Göttinger Predigten
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Pentecost 11, 08/20/2017
Sermon on Matthew 15:21-28, by Walter W. Harms
21 Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22 A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.”
23 Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”
24 He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”
25 The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.
26 He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
27 “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”
28 Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.
Great Faith
Did you catch when Jesus said about this woman? He said to her: “Great is your faith!” In all of Matthew’s account of the life of Jesus, this is the only place where Jesus says a person has great faith. Amazing!
In other places he has Jesus telling his disciples that they have little faith. He tells Peter the same when he wanted to walk on water. He tells a centurion, a commander of soldiers in the Roman Empire that he hasn’t seen such faith as that man had anywhere else. Amazing!
In both cases he said this to persons who were not of the tribe of Israel. They were not “lost sheep” to whom Jesus was sent. We need to examine why this woman was told she had great faith. What makes “great faith” anyway? And how about your faith? On a line from great to very small, where do you put your faith? And where do you think Jesus would rate you, if he were going to do that at all?
This woman, a Canaanite person, was from Tyre and Sidon, modern Lebanon of today. Canaanites were persons who lived in Palestine when God’s people first conquered that land. They were to destroy all those people because, if they didn’t they would infect God’s people with their kind of worship of idols, false gods. Needless to say, they didn’t do what God has said for them to do and sure enough, they went after all those false gods, like bears go after honey.
These Canaanites knew about the true and only God, but they did what God’s people have done throughout the history of mankind. They worshiped everything. You know, like we do.
I would presume because you are here today, that you believe Jesus is the only Savior of the world, that he came to die to forgive you all sins and that by trusting in him you will someday be raised from the dead and life forever in heaven. Right?
That doesn’t prevent us from giving a lot of credence, a lot of trust in some other very important aspects of our lives. We put a lot of trust in the income we have or receive. Without that money, where would we be? We all certainly put at least some trust in the medical people that we go to, otherwise we wouldn’t trust them and the medicine they prescribe for us. We love the homes we have. We certainly would not want to live “on the other side of the tracks” or town, now would we? Most of us have worked hard to get where we are today and worry if we will be able to maintain our quality of life.
And just to add a finishing touch to all that, almost none of us, with exceptions of course, are not of the tribe of Israel, nor we of that lost tribe. We are not so much different from that Canaanite woman who ran screeching after Jesus. Oh, we know what we want from God all right, but so often when we are not in desperate situations, running after Jesus is not our thing.
This woman knew far less about God, about our Savior than we do. She had never gone to any kind of church as we know them. She was not educated in God’s Word at all. She probably couldn’t even read, if there was ever anything for her to read at that time, before books, paper and any kind of place even to read.
She had heard about Jesus. She must have heard stories about the miracles that this Jesus did, probably pretty hard for her to believe. They were probably a source of rumor and gossip among the people she knew. She must have heard that this man Jesus was purported to be a descendant of King David, the ancient king who was renowned for his prowess in war. Perhaps she had heard stories that one of David’s children would someday be king over everything and perhaps, just perhaps this man called Jesus was that son.
Enough for interesting stories when she went to market or met with friends or family members that occurred often in those days. But for this uneducated woman, literally from the other side of civilization as far as people in Israel were concerned, there was another, far more important pressing issue with her. She had a daughter who was demon possessed. I don’t suppose you know anyone exactly like that today, but we do call some people we know who do very evil as demon possessed, don’t we?
We can’t truly understand what demon possession meant to her or other people back at that time. Perhaps we would call it some kind of severe mental illness today. Or perhaps it was some kind of problem from birth as autism or some other mental and physical defect apparent from birth. It would not be strange for people to call this “demon possession” back then.
Today we are just beginning to understand some of those defects and types of mental illness that are manifest from the time of birth. Certainly we don’t call them demon possession today.
For this woman there was no solution for this in Tyre and Sidon, her native territory. And guess what? This person she heard of, this Jesus was traveling in that territory! Wow! This was the chance, an opportunity to meet him. She was no doubt desperate, no other way to go, no other possible way to deal with this demon possessed daughter.
She goes after Jesus, cries out to him. She doesn’t ask for healing or a cure for her daughter. She asks for mercy from this “Son of David.” And Jesus ignores her. Yes, ignores her. Does that sound like something Jesus does to you? You know, ignore your cries for help? Most of us have experienced that kind of, what we call lack of attention from God, from Jesus. You know, desperate prayers seem to be unanswered or ignored. We may even believe that we are not only ignored, but punished by his lack of attention and answer.
This woman becomes a nuisance. This supposedly calm trip for Jesus and his disciples is broken by this screeching, hollering, howling woman. The disciples ask Jesus to do something, whatever, do something Jesus. Jesus gives them his answer: his mission is to lost folks who are Israelites. There you have it!
She doesn’t give up. She kneels before Jesus and asks for help. He insults her, calling her a dog! Wow! I’ll bey you never expected Jesus to do that. Most of the pictures we have or feature in our minds are a gentle easy going person, gentle with children and those who seem to be like sheep without a shepherd.
Let me tell you, this woman has guts. She doesn’t let this daunt her. She is willing to be a dog or worse for that matter, if Jesus will give just a crumb out of all the goodness that God has given to Israel. And he gives her this “crumb,” the healing of her daughter.
Let’s not mistake what is going on here. Her faith is not “great” because she pleads to Jesus. We have all done that. Her faith is not “great” because she is persistent. After all, the great St. Paul prayed probably for three years, I think, for God to take his “thorn in the flesh” away and God didn’t, even to this servant whom he himself had chosen to bring the Good News of a God who is gracious to sinners, miscreants, evil doers and worse. So it is neither persistence nor the method of her asking. It is something else.
For certain it is her recognition of who she is. She is the dog Jesus talks about. She deserves nothing. She is owed nothing. She is worthy of nothing. What she gets is: mercy! That is all we get and it is more than we deserve. As we say in our confession, we deserve nothing but God’s wrath now and eternal punishment. Have you gotten more than that from God, from the Savior he sent to rescue us from his wrath and eternal punishment?
We have received from God exactly what this woman got. This dog of a woman got a crumb from the master’s table. That’s all she wanted. Her great faith came because she didn’t plead for anything from God except this crumb of healing. She asked nothing for herself. She was willing to humiliate herself in front of these men, the disciples. How often have we been willing to humiliate ourselves, to acknowledge that we are dogs who do not deserve anything from God, but have received mercy? All the rest and I mean all the rest is more than we deserve.
Ever complain? Ever dissatisfied with life? Ever grumble and complain? Ever think the crumb of God’s mercy from Jesus is not nearly enough?
May God have mercy on us, miserable sinners now and in the hour of our death. Amen.