Sermon text: Matthew 15:21-28
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
What kind of faith do you have? And what kind of God do you have faith in? That’s what we will see in our text this morning: an answer to those two questions. What kind of faith? A persevering faith. In what kind of God? A merciful Lord and Savior. Persevering faith in a merciful God. That is the story of Jesus and a Canaanite woman.
The story begins with Jesus going up to the district of Tyre and Sidon — two coastal cities outside Israel’s territory. They’re up north. This is the gentile territory that Jesus is entering. The people who live there are not Jews. They did not follow the religion of Israel. They were Gentiles. In other words, they were pagans. The Canaanite woman from that region came to Jesus. It’s interesting to note the titles that are assigned to this woman. Matthew calls her a Canaanite to describe her. Sometimes we call her the Syro-Phoenician woman based on how Mark described her in his account, but Matthew stays with the Canaanite. It’s an old-time word, an Old Testament word for the people who were living in the land of Canaan when Israel took possession of the land.
The Canaanites were Gentiles. They were pagans. They were outside the covenant of the Lord God, the covenant that he made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They were in close contact, close enough in proximity to have some knowledge of at least the articles of faith of the Israelite people. And this woman apparently did come into contact with the Jews in the day. She comes to Jesus crying out, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David.” And she uses the messianic title, the Son of David — the Messiah whom God had promised would be the son of David, the physical descendant of David the king, the great and the greatest of all, even greater than David himself.
The Lord had promised David that one of his sons would reign on his throne forever. And this Son of David, this Messiah, this Christ, would usher in a glorious reign of blessing for Israel. And that was the point that was often lost by Israel: a glorious reign of blessing for all other nations, too. The Israelites had come to think of it as their private possession. When the Messiah comes, his blessing would extend even to the Gentiles as well as to the Israelites. The nations would come running to Israel to receive the Lord’s blessing, much as this Canaanite woman does in our text this morning. So, the woman must have known the prophecies about the coming Messiah, the Son of David. She knew something of those promises and it gave her faith. She was waiting and looking for the coming of the Christ. And she recognized in Jesus the elements of fulfilling prophecy. She saw in him the promised Son of David. For faith looks to Jesus as the fulfiller of God’s promises.
And the Canaanite woman must have heard what Jesus was doing: his healings, his miracles, his acts of mercy that emboldened her now to come forward with her request. She pleads to Christ, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David. My daughter is severely oppressed by a demon. Lord, have mercy on me.”
Several times in the gospel, we hear people crying out to Jesus with these very words: blind men asking for their sight, fathers seeking help for demonized sons, and this woman seeking similar help for her daughter who was suffering terribly. So she cries out, “Lord, have mercy.” In Greek, Kyrie eleison. That’s the cry of the church in all generations. We say at the beginning of the divine service in the Kyrie: Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy. Kyrie eleison, Kyrie eleison — it is the church calling on our Lord and asking for his mercy. We come before God with all these needs — all kinds of suffering and misery in the world and even in our own lives. We need God’s help and we frequently cry out to him for mercy.
And that’s what God gives us: his mercy. God’s power is made known chiefly in showing mercy. That’s why Christ came in the first place. In all the misery that we pile up in this world — sin, sickness, death, guilty conscience — the answer to all of it ultimately is in the mercy that took Christ to the cross. But his all-availing death for you and me delivered us finally from all the misery that is here. The mercy of God is his answer to our misery. He visits us in our distress. He gives us release from the ravages and the effects of sin in the world. This world’s a mess. Human beings are suffering and misery. Thank God that he has had mercy upon us all. He wants us to call upon him in our day of trouble, like the Canaanite woman: Kyrie eleison. Lord, have mercy.
Now notice Jesus’s response — or should I say the lack of his response — in dealing with the woman. He didn’t answer her a word. She cried out for mercy. He said nothing. That seems to be a rather harsh reply for what we know of Jesus. He didn’t answer her a word. Is that Jesus being coldhearted? How do we explain his silence? Come to think of it, how do we explain the silence of God in the midst of our trials? Sometimes when we pray, we don’t get the answer we’re looking for. It seems God does not hear our prayers. We are often met with silence. That’s our conclusion: God must not love me. He must not be paying attention to me. He must not be saving me. It’s a mystery to us how God moves. He moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform. The silence of God is not coldheartedness, though. Rather, it’s our inability to see what God is doing in our life. He may have a better plan in store than the one that we have in mind.
So at first the Canaanite woman is met with silence. Jesus did not reply and answer to her. The time was not yet right. Jesus is waiting a bit before he answers. He wants this woman to exercise her faith, to stretch it out, so to speak. Maybe he has something he wants to teach his disciples, too. The disciples, you see — maybe they’re the ones that are a little bit coldhearted. They don’t understand what Jesus is wanting to do. So they say, “Send her away, for she is crying out after us.” They’re saying, “Get lost. She’s a lousy Gentile. She doesn’t deserve help.”
And at first, it seems like Jesus is going to go along with that line of thinking. He tells her, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” And that’s true. In his earthly ministry, Jesus the Messiah was principally and primarily sent to the house of Israel, that is to the Jews. The lost sheep of Israel needed to be gathered, for the Lord had made a covenant with Israel and Jesus was sent to fulfill it. His ministry for the most part was among Jews. Long ago, the Lord promised to bless the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And now Jesus was keeping that promise, but keeping it first and foremost to the Jews.
