God has interesting timing.
Just as the attention of our country and much of the world is on the recent activities of white supremacist and Nazi groups in our midst, the lectionary--the plan for Bible lessons based on ancient Christian practice--appoints today’s gospel lesson for tens of thousands of churches throughout the world.
That’s no coincidence...it’s a God-incidence!
It is exactly the word that you and I and all the world need to hear today.
The lesson tells us about Jesus’ encounter with a woman who is a member of a race of people hated by God’s people since Old Testament times, the Canaanites.
At the end of the lesson, Jesus confirms two important insights into Christian faith known by this Canaanite woman, insights that Saint Paul later summarized: “...all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:27-28)
Jesus came into this world to die and to rise and to call all who believe in Him to become part of one race, the fully restored human race who populate the Kingdom of God.
The Church of Jesus, whatever the denomination, color, or nationality of its people, is a preview of John’s vision in Revelation: “I looked, [John says] and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language...And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’" (Revelation 7:9)
One of my favorite Sunday School songs growing up, said: “Red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in His sight / Jesus loves the little children of the world.” Today, in a world rocked by hatred, we need the gospel message. We need Jesus!
When I say that, I’m not just using words. I’m proclaiming the absolute, bottom-line truth: WE NEED JESUS!
Only Jesus can fill our deepest need.
Only Jesus can bring forgiveness of sins.
Only Jesus can put God’s love into our hearts.
Only Jesus can give us sanity for living and thinking.
Only Jesus can give us eternal life with God.
WHAT WE All NEED IS JESUS AND ONLY JESUS!
As the Church, we need to be challenged to proclaim, with no embarrassment, that Jesus is the way, and the truth, and the life, that no one comes to the Father except through Him; that God loves us and that Christ came to die and rise to offer new life with God to all people: Jews, Canaanites, blacks, whites, browns, yellows, Republicans, Democrats, Americans, Arabs...everyone.
WE NEED JESUS!
Desperately.
Totally.
Now.
In today’s lesson, Jesus meets a woman who knows just how much she needs Jesus.
Jesus, she knows, is the only hope for her demon-possessed daughter.
By faith, she knows the truth of what the Bible repeatedly teaches: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." (Romans 10:13; Acts 2:21; Joel 2:32)
Let’s take a look at our gospel lesson, Matthew 15:21-28. It begins: “And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon.”
Jus before our lesson's narrative begins, Jesus has been teaching His fellow Jews that it’s not the outward rituals that people perform that make them right with God, it’s a faith that turns to God in humility, repentance, and faith that God uses to build righteousness within us.
Most of His fellow Jews didn’t care for this message. They thought of their religion in transactional terms: They offered sacrifices, did good things, or pointed to their pure Jewish ancestry as their part of the bargain and they thought that in return, God had to give them favor.
Jesus said that unless they (and we) turn to God in surrender and faith, we will still be dead and separated from God. No matter how many good things we do. No matter how religious we are.
Not a popular message. Even today. People don’t like to think that their relationship with God or their salvation aren’t under their control, but God’s control.
So, Jesus left His homeland for a bit. It wasn't that Jesus was afraid of unpopularity or of dying. He had come to be rejected by the people and go to the cross. He had His face set for Jerusalem for precisely this reason. He would go to a cross, but it wasn’t the right time yet (John 7:6, 30). He and the disciples go to Tyre and Sidon, a pagan area filled with Gentile unbelievers.
Verse 22: “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.’”
Back in Old Testament days, God decided that because of the Canaanites’ idol-worship and injustice, He was going to take their land from them and give it to Israel, the Jews, His people. That’s what God did. Canaanites were still, at the point when Jesus meets this woman centuries later, idol-worshipers. They were also hated and mistrusted by the Jews. And yet, here’s this Canaanite woman, approaching Jesus, calling Him by the title that Jews associated with the Messiah, “Son of David.”
See what happens next, verse 23: “But [Jesus] did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, ‘Send her away, for she is crying out after us.’ [Jesus] answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’”
Some people look at this passage and think that Jesus is being heartless.
I’ve even heard some preachers suggest that the Canaanite woman came along and taught Jesus a lesson. According to these people, Jesus was a bigot who had to be set straight by this petitioner.
Please! Jesus is both God and man. He knows exactly what's going to happen before it happens. Jesus was not surprised that this Canaanite showed up.
