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Sermon for Reminiscere – Lent 2
1 Thessalonians 4:1-7 + Matthew 15:21-28
470 years ago this past Thursday, Feb. 18, 1546, Martin Luther died. Two days before that, he wrote these last words on a scrap of paper: “We are beggars. This is true.” For all that God accomplished through him, Luther never thought highly of himself, especially before God, never thought for a moment that he deserved anything good from God. Instead, he praised God’s grace in Christ Jesus. And he maintained that beggar-attitude up to his dying day.
One has to have an attitude like that, a humble, self-abasing, beggar-attitude before God in order to appreciate today’s Gospel about the Canaanite woman who was compared by Jesus to a little beggar-dog. You can only appreciate this text if you start from the position of beggar, convicted sinner, eternal death row inmate, with no entitlement mentality, no illusion that you have a right to God’s help, or to God’s attention, or even to God’s concern—no matter how sincere you may be, no matter how downtrodden, no matter how worthy.
In other words, this text is well beyond the grasp of the world, because it preaches against the very things the world praises and it praises the very things the world hates. The wisdom of the world is cast down and the foolishness of God is exalted. This is a precious text against our pride, a text that praises Spirit-worked humility and faith, and that, as always, highlights the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. So let’s dig right into it.
21 Then Jesus went out from there and departed to the region of Tyre and Sidon.
St. Matthew isn’t giving us useless information here. Tyre and Sidon were Gentile territories to the north of the land of Israel. Five chapters earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus had sent out his twelve apostles with this command: Do not go into the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter a city of the Samaritans. But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as you go, preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons.
Earlier in His ministry, Jesus expressly forbade his apostles from going to Gentile territory. And this account in Matthew 15 is the only time recorded in the Gospels when Jesus Himself left the land of Israel during His whole earthly ministry. That’s significant. He came to the Jews and sent His disciples exclusively to the Jews at first, and that shouldn’t surprise us; above all the nations on earth, God chose Israel to be His special people, and He made special promises to them of grace and every blessing.
But God had also revealed in the Old Testament Scriptures that the light of the Messiah, shining from Israel, would also give light to the Gentiles, and that the Church of God would be greatly enlarged as the Gentiles came streaming into it. So, occasionally, Jesus sought out the Samaritans, the half-Jews, and preached the Gospel to them. And on this one occasion, Jesus even entered Gentile territory, not only to help a Gentile woman, but also to teach some important truths to His disciples, and to us.
And behold, a woman of Canaan came from that region and cried out to Him, saying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David! My daughter is severely demon-possessed.”
What a tremendous confession of faith! This Canaanite woman identified Jesus as the Lord, as the Son of David—the Messiah—as the merciful One, and as the One who had the power to crush the serpent’s head, to cast out demons. Such faith could only have come from one place—from hearing the word, the good report about Christ. How she heard, we don’t know. One way or another, word had reached her. And she believed. And her faith led her to beg for mercy from Jesus.
But He answered her not a word.
Jesus seemed not to be listening to the cries of this beggar-woman. He seemed to be ignoring her. He seemed unconcerned, unmoved by her pleas. But we know how the story ends, and that Jesus not only cared about this woman, but wanted to hold her up as a shining example of faith for billions of people to see over the course of the millennia.
And His disciples came and urged Him, saying, “Send her away, for she cries out after us.”
Even the disciples seemed uneasy with Jesus’ lack of response. They also didn’t like that she just kept calling out to Him for help. So they asked Him to send her away. She seemed to have no friends at all, no one to intercede for her, not even the holy apostles.
