed in his name he empowered to become the children of God.

What a blessing it is in this day to be bom into a Christian family. To have parents that attend church regularly. Parents who train their children in the morality and hope of the Bible. Parents who share the good news about how Jesus died for our sins. We have forgiveness in Christ. Forgiveness is a new start. No matter what mess we have made of our lives, God is willing to forget the past, forgive us in the present, and empower us for the future.

There are however two traps into which those who have grown up into the church might fall. The first is that exhibited by the Pharisees. They had kept the morality of the Bible, but had lost the heart of its message. They expected a Messiah who would congratulate them on their faithfulness to the laws. They forgot that mercy was at the heart of God's words. They wanted privilege, honor, and prestige for themselves, but were unwilling to show mercy to the widows, the poor, and those around them.

The second trap is equally dangerous. It focuses only on the mercy and grace of God and tries to take advantage of it. It assumes that God is loving and forgiving, but it forgets that God calls all his people to responsibility. We remember that Jesus forgave the woman caught in prostitution, but don't always remember his words to her "Now, go and sin no more."

Unfortunately, many who were raised by Christian parents have turned their back on the faith of their fathers and mothers. Rather than being a light to the rest of the world they have incorporated the ways of the world and mixed their beliefs with the unbelievers around them. While all of us hurt when that happens the message of salvation is too precious to keep only to ourselves. We must go to those who are open to this forgiveness, who have a spiritual need. Just as Jesus went to the Canaanites.

The woman, a parent, expresses her anguish over the sickness of her daughter and persistently cries for God's mercy. Is she a woman who is grabbing at straws. Is she trying everything, anything that will be able to save her daughter. Jesus tests her to find out. He ignores her requests for help. Jesus' silence neither quiets nor satisfies the woman. The disciples, indignantly tell Jesus to send her away. They are annoyed that a pagan, much more a pagan woman would have the gall to pester Jesus with her concerns. They have fallen into the first trap, the trap of self- righteousness. Jesus seems to give credence to their self-righteousness when he says that he has been sent to the lost sheep of Israel, the covenant people. But the Canaanite woman knew that this was just a test. She knew, like the Samaritan woman and Paul, that God gives the power for salvation first to the Jew and then to the Gentile. (Romans 1:16).

Neither silence nor Jesus' words restrained the mother. She moves past the disciples, kneels before the Lord, and cries out as only the parent of an afflicted child can, "Lord, help me!"

Jesus makes certain that she grasps the historic distinction between Jew and Gentile, and her own position before God. "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs." The word for dogs in this text is the word for household pets. Even if dogs are household pets, we must not overlook the severity of our Lord's comparison. This comparison applies to us for we are Gentiles as well.

The Gentile mother understands. In a masterful response revealing a developed faith, she phrases her response and request powerfully. She dares not argue that her needs are an exception, or that she has the slightest right to Israel's covenant mercies. She does not complain that Jesus is unduly harsh. She humbles herself before her God and simply asks for help, confident that though she is entitled to nothing, yet, at least, she might receive by sheer grace, a leftover crumb of God's goodness. Jesus promptly praises her great faith, a faith created by the Spirit, a faith that endured the Lord's silence and surface rejection, and persevered through trouble and sickness, seeking mercy and help. To his disciples then and now, Jesus commends her example of growing living, enduring faith.

Like the disciples around Jesus, people today need to see how the Lord cultivates in them a living faith so they might be encouraged to persevere through life's difficulties with joy. We need to learn the lesson that the woman provides us this morning. She came to Jesus fully aware that she had no claim whatsoever to his mercy. She was a foreigner. She is like you and I, and all people who have no claim whatever to God's mercy. It was, is and always will be a free gift given by him to us. What the Lord was looking for in the woman was faith. A faith that trusted that regardless of her past, her heritage, he would be merciful to her. She did not have any illusion of self-righteousness. She didn't ask for the world. A crumb would be enough.

This woman was a woman that Jesus would die for. She needed him and trusted him and put herself in his hands. Jesus would not and could not turn his back on her.

Now Jesus grants her prayer. It is unwarranted to think that Jesus kept stringing her along for the purpose of making her faith stretch itself to the utmost. He was not dangling a morsel higher and higher to make a dog jump to the limit of his ability before rewarding him. The greatness of her faith lies in its utter trust. The greatness lay in submissively accepting and in correctly understanding that Jesus has come to save us.

This woman characterizes our situation before God. We are in need of healing. We have sinned and are possessed by demons. Without his help we are lost. Yet, even in our lostness we can cling as this woman did to our trust that Jesus will save us as well. He saves us primarily from sin death and Satan. These are the real enemies we face. These are the enemies we cannot overcome without a Savior. If he does not save us, we are lost for there is not another that can help us out of our sin. You and I believe that Jesus has died for us. That no matter how dark or dismal it looks in this world, God will save us, in fact God has saved us. His blood cleanses us from all sin. If along the way God saves us from other disasters, blesses our lives, gives us children, a job, a home, and good friends; these are all icing on the cake.

The woman in our text was satisfied with crumbs from the table. Are we any more deserving?

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.