Sermon: Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Matthew 15:21-28, August 20, 2023 Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

Sermon: Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Matthew 15:21-28, August 20, 2023

Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

You’ve just heard a remarkable gospel story, one in which Jesus shows his humanity and what appears to be his prejudice against foreigners, in this case the Canaanite woman.

Jesus and his disciples were traveling in the area of Tyre and Sidon, which was non-Jewish, or Gentile territory. A Jewish man of Jesus day would have had nothing to do with a Canaanite, especially a woman. So, there were two strikes against her – she was a foreigner and she was a woman, thus, impure. Jesus would have risked defiling himself by engaging with her. And remember that Jesus was religiously observant and honored the religious traditions of his upbringing.

But this exchange seems so unlike the Jesus we have come to know as one who routinely broke down dividing walls to come to people’s aid. But that’s not what happened in this story. The Canaanite woman was desperate for help because her daughter was tormented by a demon. The woman cried out: “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David” – this was an attempt to meet Jesus where he was in terms of his own faith tradition, naming him as Son of David, the great Jewish king.

But Jesus completely ignored her, in keeping with his religious custom. To get a visual sense of Jesus’ response to the woman, look at today’s bulletin cover with Jesus’ arms crossed in a standoffish posture – a picture is worth a thousand words…. But the woman persisted to the point where the disciples pleaded with Jesus to send her away. Jesus then revealed this: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” That is, foreigners were beyond the scope of his religious mission. Still the woman persisted, kneeling before him in the posture of worship, “Lord, help me.”

And then Jesus uttered the terrible insult, finally directing his attention to her: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” In Jesus’ day, dogs were not adored household pets as they are today. So, Jesus’ comment was quite derogatory and dismissive.

Again, this exchange is so unlike the Jesus we know from so many other gospel stories where Jesus has compassion on people in need, especially the downtrodden and outcaste, and teaches about breaking down the walls that divide.

This exchange between Jesus and the Canaanite woman reveals a major problem when it comes to human religious and cultural and ethnic impulses.

And that problem has everything to do with preoccupations with religious or ethnic purity, that truly religious people, who have pure religion, cannot risk being defiled by others who are not religious in the same way and thus are deemed unclean, impure. The same problem exists in terms of perceptions of ethnic or cultural, or ideological and political purity.

Most all human faith traditions and cultures have this dynamic in one way or another. We’ve seen it in action throughout history. In extreme forms, the idolatry of ethnic or racial purity can lead to genocide as evidenced in the Holocaust against the Jewish people in the mid-20th Century, when Jews were deemed racially inferior and dirty in comparison to the alleged purity of the Aryan race.

And we see these purity preoccupations in the news every day now in America. LGBTQIA+ people are deemed by the religious right to be impure and thus they must be shunned and books about them must be banned from libraries and courses in school sympathetic to their cause must be discontinued allegedly in order to protect innocent children from being profaned.

Examples of this abound. It’s so very destructive, and cults of purity have caused untold human suffering throughout history and today. And it’s all rooted in fear of the other who happens to be different from whoever is in the “in” group.

And Jesus himself in today’s gospel story seems to be prone in his humanness to these same purity preoccupations. But the good news in the story is that Jesus came around. How so? What made the difference for Jesus that provoked him to change his mind about engaging the Canaanite woman in her desperate need? In short, it was the woman’s persistence and audaciousness in faith that drove Jesus finally to attend to the woman’s needs. Each of her actions in approaching Jesus was an expression of faith – addressing Jesus as Son of David, kneeling in worship before him, calling him Lord, and culminating in her retort back to Jesus after his insulting comment: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

The undeniable evidence of the woman’s faith is what finally broke down the walls that Jesus seemed to erect, and he finally exclaimed the truth: “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And then Matthew reports that “her daughter was healed from that moment.”

Suddenly this story becomes very Lutheran, for it’s all about faith. Sola fide. Faith alone ends up making the difference, that is, the woman’s insistent, persistent, audacious trust that despite all the obstacles God’s mercy would finally prevail. That’s what Lutherans believe!

And you know what? We’re all the Canaanite woman. That is, truth be told, we are not worthy of divine mercy amidst our sin and shortcomings, and yet we, too, implore God for mercy, persisting in audacious faith, which is itself a gift from God.

We express this faith-filled trust every time we approach this sacramental table to receive God’s mercy mediated to us in the presence of Christ amidst bread and wine.

This dynamic is beautifully revealed in a prayer Episcopalians and others pray just before they receive the Eucharist. It’s called the “Prayer of Humble Access” and it reads like this: “We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy. Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.”

This is the same flesh and blood that was offered in the most universal embrace in the history of the world on the cross of Christ, an embrace vindicated and made good by the victory of his empty tomb, an embrace that ultimately breaks down dividing walls, cures the fever in our blood that causes us to fear others and lash out at those who differ from us. Thus, picture Jesus on the cross, arms not crossed in a defensive posture, but stretched out wide in love for the whole world and all of creation.

With its welcome embrace, the death and resurrection of Christ, and indeed the whole Christian mission, become a fulfillment of the universal vision of welcome articulated by the prophet Isaiah in today’s first reading: “For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel: I will gather others to them besides those already gathered.” (Isaiah 56:7b-8)

And lest we think that the mission of Christ superseded or replaced the covenant God established with the people of Israel, listen again to how Paul assures us that the Jewish people are not rejected, but continue to be included in God’s embrace. Paul writes, “I ask, then, has God rejected the chosen people? By no means!... For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” (Romans 11:1a, 29)

Our faith generated and emboldened by the radical extent of God’s embrace in Christ, we are empowered, then, to be persistent, insistent and audacious in our own prayer life and in our mission and ministry, not giving up on the daily struggles for justice, but seeking to break down the walls humans erect out of fear of others. In short, we live by faith, not fear, as we live for others, welcoming others with the embrace of God’s gracious and saving love.

So, let our Hymn of the Day, which we’re about to sing, be our audacious prayer which sums up and inspires our own ministry and mission as a congregation as we seek in the power of the Spirit to extend God’s embrace to all: “Build a longer table, not a higher wall, feeding those who hunger, making room for all, feasting together, stranger turns to friend, Christ breaks walls to pieces; false divisions end.” (All Creation Sings 1062) Amen. Let it be so, Lord Jesus, let it be so. Amen.