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Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text comes from the Gospel reading, but also in connection with the Old Testament and in the Epistle. You may be seated.
In Christ there is no east or west or south or north, as well as the first hymn. There is this concept throughout these readings and throughout the hymns that God is a God who gathers and gathers people from all parts of the world and gathers people from all different kinds of families. From families who have a long history in the church to families who have no history in the church. God does the gathering. Satan is the one who goes out through all the world to scatter God’s people. And he has. And God uses his children who have been scattered, and he gathers and uses them to gather others into the one holy Christian and apostolic church.
Here is an example of a woman, not a man, but a woman, and of all nationalities, she is a Canaanite. And you know how the Jews abhorred, abhorred the Canaanites for their pagan religion. And here she is along the coast of Palestine, near Tyre and Sidon. And here she is following Jesus and the other twelve. So there’s thirteen men being followed by this one woman who shouts out over and over and over for Jesus to bring healing.
So unusual that in the Gospel reading, this whole thing is introduced with the word, behold. Behold, which is another way of saying, take note of this event that is happening that is being told to you now. That not only is this a Canaanite woman, but God is going to use her to teach you. God is going to use her and what He does with her and to her to teach you and me about who really is the outcast.
One of the things that happened in this event that blew the disciples’ minds was this. She kept crying out and Jesus kept ignoring her. And it’s interesting, her crying out to Jesus, what it did to unnerve the twelve? We don’t know. All that we do know is that her continual crying out got each of the twelve to say to Jesus, “Jesus, send her away. Tell her to go. She’s crying out after you.” Could that be they couldn’t handle her crying out? Could that be they couldn’t handle Him not answering her right away? Could that be that she didn’t fit their expectation of who should follow Him? Who knows what the reason was? We don’t.
We do know they said, “Send her away.” Now the last time the disciples said, “Send someone away,” was when Jesus just performed, right before he performed the miracle of feeding the 5,000. Remember? He said, “Jesus, send them away because there’s no food around here.” And what did Jesus say to them? “You’ve got it, feed them.” So here she is crying out for mercy, and they’re not doing a thing for her. But they tell Jesus, “Send her away because she’s causing problems, crying out after us.” In essence, it’s like saying to Jesus, “Do something, Jesus. Silence this continual crying out.”
Well, the other rare thing about this reading is that this is one of the few places where Jesus dialogues with someone he’s about to grant a great answer to prayer. Other places he immediately answers the prayer, but this one he dialogues, not so much to ask questions as it is to push her to reveal something to you, about you. He’s using this woman not so much for her sake, but for your sake and for the Twelve’s sake. That’s who he’s using—this woman and the miracle that he’s about to perform. And the dialogue fits that message.
The first thing Jesus said is that he says to his apostles, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” That’s exactly what Paul said in the epistle to the Romans in this morning’s epistle reading. How God called the whole world through the Jews, but simply because of their ethnicity or their lineage isn’t what gets them into God’s heaven. It is faith in the Messiah whom God sent that gets them into heaven.
In the Old Testament reading, Isaiah is making it clear to everybody in Isaiah’s time, long before Paul preached what he preached to the church in Rome, he’s making it clear to Isaiah that he’s coming to gather those who are his children from the foreigners. And then he uses that O word in this morning’s Old Testament reading, the outcasts. See, the problem with you and me is that we don’t typically see ourselves as the outcasts. We typically see ourselves as the in crowd—a long family line maybe of Christians or as a long family line of those who sat in that specific pew in this church. Or some other thing.
We do not see ourselves as the one on the outside looking in. So there is a sense of entitlement that courses through your and my veins. Not the sense of this woman who says, “I’m willing to eat even crumbs from the table if I can eat your bread.” Not us. We would never think of ourselves as the pet dog in the house. Why? We would think of ourselves as the one who is the child who sits at the table. Who’s really the outcast?
So this woman, after having heard what Jesus said to these self-righteous people like us—these twelve—she prostrates herself at Jesus’ feet and worships Him and says, “Lord, help me.” Jesus’ response again is for the twelve and for you and me. It’s not right to take the children’s bread and give it to the dogs, meaning the pets of the household, the less than, the ones who are not seated at the table, the outcasts.
But she herself doesn’t care whether her situation or standing in this world is as a child or as a pet. All she desires is what? The bread from the Master. Is that what you desire? Or do you desire the place, the status, the standing, the entitlement? Do you really see yourselves as one who needs to sit at the table and not glad with the crumbs that fall from the table? That’s entitlement. And it’s another way of saying idolatry.
