A sermon preached by Pastor Lewis Polzin on August 16, 2020 at St. Peter–Immanuel Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on Matthew 14:15-21-28. You may play the audio of the sermon here.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from the Gospel according to Matthew, the 15th chapter:
Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. 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.” But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, “Send her away, for she is crying out after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” And he answered, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly.
Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
It's kind of funny how Jesus works here, insulting a woman who comes to him begging for mercy, and make no mistake, this is an insult to call her a dog. You do have to remember that, in Jesus’ favor here, the Israelites were supposed to slaughter the Canaanites, to exterminate them from the land when they came in and they failed at their task. And the Canaanites were still around and they still are today; their line still exists. So, when Jesus looks at her and counts her outside of the house of Israel and makes sense, it makes sense: His people had let him down with his instructions so many millennia ago. And still this woman comes to him begging.
Let's look at the text: Jesus goes away from the area of Judea and goes over into Tyre and Sidon, Gentile territory, a place where people who were not Jews lived, and there, of course, Jesus finds this Canaanite woman. She's heard of all the things that he can do. And if you look at her words, she recognizes who he is: Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David. She recognizes that he is indeed the Messiah and from the line of David, the man who was an Israelite among Israelites, the most beloved king ever to exist. By calling him that, she’s already giving a confession of who he is and who she is not, for she is not that, she is not of that line and lineage. And yet, Jesus can do great things for her. She has faith in this.
She says her daughter is severely oppressed by a demon. Now, we so often ignore the idea of demonic possession or at least demonic oppression, but it does and it can happen and it’s something we in the Western world have kind of cast aside. In the days when Christ was on the earth, it was something that was very easy to see, for they understood that sickness and other illnesses could be brought about in this way. Today, we don’t look at that, but I would even venture to say that there are sicknesses in our country, in our state, in our city that are brought about by demonic oppression. But we don't want to believe it. We want to fix it all with medicine and treatments. But that wasn’t an option for this woman.
Still, this woman knew Jesus could stop this. But Jesus doesn't answer her a single word. It's like he ignores her. Jesus obviously doesn't have an issue talking to women. We've seen him talk to women throughout the Scriptures, but a Canaanite woman, well, maybe that's something different or maybe Jesus is up to something even greater. The apostles come up to Jesus saying, Send her away for she's even crying out after us. It's not send her away without what she wants, I think it's just give in to her demands, do what she's saying she wants you to do because she's even asking us to do it, too. We want this to stop. We want her to go away, we don't like her.
Jesus answers them, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. From both our Old Testament and our Epistle text today, we see that the Gentiles, people who are not Israelites, the Gentiles will be welcomed onto God's holy mountain and there they will pray and they will find joy in that, for God's house will be a house of prayer. And we find Paul talking about the plan for the Israelites, that they have not been rejected just because the Gentiles are being grafted in. They’ve been called by God and that stands forever, but the Gentiles have now been grafted in, and in fact, because the Jews did reject Jesus, that gives us confidence because if they've rejected faith in Christ, if they’ve rejected God, God still always wants and needs a people for himself. So he brings the Gentiles in.
Israel has gone astray, whether it's that they're led by people who don't think and don't see what is in God's scriptures or whether they themselves have rejected it. I think it's both ways. You have to remember Israel is essentially led by two parties. First there’s the Pharisees, who Jesus actually would probably belong to in terms of their theology were pretty scriptural guys. They looked at the scriptures and believed God's word, what he said was true. The problem was that they set up laws not only for themselves, but for all people to follow, extra laws that try to make it seem like you could obey God's law and earn for yourself salvation.
Then, there were the Sadducees. They were a little bit different; they are what we would call the theological liberals. They didn't believe in angels. They didn't believe in the supernatural. They didn't believe even in the resurrection. Yet here, Jesus saying it doesn't matter who these people believe, whether they are on the Pharisee side, whether they're on the Sadducees side, whether they have forgotten the God who gave them life, whether they forgotten the God who led them out of Egypt, it doesn't matter. I was sent to the lost sheep of the House of Israel. I'm the great Shepherd. I'm here to call them back. I'm here to rescue them.
Again, Israel’s calling is sure. God has called them from the beginning saying, You are my chosen people, a chosen nation, a chosen offspring for me. Jesus tells this to his apostles, but the woman overhears this. So, she goes before her Lord and she sits down before him, leaning down on her knees, worshipping him, praying to him, Lord help me. We heard those words come out of Peter’s mouth last week when he began to sink in the water. He cried out, Lord save me. It’s the same request, only this woman is not looking just for herself; she is looking for help for her daughter. And Jesus when he hears that request, what is he going to do?
