Worthy to Ask God for Help?

[This sermon was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.]

Matthew 15:21-28
A young woman visited me in the office of my first parish. She wasn't a member of the congregation. But I knew her to be a kind-hearted person. She was then in her twenties, but back during her teens, her mother had died and a grandmother took her in. She had been close to her entire family, but when an uncle sexually abused her and she felt that she could confide in no one, her life grew worse and worse. Feeling isolated and hopeless, she became promiscuous, then got involved first with alcohol and then hard drugs.

After we talked, she checked herself into a hospital and then a treatment program. The counselors and other patients urged her to rely on her “higher power.” For her that could only mean the God we meet in Jesus Christ. That created an early snag in her treatment regimen: She couldn’t believe that God would care about her, be interested in her, or help her. She felt far from God.

I visited her several times at the treatment facility. Along with family and friends, I urged her to read Scripture and to pray, talking with God just as she would with a good friend, and to be unafraid to ask God for help. Over time, that young woman gained the strength not only to deal with her addictions, but also to face life. The last time I saw her was many years ago. But the last I heard of her, she was still doing well.

And her real progress seemed to begin when she vetoed worrying about her own worthiness and asked God for help.

In my twenty-four years as a pastor, I’ve met many people who wanted to have God’s help and guidance, but felt, like that young woman, that they didn’t dare turn to God. They didn’t feel they were good enough or important enough to care for them.

But is that true? Do we have to meet some test of worthiness before God will hear our prayers?

The fact is that none of us is worthy of God’s help. But God wants to help us anyway.

We see this truth in today’s Gospel lesson. In it, Jesus passes through the non-Jewish region around the cities of Tyre and Sidon. The people who live there aren’t the targets of Jesus’ earthly mission. After He is crucified and risen, just before He ascends to heaven, Jesus will tell His Church—including you and me--to go into the whole world with the Good News that all who believe in Him will have forgiveness of sin and everlasting life. But during His earthly life, Jesus came to fulfill the Old Testament prophecy of a Messiah Who came to call God’s own people, the Jews, to follow God into His kingdom.

And yet, for one of only two times in His life, we encounter Jesus as He chooses to travel outside His native country. He probably did this because the opposition against Him is increasing and in God’s plan, it isn’t yet time for His crucifixion.

But if any of Jesus’ disciples thought that Jesus could travel anonymously through this country north of theirs, they soon had another think coming. A Canaanite woman shouts at Jesus. The Canaanites, you’ll remember, were bitter enemies of God and of God’s people. Yet this woman cries out to Jesus for help.

How did she come to think that she was worthy to cry out to Jesus for help?

What made her think that the Messiah of an enemy people would free her daughter from imprisonment to a demon?

The answer to those questions couldn’t have been because she was ritually clean, as the Pharisees insisted good people must be. She wasn’t a Jew. She didn’t abide by Jewish ritual law. I bet she didn’t even know what a Kyrie, a Hymn of Praise, or a creed were.

It appears to me though, that there were three things that she did know, three things that you and I need to know when dealing with daily life.

First: She knew who Jesus was. That’s clear from what she called Jesus. “Have mercy on me, Lord,” she says, “Son of David.” Son of David was the title associated with the long-promised Savior, Messiah: the King of all kings.

Who knows how the woman had come to know this? Probably reports had come from Judea about Jesus. On hearing them, she may have resolved that even if there was a one-in-a-million chance that she would ever meet Jesus, if she did, she would go to Him and beg Him to help her daughter. She believed that Jesus was the Messiah and because He was the Messiah, she also believed that He could help.

One of the most important questions that Jesus asked during His earthly ministry was, “Who do you say that I am?” This is an important question for you and I to answer: Who do we say that Jesus is? It's a question that we must answer for ourselves. We can't rely on the faith of our parents or children. Who is Jesus for you? Is he some distant deity you either fear or forget or both? Or is He, as this woman knew, the Messiah Who came to show mercy and give life to all with faith in Him, even minute faith that just dares to trust Jesus? The woman knew who Jesus was.

Second, this woman knew that she didn’t deserve Jesus’ help. She would agree with Paul, when he makes an honest confession for the whole human race: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The Canaanite woman doesn’t say, “Lord, take away the demon because I’m a good person.” She doesn’t say, “Lord, help my daughter; she’s such a good girl.” She knew that nobody deserves the help of God. And so, she says simply to Jesus, “Have mercy on me, Lord.” She bases her request not on what she deserves, but solely on the infinite love and mercy that God bears for all people!

