Faith still looks to Christ for good

Sermon for Reminiscere – Lent 2

Isaiah 45:20-25  +  1 Thessalonians 4:1-7  +  Matthew 15:21-28

I would remind you of the words we chanted today in the Introit. Remember, O Lord, Your tender mercies and Your lovingkindnesses, for they are from of old. Let not my enemies triumph over me. God of Israel, deliver us out of all our troubles! To You, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, I trust in You; let me not be ashamed. Those words summarize beautifully the message in today’s Gospel, as we learn from Jesus’ interaction with the woman of Canaan. No matter what obstacles were placed before her faith—obstacles placed even by Jesus Himself—she overcame them all and was rewarded for it in the end. No matter how hopeless her situation seemed, she clung to her godly prayer, Remember, O Lord, Your tender mercies and Your lovingkindnesses, for they are from of old.

Not that the Lord forgets. He never forgets anything. He never gets distracted. He never sleeps. He never changes His mind. And yet He teaches us to pray with the Psalmist, Remember, O Lord! Remember Your tender mercies and Your lovingkindnesses, for they are from of old. It’s the prayer of faith. True faith doesn’t view God as a vending machine, so that you put in a request and then expect the requested action to pop out within seconds. No, true faith comes to God in humility, with a pressing need, with a knowledge of God’s faithfulness, with confidence in God’s mercy, with the persistent prayer of a dear child to a dear father.

Matthew tells us that Jesus left the territory of Israel to make a little visit to the northern region of Tyre and Sidon, on the northern border of Galilee, where Jesus grew up and spent much of His ministry. Why step outside the borders of Israel? We have no idea, except that it shows clearly that Jesus had a saving purpose also for those who were not born of Jewish blood.

A woman from that region, a non-Jew, had a daughter who was being afflicted somehow by a demon. She heard that Jesus had come into her country, and she had obviously heard the good report about Jesus, probably because Galilee was right there on the border of her country. She had to go looking for Him; Mark tells us that Jesus was trying to keep a low profile. And then she presents her urgent plea to Jesus: Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David! My daughter is severely demon-possessed.

What great things the Word alone had already accomplished in this Gentile woman! O Lord, Son of David! What had she—a Gentile woman, living outside of the land of Israel—to do with David, the great king of Israel who had been dead for a thousand years? What had she to do with David’s Son, the Christ, who was to sit on David’s throne as King of the Jews? Why does she believe He is merciful? And why does she believe He has power over the devil? The Word of God did it all.

The Word of God told of the coming Son of David who would destroy the devil’s power, who would be merciful and just, who would not reign over the physical descendants of Israel alone, but who would welcome all nations into a new Israel, a people of God made up of believers from every nation. You heard the Lord proclaim it today through the prophet Isaiah: There is no other God besides Me, A just God and a Savior; There is none besides Me. Look to Me, and be saved, All you ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other. Somehow the woman from Canaan heard the Word about Jesus, the Son of David. And hearing, she believed. And believing, she cried out to Him for help against the devil’s hold on her daughter.

What follows in the Gospel is a testing of her faith that was as much for the apostles’ benefit and for our benefit as it was for hers. The devil, for his part, would have convinced the woman that God was not good or merciful, at least, not to her. For His part, Jesus would test the woman’s faith in order to hold it up as a shining example of His power over the devil.

Jesus answered her not a word. He doesn’t get annoyed with her. He doesn’t send her away. He allows her to keep crying out for help. He just doesn’t say anything. And the devil would have the woman think, Jesus isn’t good or merciful, at least, not to you.

The disciples didn’t know what to make of Jesus’ silence. They got tired of her crying out and assumed from Jesus’ silence that He didn’t want to help her. Send her away, for she cries out after us, they said. But some things should not be so easily assumed. Didn’t Jesus always help everyone who came to Him for help? Didn’t the Scripture bid all the ends of the earth to look to God and be saved, as Isaiah wrote? But at the first sign that maybe Jesus wouldn’t help the woman, the disciples gave up hope.