Well, I have never found an instance in the scriptures when someone says, Lord, help me, Lord, save me, Lord, bring me home, that God says, Not you. Jesus looks down to her, though, and says it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. He doesn't say no. He says something very interesting. He does call her a dog and that's a big insult. In a lot of cultures today, calling anybody by any animal name is an insult. And I think it is the same in this culture, to call someone, especially a dog, something that was unclean, something that nobody would have had around, well, it's not a very nice word is it? But, Jesus here is bringing something out of her that everybody else needed to see and hear.
Do we think that Jesus did not know her faith in coming to him? She already called him the Son of David, even by her confession. She knows that Jesus is the Messiah, but Jesus being God also is able to see into her heart, and seeing, knows where she is coming from- a position of faith, a position of trust, a position of pleading for mercy.
And so when Jesus says this, it's not to put her in her place, but it is to bring about her confession. We talked about that last week, as well, that it is not just with our hearts that we believe that Jesus is Lord, but we confess him with our mouths. And that confession it's not just for us, is it? It’s also for those who are gathered around us. It sets us apart. It shows that we belong to him. And when we do that, when we make that good confession, God is pleased and people around us, while they may either be pleased or they may hate us, knows with whom we stand.
Jesus here calls Israel his children; the children's bread He gives them. This should start sparking something in your minds, I think, as we go through this. It’s not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. I mean, what a waste. Again, a dog is not something that you would have in your home. They were unclean, dirty. To take the children's bread and give it to them- what an insult to your children. But the woman, knowing her place, knowing who she is in front of this man, says to him, Yes Lord. That's true. That is wrong. You should not give me what everybody else gets. Instead, all I'm asking for are the crumbs.
Who keeps crumbs? No one. We brush them off the table onto the floor and out the door. And she would have that. Jesus looks at her and says, Woman, great is your faith. Be it done for you as you desire. Jesus not only got her confession of faith, but had everybody else hear it, too, and her daughter was healed instantly.
What joy there must have been in that woman, that she knew that her daughter, her sweet little girl, was finally freed from this demon that had been oppressing her, that had been making her sick. What joy she must have experienced as she got her daughter back from the dead. It's a wonderful thing to consider, then, that this crumb of healing is just a crumb. What else is there? What is the bread? What is the bread that Jesus would give to his children that he should not give to others?
Our minds, I think, should be immediately taken to the Lord's Supper, where, in the bread, he gives us his body and that is a wonderful thing. For us to realize that in this Jesus does call us his children and gives us bread unto life everlasting, that’s really what it's all about. It's about salvation. It's about being saved from our sins and welcomed into eternal life. It is about reflecting the glory that has come into the world that we may be counted as his. Because we are.
This woman got not only the crumb, she got the whole harvest. Not only did her daughter get healed, but she indeed, by her confession, because she has faith and she has been saved the same way as you, by grace through faith, she is in eternal life even now with her Lord. What joy there is in this woman, as she not only receives her daughter back, but as she knows that she shall never lose her again, she shall live with her forever. What joy there must be in us then, too, as we receive the crumbs that would fall from our Lord's table, and not just the crumbs but the entire loaf and we receive it to life everlasting.
We may endure through this life. Maybe not thrive. Maybe not have everything we want. Maybe not be healthy. Maybe not be rich. Maybe not be well set in our lives. Maybe with family discord. And yet, Jesus’ promise to you is that he shall feed you. He shall feed you with the stuff of life. It is an amazing thing for us to realize this, for we see that our Jesus, the one who was crucified to take away our sin, the one who is crucified to give us his righteousness, would feed us every time we ask of him, Lord, help me.
He will not turn you away, my friends. Though we may seem to doubt, though we may seem to go through life with difficulty, our Lord will never turn you away from giving you what may seem like crumbs to you, but it is a feast that never ends. Lord, help me: everything hinges on these words. For there we remark to God that we are indeed sinners, we cannot help ourselves, we cannot bring ourselves what we need. We need God. We need his salvation. We need his provision and, though we may be counted among the dogs, our Lord counts us his children. Our Lord counts us as his sheep and he shall always provide exactly what it is that we need, salvation, grace, giving them to us through His Word and Sacrament, and even providing the stuff of these temporal lives. Our Lord will always give us just what we need, for he loves you as his child, and he will not withhold any good thing from you. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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