So, this woman knew who Jesus was and she knew that she didn’t deserve Jesus’ help. She knew a third thing: She knew that Jesus cared. Of course, you and I have the advantage on those who encountered Jesus during His earthly life. We live on this side of His crucifixion and resurrection. Through His cross, we know the depths of His passion for us. Through His resurrection, we know that He has power over our worst enemies: sin and death. Jesus' care for us has been written in His sacrificed flesh and blood and in His resilient love that will not die!

But it’s amazing that the Canaanite woman knew how much Jesus cared, because not even His disciples appreciated this. When the woman first approached Jesus, He paused. I think He did this in order to test the disciples. If so, they failed the test miserably. They didn’t urge Jesus to help this desperate woman as Jesus had helped Him just a few days before when they thought they would drown at sea. Instead, they begged Him to send her away. “Her shouting is really annoying!” they tell Jesus.

The disciples remind me of the "good" members of some "good" churches. They want their churches to grow so long as the people who start coming look and act just like them, as long as they don't bring any problems to church with them.

That would make life easier, of course. But is it faithful for Christians to send people away who annoy us? A buddy of mine started a congregation in the Tri-County area of Cincinnati. Early on in the life of the congregation, they began attracting all sorts of dysfunctional people who felt the need for Christ in their lives. They brought all their problems and often, their noisy conflicts with them. One day, a couple got into a fierce fight on the church parking lot and the police were called in. At that point, the leadership of my friend's church had to make a choice: Did they want to take the easy way, asking only "good" church people to be part of their fellowship? Or, did they want to take the harder route, inviting dysfunctional people with all their problems into the church? They took the harder route, regularly employing off-duty policemen to be on hand for worship and today, thousands of people gather with that congregation every weekend.

The Canaanite woman knew that Jesus cared and so, in our lesson, after the disciples beg Jesus to send her way, Jesus turns from them and toward the woman. He tells her, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” Then Matthew tells us, “...she came and knelt before Him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’ He answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’”

In those days, Jesus’ fellow Jews referred to non-Jews as wild dogs. Here, poking fun at His own people’s exclusionary ways, Jesus uses the word kunarion, a term used for dogs kept as house pets. On the way to granting this woman’s request, Jesus speaks to her tongue-in-cheek. The woman seems to pick up on Jesus' humor and His intent immediately. She would never dream of taking anything from the children of Israel, she tells Jesus, “yet even the house pets eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Jesus, she knew, cared about everyone, including her.

At this, Jesus lays aside the banter and declares, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish!” He saw in her faith that He had never observed even in His closest followers. Matthew tells us, “her daughter was healed instantly.” She knew that Jesus cared.

Because of what this woman knew, it seems never to have crossed her mind to be quiet when the disciples became annoyed with her or when Jesus initially met her request with silence. She understood that no one is so far from God to be beyond God’s heart. I hope that whenever you’re tempted to feel that God doesn’t care about you, you’ll remember that too.

The people in a farming community were frightened that if rain didn’t come soon, an extended summer drought would kill their thirsty crops. The local pastors called for an hour of prayer on the town square one Saturday. They asked everyone bring a single object of faith for inspiration as they prayed. At noon, the townspeople showed up to ask God’s help. The pastors saw that people had come with a variety of objects which they “clutched in prayerful hands ... holy books, crosses, rosaries.” At the end of the hour, as if on cue, a gentle rain began to fall. “Cheers swept the crowd as they held their treasured objects high in gratitude and praise. From the middle of the crowd one faith symbol seemed to overshadow all the others: A small nine-year old child had brought an umbrella.” That boy was as confident of God’s mercy as the Canaanite woman was on the day she met God in person in Jesus.

If you and I know first of all, Who Jesus is and if we, secondly, know that through Jesus, God cares, then we also know thirdly, that in spite of the fact that we don’t deserve God’s help, God is always willing to provide it anyway. Whatever you face in the coming week, I hope that you’ll remember those three truths.

[UPDATE: Father Martin Fox of Piqua has written a fine succinct sermon based on this and the other appointed texts for this Sunday. For more on the texts, see here.]