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Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
One of the hallmarks of St. Paul Parish family that I not just have seen with my own eyes, but have heard from the lips of those who have been affected by it, has been your all’s generosity and kindness in greeting people who are visitors. And even the visitors that don’t look like you or dress like you, or even sometimes, being in the close proximity as we are to the interstate, smell like you. And you greet these people as you want to be greeted. To be judged not by what they see on the outside, in your case, but what is on the inside, in your and their case, is how you wish to be treated as well. Because the judgment isn’t about what they look like or from what their background is, but more importantly, what do they believe in? And that it’s all by grace, isn’t it? That’s true outreach.
Now there are only two places in all of the Gospel readings where outreach was met with great faith. Just two. And these two people who met the outreach with great faith, commended by Christ, were not Jews, and they weren’t religious people by and large. And they didn’t come from a Lutheran home. Or a good home. Or a nice home. Or an above-average home. The two people that God commended for their faith were a Roman centurion, a soldier, and a Canaanite woman, this morning’s gospel reading. And those are the only two.
Now that’s interesting. Because when you think about all the people with whom Jesus interacted, and more importantly, with the very men and women who were his closest companions, he never commended them for their faith. It were two non-Jews that he commended for faith from non-religious backgrounds, from not-so-good homes.
Now, in this morning’s reading, this is a woman who comes to Jesus alone. Strike one against her. Strike two is that not only is she a woman, she’s a non-Jewish woman. And the third strike is that she is, of all people, a Canaanite. Now you remember your Old Testament lessons in Sunday school. The Canaanites were the arch-enemy of the Israelites when Israel came to that region to settle the Promised Land. They were always in battle with the Canaanites. And the Canaanites were marked by paganism, complete paganism. So this woman has all three of these strikes against her. In fact, if you were to take a list of all the people with whom Jesus interacted, she would be the least likely person to seek Jesus’ help from our perspective. She would be the least likely person to even receive mercy from Jesus from our perspective.
And yet this Canaanite woman talks to Jesus in a way that only his disciples talk to him. You see, this Canaanite woman talks to Jesus as Lord. Now, that’s a familiar term, a term of a relationship. Only Jesus’ disciples regularly call Jesus Lord. She does not come up to Jesus and say, Rabbi, Teacher, Master. She calls Him Lord. She is validating already. She has a relationship with this man, even if his disciples and you and I and the world see it not. And she uses it three times in this morning’s text. Interesting, isn’t it?
The second thing that she calls Jesus is Son of David. Now there’s a buzzword that says everything about this woman’s faith. Son of David is a messianic term known to the Jews who knew the Old Testament. Son of David implied that this one is the son of David that was prophesied throughout the Old Testament scriptures, that he’s a descendant of David, whose kingdom shall not end ever, which implies that this one will never die. She confesses before Christ, before the disciples, and before you that she is a believer, that she by all accounts and by all appearances ought not to be.
After she has addressed Jesus and said, Lord, Son of David, Jesus responds with silence, deafening silence. It’s interesting. Jesus isn’t uncomfortable with the silence. The Canaanite woman isn’t really uncomfortable with the silence either. Do you know who’s uncomfortable with the silence? His disciples. Standing all that they can stand, they say, do something with her. Send her away. I can’t deal with this, is in essence what they’re saying. This is beyond my ability. I don’t know how to deal with this Canaanite woman. Get rid of them. Make my problem easier.
You’ve been uncomfortable too sometimes sharing your faith. You wanted the situation in which you were placed by the loving hand of your loving Father to go away because you didn’t want all of the conflict that was going to happen in interfacing with someone that God placed in your life to share your faith with. You wanted it to go away so that you and I can go back to our easy life. The disciples were no different. They wanted that easy life of following their Messiah around and enjoying the perks of being connected to Jesus. And Jesus is using this woman as a fantastic object lesson to his disciples. But more importantly, he’s using this for you and for me.
Jesus defines his mission to her and to the disciples and to you and me for the purpose of eliciting out of her A truth for your sake and for mine. Jesus says, I was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And that doesn’t put her off. If anything, it draws her. Look at the text. Next she comes near to Jesus and kneels before him, having heard that word. She has just been basically told, your kind was not the kind that I came to be sent. And you know what kind that people is? That’s your kind because you’re not a Jew. And neither am I. He did not come for your kind and my kind. We are not Jews. He came to the Jews first, the children of Israel. But you and I know that so many, if not most, of the children of Israel have turned their back on the one sent for them.
She comes up with boldness and confidence, not because she has a good lineage in the Missouri Synod, not because her daddy was a pastor, her mama was a teacher. Not because she can drop names of people whom she knows and has relationships with around the church. Not because they are lifelong Lutherans and have bred and hybridized their family tree. But because she knows she’s not. Because she only has grace. Because she only has his mercy. She only has his approval and not anyone else’s.