Again, Jesus didn’t send her away. Instead, He answered, I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. It sounds like a rejection, and yet it’s just a simple statement which was generally true. Jesus was born in Israel. He conducted His entire ministry in Israel. As far as we know, this was the only time during His ministry that Jesus left the borders of Israel, and it wasn’t far beyond Israel’s borders. Of course, we know now that it was Jesus’ plan, after His death and resurrection, to send out His disciples into all the world, to preach the Gospel to every creature. But that plan was still unknown when the events of our Gospel took place. The devil would have the woman think, Jesus didn’t come for you. Just give up on Him already!

But instead of going away, she came and bowed down before Him and cried, “Lord, help me!” For as hopeless as her situation appears, the devil has been entirely unsuccessful at driving her away from Jesus. When He doesn’t seem willing to help, she just comes closer and cries out some more, as if to say, “Remember, O Lord, Your tender mercies and Your lovingkindnesses, for they are from of old!”

There’s one final test. Jesus said, It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs. He seems to say that the people of Israel are God’s children, and the Gentiles are not, and that for Him to help a Gentile would be robbing Israel of the help that was rightfully theirs. Again, the devil would have the woman think, Jesus is wicked to talk to you that way. You’re not a little dog. God is not good. Turn your back on Him!

Instead, the woman replies with childlike faith, Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table. Through the silence, through the apparent rejection, through what most would consider to be an insult, the woman’s faith remains firm like a boulder. She believes that Jesus is the Son of David, the Christ of God, and that means He doesn’t have a fixed number of times He can help people, so that if He helps one, He can’t help another. She believes that He’s the Christ, so there’s plenty of help and mercy to go around, and she’s content to be a little dog at her master’s table, because a crumb of His grace is more than enough to take care of her needs, and far more than she deserves.

By the power of God’s Word, she’s passed the trials of Jesus, which the devil wanted to use against her as temptations. He had been successful with Adam and Eve using a much lesser temptation. They lived in a beautiful garden, had no problems, needed nothing. God had openly shown nothing but grace and favor toward them. But at the slightest suggestion from the devil that God was not good, that He wanted to keep them from the forbidden fruit because He didn’t want them to be like Him, they believed him! They gave up on God’s goodness when there was nothing but goodness to see. This woman of Canaan, on the other hand, saw no sign of God’s goodness and many signs that He was against her. And yet her faith remained. That’s not a tribute to her greatness. It’s a tribute to the power of the Holy Spirit, working through the Word.

Jesus praises her faith: O woman, great is your faith! Let it be to you as you desire. And her daughter was healed from that very hour. In the end, we can look back and see what Jesus was doing and the good He intended, and it makes sense to us. But during the trial, when there was no grace to be seen, only faith could see through the outward appearance to find a good and loving God. Faith still looked to Jesus for good and stubbornly kept crying out, “Remember, O Lord!”

The devil’s oldest temptation is that God is not good, because He doesn’t want you to have something you deserve to have. Ever since Eden, our sinful nature exists at all times with that false belief, that God is not good, that God should behave differently than He does, that we deserve to be treated better than He treats us. The flesh doesn’t fear God, doesn’t give Him the honor of doing as He pleases as God, doesn’t love Him, doesn’t trust in Him for grace. And the devil uses every opportunity to reinforce the sinful nature’s way of thinking. Every hardship we endure in this world, every affliction, and especially those that last a while, becomes a weapon in the devil’s arsenal to convince us, God is not good. Stop believing in Him. Stop trusting in Him.

Through all that darkness, the Word of God calls out like a bright light: God is good! He loved the world! He gave His Son into death so that all men might live through faith in Him! He has brought you into His kingdom through Holy Baptism! But the Word of God also calls out: In this world, you will have troubles. You will not always see God’s plan, and it will sometimes appear that He won’t help. Don’t be fooled by appearances. Trust His Word. And in the end, you will see that He is always good, and that it was the devil who was lying to you all along. May the cry of faith never diminish: Remember, O Lord, Your tender mercies and Your lovingkindnesses, for they are from of old. To You, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, I trust in You; let me not be ashamed. Amen.