Lent 2 [Matthew 15:21-28] (24-Feb-2013)

This sermon was preached at St Paul's Lutheran Church, Darnum (9am), Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Traralgon (10am), Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yarram (2pm) and St John's Lutheran Church, Sale (4pm).

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

Text: (Matthew 15:21-28)

Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ tables.

Prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

Our Gospel reading today, through the example of a Canaanite woman, teaches us today about prayer, and about the problems that Christians face in prayer.

At the end of our reading, we have Jesus say to the Canaanite woman, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.”

We have two things here: Jesus praises the woman, and he also gives an answer to her prayer. These are two things that every Christian desires: we want to be commended by Jesus and encouraged by him. And also, we would like our prayers to be answered.

But this reading is also a strange one, because the woman takes a rather rough journey with Jesus to get to this point. So let’s take a look at the text. We read:

Jesus went away from [Jerusalem] 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.

A Canaanite woman came out to him. She was not a Jew: she was a Gentile. And nevertheless, she must have listened to Jews, and had some basic knowledge about who Jesus was. She calls him: The Son of David. “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David.”

Those of us who are parents will know what this woman feels. We don’t know exactly what’s wrong her daughter, apart from what she says: “She is oppressed by a demon”, and, she says, “severely”, “badly”.

How often children cause their parents to pray! Maybe a child is sick or disabled, maybe the child is becoming wild and disobedient, or wayward. Maybe the child at whatever stage of life has lost the faith and turned away from Jesus, and this has caused the parents great pain.

A parent’s helplessness is shown up and reinforced so much when it comes to their children. A parent can’t live their life through their child—children all have their own will, their own body and soul, and nobody can live their life for them.

And so this woman comes to Jesus, pleading to him on behalf of her child.

And we read: But he did not answer her a word.

Many times, when we pray to Jesus it feels like he’s just not listening. We may receive no encouragement from prayer, no sense that we’ve done something important, and our sense of helplessness becomes even greater. Sometimes people say, “I suppose we can only pray.” For many people, prayer is the last resort. People “give it a go” when all else fails. Maybe this is how this woman felt too. And here she comes to Jesus, and he doesn’t even speak to her!

Sometimes people get to a point where they think that if Jesus doesn’t listen, then they should go and pray to someone else, like Buddha, or even the devil.

But then, we ask the question, “Why does Jesus snub this woman?” Why does he keep quiet? Why does he give her the cold shoulder? Is he playing some sort of sick and twisted game? Why doesn’t he listen?

But here’s the thing: Jesus does listen. And in some sense, he is playing a game. But he’s not playing the sort of game where he’s torturing a poor defenceless animal. He’s not poking a cat or a dog with a stick just so that he can have a laugh. But he’s playing the sort of game as when loving parents try to draw a little toddler towards them with a toy to get them to come and sit on their lap. Jesus wants to draw something wonderful out of this woman. He withholds an answer from her at this time, so that he can give her an answer later.

And so, we shouldn’t be discouraged by what we think is Jesus’ silence. Even when we feel abandoned by our heavenly Father or by Jesus, remember how Jesus called out on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” We are simply sharing in Jesus’ own prayer when we feel like this. And Jesus comes and joins in with us and prays with us. He sends the Holy Spirit to come and call out to our Father in heaven through sighs and groanings. This is a painful experience for us, when our greatest friend, our most faithful friend, our Lord and God, who shares our flesh and blood, seems to be against us. He’s not against us—but many times he wants us to come and feel a bit of his cross with him. Then he encourages us, “Take up your cross daily and follow me.” “Learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly of heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

Jesus doesn’t want us to be discouraged in prayer, but he wants to draw us in further. The game he plays is a loving one. He wants us to keep asking, keep seeking, and keep knocking. The door to Jesus’ heart is already opened for this woman, even though she thinks she has been left out in the cold. Jesus is wanting her to keep walking in further and further through the dark halls and corridors to where the warm fireplace is. Remember where Jesus says: Knock and the door will be opened to you.

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And so now in our reading, we read: And [Jesus’] disciples came and begged him, saying, “Send her away, for she is crying out after us.” He said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

Sometimes we know that if we would like to have some influence over a person, we might go to their friends for them to put in a good word for us. The woman has thought that if she can’t go through the front door, she’ll go around the back to see if anyone’s home.

So often this happens in our Christian life too. We really want some help from Jesus, and he just doesn’t seem to be listening. So we go to his friends. We go and ask our Christian friends to put in a good word for us. People come to pastors with their needs and request. Sometimes people outside the faith do this too, and want Christians to put in a good word for them to the “man upstairs”. And when people come to other Christians with their needs, the feeling can be quite overwhelming, because sometimes they ask such impossible things!