She also is making very clear, our Old Testament reading, isn’t she? The prophet Isaiah said very clearly, and the foreigners, the non-Jews, who join themselves to the Lord to minister to Him and to love the name of the Lord and to be His servants. She knows that text, or a text like this text that’s in the Old Testament because the Old Testament proclaimed Jesus, the Messiah, would be for all people—Jews and non-Jews. Scandinavian Germans and non-Scandinavian Germans.
The prophet goes on, Isaiah, when he refers to the house. My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples, not the Jews, but for the non-Jews. Not for those who I have been born amongst to be their Messiah, but those who I’m not born amongst to be your Messiah, Your Redeemer, Your Anointed One, the Lord God who gathers the outcasts of Israel. That must have been the verse upon which she had to have stood. She knew her place. She was an outcast by society’s standards. And she knew her place in God’s kingdom, that she was not an outcast in Christ’s kingdom. She was accepted because of Christ’s mercy and not by birth. Nor by lineage, nor by growing up in a good and above-average home, but by grace.
Now this makes a very important point for you and for me. Is this thing of which we are a part, this faith in which Sage has been baptized, in which you and I have been baptized, is this faith nothing more than a using of Jesus when it’s convenient for us? When it fits our plans? Yes. Is it whenever we need to pull him out like an ace card and trump whatever has happened to us so that we have him when we need him and when we don’t we put him safely back into our pocket only to use him when we need to use him? Or are we like this Canaanite woman who knows she cannot breathe, eat, or live without grace from her heavenly Father through Jesus Christ, her Son of David, her Messiah? Hmm.
Jesus throws out one more slam, and by goodness, it is a slam. She is called a dog. And brothers and sisters, you know in the Middle East, a dog is a pejorative and very negative term. It is not a positive term to be called a dog. You cannot soften this text and say, well, it’s like dogs of America because we all love our dogs. No, he is once more reminding his disciples to see beyond her ethnicity as a Canaanite, her sex as a female, and her non-Jewishness. And to see her as one of those Isaiah proclaimed about and one for whom Jesus will have in his mind’s eye when he dies soon and rises again.
She takes him at his word. She knows she’s not worthy to stand before Jesus as a Jew, or even as a non-Jew, or even as a Canaanite. But she knows she can stand in his presence as a sinner because sinners are the ones that Jesus loves in his presence, and only sinners, not the righteous. So she stands in his presence in kneeling and says, Fine, you don’t feed the dog’s bread. Got it. But even the dogs, of which you and I are, eat the crumbs from the master’s table, and we’re good with it. Because let’s not forget what we are too, according to Jesus. We’re dogs and we need to be good with it because he calls us his children.
See, the remarkable thing about this entire story is Jesus takes dogs, turns them into children, and he takes anyone who thinks he’s a child because of their rejection and allows them to go the way of a dog. One more time. Jesus takes dogs and turns them into his children and allows people who claim to be children and lets them become dogs. Here in this woman, from the lips of a societally unclean person comes the clean confession of truth in her confession of Him as her Lord and her Son of David.
Jesus and God’s ways are not the ways of man. His ways are to hide things from the wise and understanding and reveal them to infants, to children, and even to reveal them to dogs. That infants and children and even dogs could become children of God. Not of this world. He is a remarkable Lord Jesus.
Before we bring this to a close, consider the aftereffects of this situation. This woman left Jesus’ presence with her daughter being healed. You don’t think that’s going to make her very, very pleased and happy? Very beholden to her Lord, but very pleased and happy? To go back to a pagan land known as Canaan, and every person that God, and it is God who does it, brings into her life, they will be impacted by her story, whether they believe it or not. That’s not her job to get them to believe. They are to hear what she has to say about how Jesus did this in her life and in her daughter’s life. That made an impact. And we’ll never know the depth of that ripple effect.
The second aftereffect: think of what it did to the disciples, how it shaped their view of how you look at the world, to see the world not as Jew and non-Jew, but as those who are redeemed. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. And you’re going to sing about that during communion.
Finally, consider it in your own life. God places people in your life. It’s not chance. He allows people to come into your life that are joyful with which to share and talk about your Lord and those that are difficult. You know the ones that are difficult because you and I tend to want to avoid them. But they’re placed in our life for a reason. And what God has done in your life, bringing you into becoming his child, makes an impact in your relationship with these people that God has brought into your lives. That’s how God works.
Notice what Jesus says. Woman, great is your faith. Be it done unto you as you desire. Well, brothers and sisters, be it done unto you as you desire. Let’s eat the crumbs from the master’s table and be filled and forgiven and standing by his grace. In the name of Jesus, amen. The peace of God which passes all understanding. Keep your hearts and your minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.