Why does God give us the life He gives us? Is it because we’re due it? Why does God allow our children to be the way they are? Whether that is something that pleases you or displeases you, is it because of you or me? That’s entitlement and that’s idolatry and it’s not godly, which is why Jesus is using a Canaanite woman to teach the twelve and you and me about God’s grace and mercy. Not about entitlement.
The Canaanite woman’s response to Jesus’ statement is so cool when she says, “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table.” She does not think of herself as worthy of entitlement. She only thinks herself worthy of grace. Whatever you give me, I’ll be glad for. I’ll take it. I don’t have to be at the place at the table. All I want is some of your bread.
Scripture is full of the sin of entitlement, and it typically rests on people who have a long root in the church. What did Paul struggle with with the Christians in Rome, but the Jews thought themselves to be better than the Gentiles? What did Isaiah preach against? The self-righteousness of the Jews who looked to Egypt or other people for their power and strength and their standing and did not repent, knowing full well that what was being told to them is that they would be taken away from Jerusalem and deported to Babylon for 70 years. Entitlement.
And what is it? Whenever God doesn’t allow something to go a certain way in your life that you are angry at God for doing and disappointed in how God chose to accomplish something, that’s also entitlement. Doesn’t God owe you? Isn’t He supposed to work things out in your form and understanding and not His?
This beautiful situation and this woman’s faith is praised by our Lord. The only two places in all of Scripture where God, Jesus, ever praises anyone’s faith, both people are not ethnically a Jew. First example is this woman, this Canaanite woman. Her faith is praised in the presence of all the twelve. The second one, also in the presence of the twelve, was a non-Jew, a Roman centurion, whose faith was praised. Outcasts.
The Jews would see them and say, “Well, they’re not like us.” Who are the people that God is using you to reach? He is not using you necessarily to reach someone who already has Christianity as their belief. He is not using you necessarily to reach someone whose life is idyllic, like yours may be. He’s using you to reach the outcast, but you first have to come to terms with yourself being the outcast.
Or you will always, and I will always, look down upon those outside and not realize they’re a pet, just like we are, and we’re thankful for the crumbs that fall from our master’s table. What did Jesus say in the upper room in the Gospel of John? “Branches have been cut off so that you may be grafted in.”
You’re the outcast, grafted into the vine. You are not one who is due it, and neither am I. When we see ourselves as God describes us in this miracle, we see ourselves as one who can only receive the mercy and grace of God. Was this woman’s daughter healed? Absolutely. Is that the point of the text? No. Because this daughter, though she was healed of demonic possession, what would inevitably happen to her as would happen to her mother who went and sought the miracle? Both would have to die someday. The common sin that infects us all shows us we all are outcasts—foreigners brought close to God by God’s grace and mercy.
What God did in this woman’s life was more than heal her daughter. It was to bring her daughter spiritual salvation and bring the woman spiritual salvation. “Great is your faith, O woman! Be it done unto you as you have said.” So this woman already had saving faith in coming to Jesus—already! Christ just affirmed her in that saving faith so that she would continue because who knows whom God would use her to try to reach. Imagine the conversation of a Canaanite woman and a Jewish woman. Would the Jewish woman receive this information that the Canaanite woman shared? Why, she’s a Canaanite woman. What does she have that I don’t have? I am a Jew.
If you don’t see yourself as the outcast, is evangelism nothing more than another social blessing to give to someone? Or is it really spiritual in nature? Outreach and evangelism is spiritual when we see ourselves as the outcast that God uses to call another outcast. Satan scatters us and God gathers us. And He gathers us through parents, through children, through grandparents, through us with others. He does the gathering.
And it’s your faith and my faith, as it is this woman’s faith, that saves us. Not because of our lineage and not because of the manner in which we call out to God, but because of His grace and mercy. And he’s pushing this woman to see more so the twelve and us to see it’s not about who we are. It is about who claims us as his outcasts.
Jesus claims us as his outcasts. As in this text, Jesus claimed this Canaanite as his outcast. That we may find confidence in nothing else than Him who calls us into His church and gathers us. In the name of Him who calls us and says, “Great is your faith, be it done unto you as you believe. Receive the crumbs that fall from your master’s table, that you may continue.”
In Jesus’ name, Amen. The peace of God which passes all understanding. Keep your hearts and minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