But the promise of the blessing to Israel when the Messiah comes did not exclude Gentiles who come into contact with Israel. They can sort of brush up against the blessing, so to speak. That’s what this gentile woman was doing. Jesus came for the lost sheep of Israel, and it was not until after his resurrection that the mission would be expanded in a way to include the Gentiles in a significant manner. But even now, while he’s busy ministering to the Jews, Jesus will not withhold his blessing from this gentile woman. (I seem to have lost my page here — it’s disappeared.) For a moment, it looks like he will. He says, “I was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But Jesus is just making it clear that he’s not going to change focus on his ministry or shift his turf to Tyre and Sidon and the Gentile regions. In spite of the seeming rebuff, the Canaanite woman persists. She perseveres. She kneels before Jesus and says, “Lord, help me.” But again, another obstacle is placed in her way. Jesus replies, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” That is to say, it’s not right to take the blessing promised to the children of Israel and give them to the Gentiles, i.e., the dogs.
Oftentimes Jews referred to Gentiles as dogs as a term of disrespect, a derogatory insult. However, there’s something interesting in the text in the way that Jesus says it in the Greek language. There’s two different words for dog. The most common word is the one that the Jews use to insult Gentiles, but that’s not the one Jesus uses here. Instead, he uses a word that can be translated kynaria — little pet dogs or doggies. It’s an affectionate term used for dogs that get to live in the house and who were taken care of and part of the family.
That’s what she’s crying out for. The woman picks up on this change of vocabulary in the Lord and she says, “Yes, Lord. Yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table.” She’s got it. Faith hears what the Lord is teaching and saying to her, and she in faith latches on to the word. Jesus was not only putting her off; rather, he was giving her a word she could take hold of and cling to. The woman came, not claiming anything as her right, but simply throwing herself on the Lord’s mercy. She was willing to be a dog that eats scraps off the table. She comes in all humility. That’s why some of us like to call her the K-9 woman, the dog woman.
The Canaanite woman was ready to be a little dog, if it meant being around the Lord’s table, for that’s where the blessings are. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst. Blessed are those who come as beggars, or even as dogs, to the Lord of all mercy. The Canaanite woman did not give up when obstacles were placed in her ways. She perseveres. Luther says it this way: she battles Christ. She catches the Lord Christ in his own words. Yes, still more: with the rights of a dog, she gains the rights of a child. Now, where will he go? The dear Jesus — he’s caught himself and must put up with her and must help her. But know this well, Luther says: he loves to be caught in this way. If only we had the skill of this woman to catch God in his own judgments and say, “Yes, Lord, it is I. I am a sinner, not worthy of your grace. But you have promised forgiveness and did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Behold, Christ must then through his own judgment have mercy upon us.” The Canaanite woman is not deterred. Think of the obstacles that God has put in front of her faith. She was not deterred when Jesus initially responded in silence and did not say a word. She was not deterred by the comment of the disciples to send her away. She was not deterred by Jesus’s comment about being sent only to the lost sheep of Israel, nor by his remark about dogs eating the bread of children. The woman simply does not give up. She perseveres. Her faith again — her God-given faith produced by the Spirit working through the word. Her faith overcomes all of these obstacles and more. God wants you to have the same kind of faith: a persevering faith in the merciful Lord. God wants you to come to Jesus time and time again in spite of the many obstacles you may face. It’s so easy to give up. People do it all the time. When there’s suffering in their life, they give up and think that God doesn’t care. When something goes wrong in their life, people give up and stop coming to Jesus. When something goes wrong at the church, people don’t like it. They stop coming to church. But God does not want you to give up. He wants you to have a faith that perseveres, that’s persistent, even to the point of annoying him with prayers, like the Canaanite woman, and to seek and to find his mercy. The Canaanite woman did not give up. Jesus also commends her faith: “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” He grants her her request and her daughter is healed.
Jesus here demonstrates his authority over the demons of hell. He has authority over sin and death and the devil. He has authority to win the victory over all those things and all those powers. He did it in the most mysterious way. Moved by his mercy, the Son of God came down from heaven, came into our mess and suffered our misery with us. He entered into it fully. Jesus suffered the ravages of sin when he was nailed to the cross. He suffered the silence of God when he cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” But God then vindicated his Son by raising him from the dead. God has shown his mercy in the greatest of ways. His mercy in Christ forgives our sins, delivers us from the power of the devil, and gives us sure hope of everlasting life. His mercy endures forever. This is the merciful Lord in whom we trust with a persistent faith. And today God is strengthening your faith. He is building in you a faith that perseveres: persevering faith in a merciful Lord. Faith like that of the Canaanite — or the “Canine night” woman — who’s willing to come like a little dog to eat at the table of the Lord. Great was her faith because great was her Lord.
And the one who called forth that faith, he is the Lord who has mercy upon you and upon me, upon us, even when it looks like he doesn’t. Thus, we join our voice with the rest of the church in crying out Kyrie eleison, Lord have mercy, for our sins are forgiven. Amen.
May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.