And there is no bigotry in Jesus! God does not hate what God creates. The God Who is love, Who commands loves, and Who is sinless, doesn’t need to be taught how to love. (1 John 4:8)
So, how do we explain Jesus’ words then?
For one thing, they’re the truth. Although in the Great Commission, Jesus would later command His disciples to go to all peoples, Old Testament promises from God said that, during His time on earth, the Messiah would go to Israel. Jesus knows, as Paul writes in our second lesson, “God did not reject his people...” (Romans 11:2) And so, while Jesus would encounter Gentiles (non-Jews) in His ministry and even make a Gentile, the good Samaritan, the hero of one of His most famous parables, the Messiah had to be proclaimed among God’s people before Jesus died and rose.
I think Jesus also said this--"I was sent only the lost sheep of Israel"--because Jesus had things to teach His disciples, including you and me. Jesus always knew the teachable moment!
Verse 25: “But she came and knelt before him [Jesus], saying, ‘Lord, help me.’”
Most English translations of the Bible do an inadequate job of rendering this passage. The verb knelt translates the Greek word proskuneo, which is the word that Matthew used when writing this verse in the Greek. Proskuneo means worship.
It’s the same word Matthew used of the eleven disciples who meet the risen Jesus, about to ascend to heaven in Matthew 28:17, literally, “Having seen Him, they worshiped Him...”
This foreign woman of the wrong race and ethnicity, from the wrong side of the tracks who is hated by Jesus' fellow good Jews, worships Jesus!
She sees Him not only as a human descendant of King David, she sees Him as God.
And she offers no evidence that she’s a good person deserving of what she begs Jesus to do for her daughter. She just believes and is completely helpless.
And belief and helplessness, as our mentor Ole Hallesby has taught many of us here at Living Water, is what we need to be every time we approach God in Jesus’ name. As Hallesby points out, without belief and helplessness, it's doubtful that any of our prayers are really prayers. The Canaanite woman truly prays!
“Lord,” she says, “help me.”
Jesus accepts her worship because He is God. You may remember that in the book of Acts, the Christian missionaries Paul and Barnabas were being hailed as gods by Gentiles. They were horrified and told the crowds to stop, that there was only one God, the one revealed in Jesus (Acts 4:12-15). Jesus accepts the woman's worship. How could He not? He IS God!
It's hard to imagine what the disciples who were with Jesus must have thought of all this. But Jesus lets things go on a bit still: He has a lesson to teach we disciples.
Verse 26: “And he answered, ‘It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.’”
Many Jews used the term dog for Gentiles the way that white racists use the N-word to describe African-Americans today.
Most Jews regarded non-Jews as subhuman trash.
Now, we must always let Scripture interpret Scripture. And what we know from the rest of Scripture about Jesus totally precludes the notion that He shared His people's prejudice against Gentiles.
I believe that, as one Bible scholar has said, Jesus used this term with a twinkle in His eye, a bit like a comic tweaking prejudice. Humor is always a good tool for demolishing prejudice.
Make no mistake about it though, Jesus saw this woman’s desperate, audacious faith. He was about to perform a sign showing that He is the Messiah and God of all who have a desperate, audacious faith in Him.
And the Canaanite woman is in on Jesus’ joke. Verse 27: “She said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table.’”
“Yes, Lord,” she’s saying, “I know that the Jews are God’s people and that salvation will come into the world through the Jews. That’s the first thing I know. But I also know a second thing: that You are the Lord of heaven and earth and that through You, salvation will come to all who believe in You. Even those with the wrong color of skin and those with the wrong ethnic background. Just as the dogs get the crumbs, You have grace enough to spare for everyone!”
In verse 28, Jesus explodes with the same kind of joyous exclamation that must come from God every time we turn to Him with desperate, audacious faith. “‘O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.”
God receives all who turn from their sin and trust in Jesus as their only hope, the only way to life, the only way to God.
God receives all who turn to Him with desperate, audacious faith.
God hears all who trust Jesus with desperation and helplessness, who know that Jesus is our only hope for this world and the next!
God will, through Jesus, even receive you and me and all the other Canaanites who trust in Jesus.
The only in-crowd in the Kingdom of God is the crowd who confess that Jesus is Lord and then follow Him wherever He leads!
Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This is the text for the worship message this morning.]
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