This is the same with the disciples here. They probably think: “How can I help? What do you expect me to do? I’m not Jesus!”

And so they go back to Jesus and say: “Send her away, for she is crying out after us.”

When they say, “send her away”, they are not necessarily asking Jesus to send her away empty, but for him to hurry up and do something for her! “Do something for her, will you! Shut her up! Do what she wants! We don’t want to listen to her anymore!”

But Jesus also refuses her here. He says: I was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Is Jesus saying here that he was sent only for the Jewish people? No. But at the same time, he went to them first. John chapter 1 says: “He came to his own and his own people did not receive him, but to those who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” It’s only when the Jewish people reject the words of Jesus, that they are then carried by the apostles to the Gentiles. In our Gospel reading, this woman was not Jewish, and Jesus seems to reject her because she’s a Gentile.

Sometimes people are like this: people think, “there’s something inherent in me that I can’t change, and that this one thing prevents Jesus from listening to me.” We might think: maybe Jesus doesn’t listen to men, or maybe he doesn’t listen to women. Maybe it’s because I’m white, or black, or young or old.

The woman in our gospel reading today doesn’t know where else to go though. She knows she’s not Jewish, well and good. But what good is that? There’s no Gentile Jesus! There’s only a Jewish Jesus.

And so we read: 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.”

Now the woman is desperate. She throws herself on her knees, and says: “Lord help me.” And once again we get a stern response from Jesus.

Now, at this point, many people would storm off in a huff! “I’m not going to sit around and be insulted!” we might say.

But it’s precisely the insult that she latches onto. He says: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ tables.”

We can see here how the woman humbles herself under the mighty hand of God. As St Peter says: “Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”

Are there things about the Christian faith that offend you, or insult you? Do you sit there week after week, rolling your eyes at the confessions of sins? “I have deeply displeased you.” “I deserve your punishment in time and in eternity.” And then we say, “what I need is self-esteem!” “I’m not sitting here week after week flagellating myself, and making myself feel miserable.”

Well, when you feel like this, it’s time for you to sit down, shut your mouth, behave yourself, and stop carrying on like a 5-year-old brat. This is a serious business!

Let yourself be insulted by Jesus. Have you ever thought that Jesus knows what’s best for you? Have you ever thought that he is the best teacher of prayer, the one who breathes out the Holy Spirit from his own mouth, and he knows how to lead you closer to his heart? Have you ever thought that he is chastising you not because he hates you, but because he loves you with the greatest love imaginable? Don’t be so proud and precious, and take yourself so seriously. The angels can fly because they take themselves so lightly!

And we are taught in our culture to be so precious about our feelings! We think the worst thing that Jesus could ever do to us would be to hurt our feelings!

And yet, all the time, when we rebel against Jesus like this, we push ourselves away from the Fountain of Love himself, we push ourselves away from those wounds which pour out that life giving blood over us, we push ourselves ourselves away from the Way, the Truth and the Life!

Have you ever joined Abraham in his humility and said, “Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes”? Have you ever joined King David and said, “I am a worm and not a man”? Have you ever read Proverbs 30 and cried out with the writer: “I am weary, O God, and worn out. Surely I am too stupid to be a man”?

Or what about this woman? She is happy with Jesus’ insult, and she says, “If I’m a dog, I’m a dog. But if I can’t have meat and bread, then give me a dog biscuit. Give me a crumb from my master’s table.”

But the insult that Jesus gave her was also a crumb for her to latch onto, the final crumb which she would snatch and be raised to sit with Jesus at his wonderful heavenly banquet. The insult is not an insult for her! It’s her golden ticket! And so Jesus only says this, so that he can finally say, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire!”

And the final outcome of all this is that Jesus praises this woman as a great person of prayer. He praises her helplessness. He praises her desperation, and gives her as an example to every Christian for the rest of time.

The events of our reading today may only have lasted 5 minutes. But what’s five minutes of pain and frustration, in comparison with an eternity of joy? What’s five minutes of desperation for this woman, compared with encouragement and hope for every Christian in the future who feels frustrated and desperate and helpless in prayer?

We read in the psalms: Taste and see that the Lord is good. God’s anger is but for a moment, and his favour is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning. Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy!

Amen.

Lord Jesus Christ, draw us closer to you through joy and sorrow, happiness and sadness, laughter and tears. Give us endurance, and give us the encouragement of the Scriptures that we might have hope. Amen.