But He answered and said, “I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
Jesus finally answers the woman, giving her just a little bit of hope, because He didn’t do what His disciples asked Him to do; He didn’t send her away, as He could have done. But what does He answer? The same thing He had told His disciples back when He sent them out, when He told them only to go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
How could Jesus say that He was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, when we know He said on various occasions that He was sent to give His life for the world, that “God so loved the world,” that when He was lifted up on the cross, He would “draw all men to Himself”? The only way to understand this is to understand that the house of Israel, which began with the physical descendants of Jacob, was intended to expand beyond the physical descendants of Jacob, was intended to grow at the time of the Messiah to include all Jews and Gentiles who would believe in Him as the Christ. But that was a mystery hidden from most and not fully revealed until after Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.
Then she came and worshiped Him, saying, “Lord, help me!”
“Worshiped” may be a little misleading. The word means “to kneel before” someone, which was certainly done to show reverence and humility in the presence of someone great, but in this case, it shows again her beggar-attitude before the Lord as she knelt before Him. She kept looking past the stony exterior to the Lord who, according to His reputation, had never once turned anyone away who sought help from Him. Maybe, she thought, maybe the Lord Jesus will still help me, even though I’m not a physical descendant of Israel. I’ll keep begging until He does, for my daughter’s sake, because His merciful reputation goes before Him.
But He answered and said, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.”
The children being the people of Israel, of course, and the little dogs being the Canaanites and every other nation on earth. This is why modern-day “racism” is so ridiculous. The only “race,” if we want to use that word—and I don’t like to, because there is only one human race—but the only “race” that has ever had a special claim of superiority before God is the Jewish race leading up to the time of Christ. Every other race, whether you were white or black or yellow or red or some shade in between, was inferior to the Jewish race. All non-Jews were like “little dogs.”
This is the severe consequence of the sin that dwells in all people of every nation. Sin separates from God. Sin makes everyone unworthy before God. The truth is, the Jews, the house of Israel, were also sinners and would have also been counted as “little dogs” if God hadn’t taken them and adopted them as His children purely by His grace. As God said to Israel long ago, “Therefore understand that the LORD your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stiff-necked people.”
How did the woman respond to Jesus’ words? She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.”
Can you imagine anyone today not being offended at being called a “little dog” because of their race? Everyone gets offended at the drop of a hat these days, because everyone’s sinful pride is alive and well and everyone’s entitlement mentality kicks in. But those who truly believe that they are sinners before God who deserve only His wrath and punishment, as the Bible declares and as you yourselves confessed just a little while ago, and those who truly believe that God is good and means us well for the sake of His Son, as you also confessed, are not deterred. Faith is willing to be humbled before God and man, and still continues to look to God for mercy, as the woman in our Gospel demonstrates so beautifully.
Then Jesus answered and said to her, “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be to you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed from that very hour.
As we’ve noted before, there are only two times in Scripture when Jesus praised someone for having a “great faith.” A Gentile centurion, and this Gentile woman. After the testing of her faith is done, this woman receives all that she wanted from Jesus, and more—even praise from the lips of Jesus for her faith, which wasn’t really to her credit as much as it was to the credit of the Holy Spirit who had worked such faith in her and who now holds her up as a shining example to Jesus’ disciples, and to us.
Jesus’ disciples needed to understand that Israel was about to expand to include people from every nation, tribe, language and people—all who would humble themselves at the preaching of the Gospel and believe in Jesus Christ as the Savior sent from God. Salvation had to come first to the Jews, because of God’s Old Testament promises, but it wouldn’t remain only with the Jews, and in fact, most of the Jews would be cut off from God’s kingdom because of unbelief. Faith alone saves, not good works, not genetics. As Paul wrote to the Romans, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek (that is, the Gentiles). For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.”
You and I need to understand from this Gospel that, as sinners, we do not deserve God’s help at all, that, “We are beggars. This is true.” But beggars are not cast out by God. On the contrary, spiritual beggars from every nation are the very ones who receive God’s mercy. We were once counted as “little dogs” in God’s sight. But through Holy Baptism and faith in Christ, God has now counted us as His own children and will give us every grace and blessing at His heavenly table, as St. Paul wrote to Titus: When the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. Amen.
