First for the Jew, then for the Gentile

Sermon for Reminiscere – Lent 2

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

We have before us today a beautiful Gospel about great humility and great faith on the part of the Gentile woman, and about great kindness on the part of Jesus and His great power to deliver people from the devil’s power.

An unbeliever might hear today’s Gospel and accuse Jesus of being unkind to the Gentile woman who came to Him for help. Even believers might wonder why He treated her as He did. To me, this text has always provided a wonderful opportunity to step away from our entitlement culture—and from our entitlement nature—so that we can understand both ourselves and Jesus rightly.

Jesus leaves the boundaries of Israel proper to visit the northern lands of Tyre and Sidon, where mostly Gentiles lived. (It’s worth pointing out, for any who may have doubts, that the Gentiles were all the nations of the world except for Israel. A person was either a Jew or a Gentile.) So Jesus goes to Tyre and Sidon, but tried to remain hidden, as Mark tells us in his Gospel. Why was He there, then? From His later comments, it’s very likely He was seeking groups of Jews who lived there, in faithfulness to God’s promises to Abraham and to his descendants. The shining jewel in the crown of Israel was God’s promise to send the world’s Savior to them—not to them exclusively, but to them first. The Jews were the invited guests at the heavenly banquet. The Jews were the ones who were supposed to receive the Christ and all His benefits. As Paul says in Romans 1, the Gospel is the power of God for salvation to all who believe, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.

So Jesus went north, and the demons were active there, too. A Gentile woman’s daughter was possessed or otherwise afflicted by a demon. And somehow the girl’s mother had heard about Jesus, heard that He was the Son of David, the promised Messiah who would come to Israel, but from Israel would also welcome the Gentiles into His kingdom. So she found Him and pleaded for help: Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David! Hopefully you recall singing those very words already this morning, right after the Introit. Lord, have mercy upon us!

Were you as desperate when you sang those words as this woman was, do you think? Was your song that sincere, that urgent? Think about that for a moment. Think about what those words actually mean. You have desperate needs; only the Lord can fulfill them; so you cry out to Him for His help. Is that what you’re crying out when you sing them? Shouldn’t it be? This is a healthy reminder not to say or sing the words of the Liturgy in vain, which would be worthless and worse than worthless, a breaking of the Second Commandment not to misuse the name of the Lord your God. You’ll have the chance to sing the same words again today in the Agnus Dei right before Communion. Have mercy upon us! I hope you’re thinking about when you sing them.

The Gentile woman in the Gospel cried out with all sincerity and desperation, Lord have mercy upon me! And she got no reply. Nothing, either positive or negative. Jesus heard her, but seemed to be ignoring her. You could view that as meanness, which would be wrong. Or you could view that as Jesus urging her to be persistent in her request and preparing His disciples for an important lesson about Jews and Gentiles.

She kept crying out. It became so uncomfortable that Jesus’ disciples urged Him to send her away.

But that wasn’t His purpose. He replied, Jesus’ reply is striking, “I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” From Scripture, we know that the Son of David was to be a Light to the Gentiles, that He was supposed to gather the Gentiles into His kingdom, that the Gentiles would seek Him and put their hope in Him. Those prophecies help us to understand Jesus’ words. Again, it was never about exclusivity for the Jewish people. But it was about chronology, doing things in the right order. Israel was to receive the Christ first. He was sent to help them first. It’s why He was born and raised in Israel. It’s why He conducted almost all of His ministry in Israel. God had made certain promises to Abraham and to His offspring. Why? Because they were a better race than the rest of men? Not at all. God tells them that He didn’t choose them because they were better. On the contrary, they were a stiff-necked, stubborn people who easily went astray. It was an election of grace. He chose them for His own reasons, for His own purposes. He gave them the Gospel as a gift. And so the Gospel was “first for the Jew.”

But it was never meant to be only for the Jew. The woman in our Gospel clung to that truth, held fast to Jesus as One who would help her, regardless of her Gentile race. She came and worshiped Him, saying, “Lord, help me!” “Worshiped” is probably not the best translation. She knelt down before Him and pleaded with Him.

And as she was down on her knees, begging (something like the picture on today’s service folder), Jesus placed one more test before her, yet another obstacle in her way. He answered and said, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.” What would she do with this response? Would she become indignant? Would her pride cause her to get angry with Jesus, to accuse Him of racism? No. As she sits there, begging on her knees, she’s happy with Jesus’ analogy, happy to be compared with a little beggar-dog. Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.

Her humility before Jesus, combined with her unwavering faith in Him, is a shining example for all of us, as Jesus Himself attests, as Mark emphasizes in his account: For this saying go your way; the demon has gone out of your daughter, whereas Matthew emphasizes the woman’s faith is making such a statement: O woman, great is your faith!

What was so great about it? It claimed nothing before God. No virtue. No merit. No entitlement to God’s help. It allowed God to put her in her place, not only as a Gentile, but more importantly as a sinner who deserves God’s wrath and punishment. There was no fighting back, with a, “God, I deserve to be treated better than this! How dare you refer to me as a little dog!”

No, her faith shone brightly for the disciples to see, and Jesus rewarded her for her it. See, Jewish disciples! Not only the Jews are capable of faith in God. Not only the Jews will receive help from Jesus. On the contrary, this Gentile woman showed greater faith than most of the Jews. That would be a recurring pattern they would see going forward. The favored race of the Jews, the ones to whom the Messiah came first, would mostly tragically reject their Messiah and put Him to death on a cross. And more tragically still, the majority of the Jews would still reject Jesus after His resurrection and ascension and the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, whereas larger numbers of the Gentiles would believe.

So does God see a person’s race? Well, God made every single one of us, through our parents, so it isn’t as if He’s oblivious to race. He sees everything about everyone—everyone’s personal and family and cultural history, every trial we’ve ever faced, every struggle, every genetic strength, every genetic weakness. He sees it all. And, in His own wisdom and for His own reasons, He chose to put each one of us where we are, some with more earthly benefits, some with less, some in one country, some in another, some with good families, some with bad. What He doesn’t do is treat us differently or love us more or less because of any of that. He is not a “respecter of persons,” as James puts it. He doesn’t show favoritism to anyone, neither to white nor to black nor to brown. The same holy Law condemns all who fall short of its righteous requirements, and that’s everyone. And the same Gospel promise goes out to everyone descended from Adam and Eve, and that’s everyone.

It’s the human race. That’s the only race that really mattered to Jesus, except for fulfilling God’s promise to go first to the Jews, then to the Gentiles. He took on that human race in order to take a human body to the cross and pay for humanity’s sins. Now He calls for His Gospel to be preached equally to people of every race, repent and believe the Gospel! That message went out first to the Jews, but now has reached all the Gentiles as well, even you and me.

So treasure your Baptism! It separate you from the mass of the human race and made you children of God and heirs of eternal life, together with all the Jews and Gentiles who have believed in Christ Jesus over the ages. And that means you can beg for the Lord’s mercy at any time, for any reason, and you can know that He’ll give the help you need. As we sang in the hymn today:

Commit whatever grieves thee
Into the gracious hands
Of Him who never leaves thee,
Who heaven and earth commands.
Who points the clouds their courses,
Whom winds and waves obey,
He will direct thy footsteps
And find for thee a way. Amen.