Lent 2
Mt
15:21-28
3/12/17
Imagine this scenario. It is around 10:30 a.m. and the Wednesday
morning Bible class is about to start. As
people are getting their coffee and visiting, a man enters the door on the east
end of the building near the Conference Room where the study meets.
I am standing near the door to the
Conference Room and this person says to me, “Pastor, can I talk to you? I need some help.” However, I don’t respond to the man. In fact, I ignore him like he isn’t even
there.
So the man says again, a little
louder, “Pastor, can I talk to you? I
need some help.” Now the congregation
members who are there are beginning to get a little uncomfortable. They say,
“Pastor, there’s a man here who wants to talk to you.” But rather than going over and talking to the
man, I instead say out loud, “As pastor, I am only here to serve congregation
members.”
Then the man comes up to me and says
more urgently, “Pastor, I really need to talk to you. I need some help.” And this time I say to the man, “It wouldn’t
be right to take what belongs to the church and to give it to scum off the
street.”
I am pretty sure that if this happened
you would be appalled at my behavior. I
certainly hope you would be. You would think that this was completely
inappropriate and unacceptable behavior by your pastor.
And yet … this is precisely what
Jesus Christ does in our Gospel lesson today to a Canaanite women who is
seeking help for her daughter. I would
argue that it is one of the most surprising things that Jesus does in the
Gospels. It seems so out of character –
so unlike the Lord we know as the caring, loving and compassionate Savior.
But what we see in our Gospel lesson
today is part of how God deals with us. We may not like it, but at times God
hides his yes under a no. At times we do
not see a yes, except for the one he has spoken to us in his word of the
Gospel. And in those times, the Canaanite woman’s persistent faith teaches us
that we must cling to Jesus Christ as he has revealed himself in God’s Word.
Just before the beginning of our
text, Jesus has been engaged in a dispute with the Pharisees about their
tradition of the elders – in particular about the fact that his disciples don’t
carry out the washings that the Pharisees said were necessary.
As he does on several occasions,
Jesus now withdraws from the conflict.
His mission that leads to the cross has a timing that follows the
Father’s will. Jesus will not have anyone seek to disrupt this plan. And so we hear in our text, “Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre
and Sidon.” Jesus went northwest to an
area that was along the Mediterranean Sea.
He went into an area that was historically a pagan one. This had been the home of Queen Jezebel in
the Old Testament – a pagan woman who promoted the worship of Baal in Israel
during the days of the prophet Elijah.
While he was there, something
unexpected happened. Matthew let us know
this is the case by using his phrase, “and behold.” We hear, “And
behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, ‘Have mercy
on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.’”
Matthew calls her a “Canaanite
woman.” This was really an anachronistic
term – nobody called people there Canaanites anymore. But he uses this word
because it carries with it all the associations of the pagan past that opposed
Israel.
She is a Canaanite woman, and yet,
she says, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely
oppressed by a demon.” She asks for
Jesus’ help as she says “Have mercy, O Lord” – the same thing we say in the
Kyrie at the beginning of the service. She
calls Jesus “Lord” – something that in Matthew’s Gospel we have come to
associate with people who believe in Jesus. And then, the kicker is that she
calls him “Son of David.” She addresses
him using a term that refers to Israel’s Messiah.
You’ll be hard pressed to find
anyone who gets it more correct. She seeks out Jesus. She begs for help. She calls him Lord. She calls him Son of David. This is a
remarkable statement of faith! And all
of this from a Canaanite woman who didn’t live in any of the lands of Israel!
How did this woman learn about Jesus? We aren’t told. But one thing is clear:
Someone spoke the Gospel to her. Someone
told her about Jesus the Lord who was Israel’s Messiah and how he was bringing
God’s reign by healing the sick and casting out demons. She hear this word, and she believed it. She
believed and her faith set her into action.
She sought out Jesus and she called out to him in faith for help.
This amazing example of faith comes
to Jesus. And what does he do? He ignores her. He didn’t answer her a
word. Yet the woman was not driven away
by this. Instead she kept crying out to
Jesus, so much so that the disciples came to Jesus and apparently asked him to
just give her what she wanted so that she would go away. However, Jesus didn’t do this. Rather he said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” His answer was to say that yes, he was the
Son of David - Israel’s Messiah - and so this pagan woman was not his concern.
Put off yet again, the woman didn’t
go away. Instead she drew even closer to Jesus. She humbly kneeled before him with the urgent
plea, “Lord, help me.” This was clearly
faith on display. Surely Jesus would now help the woman’s daughter! But no, instead he delivers the most offensive
statement yet. He said, “It is not right to take the children's bread and throw
it to the dogs.” He calls the woman a dog. He calls her something that in this culture
was about as derogatory as you could get.
In the Gospel lesson we see faith as
it receives nothing except the answer, No.
Everything the woman experiences says that she is ignored. It all says that she is rejected. She has
heard the Gospel. She has heard the word
about Jesus – who he is and how he helps people. She believes it. Yet everything she
encounters says that he doesn’t care at
all.
At times, this is our experience
too. God’s Word says that he loves
you. It says that he has given his Son to
die on the cross for you, and that he has risen from the dead. It says that
through baptism you are now a forgiven child of God.
And yet … it sure doesn’t seem like
God loves you. Instead, you find
yourself struggling with a chronic and debilitating condition that saps you of
energy and joy. Instead, you find
yourself bearing the daily weight of anxiety and depression. Instead, you experience regular challenges in
your relationships with a spouse or family member or at work.
There are times when we seem to
receive nothing except the answer No from God.
There are times when the experience of our life seem to say that God
does not care. And the temptation is to conclude that no, he
does not. The temptation is to complain against God or get angry at God. Finally, the temptation is to turn away from
God. When Martin Luther wrote a sermon
on this text he said, “It is a very hard blow when God appears to be so stern
and angry and hides His grace so very deeply.
This is well-known by those who feel and experience it in their hearts
and think that He will not do what He has said and will let His Word be false.”
The Canaanite woman experienced
this. Jesus called her a dog. Yet then we hear her response to Jesus in our
text. She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the
crumbs that fall from their masters' table.”
He called her a dog. Fine. Her faith in Jesus remained confident that
even if he treated her like a dog, he would still be able to give her all that
she needed. And then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it
done for you as you desire.” And we learn that her daughter was healed
instantly.
Martin
Luther said of this text that, “This was written for all our comfort and
instruction, so that we may know how deeply God hides his grace from us, so
that we would not consider him according to our feeling and thinking but
strictly according to His Word.” Why does God act this way? Luther answered, “But see how Christ drives
and pursues faith in His people so that it becomes strong and firm.”
God leads
us away from ourselves – our thoughts, our feelings, our perception - and
towards him. He leads us toward what he
has revealed in his Word. He leads us
toward the One who stands at the
center of his Word – Jesus Christ. For
it is in Jesus that God has revealed the great Yes that overcomes every No we
may encounter in life. In the crucified
and risen Lord, God has revealed his loving heart to you. He has done something that allows no doubt to
remain about his care for you.
God has
revealed this Word – this Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ – to you. Our calling as Christians is to set our faith
on this Word, and this Word alone no matter what happens in life. Luther said, “Our heart thinks there is
nothing else but only no, and yet this is untrue. Therefore it must turn away from this feeling
and with a firm faith in God’s Word grasp and hold onto the deep, secret yes
under and above the no, as this woman does.”
This Yes is
Jesus Christ – his incarnation, death and resurrection for you. This Yes has
given you forgiveness. It gives you
God’s love. It gives you salvation and
eternal life. Like the Canaanite woman, faith
clings to this Yes from God, because when we have Jesus we have the only answer
that we will ever need.
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