Sermon - 11th Sunday After Pentecost (8/16/2020)
Is. 56:1-8; Ps. 67; Rom. 11:1-2a, 29-32; Mt. 15:21-28
I have to admit it: Neither Jesus nor his disciples come across very well in this gospel passage. They have gone to the region of Tyre and Sidon, outside of Israel, in what today is southern Lebanon. A woman of that district comes to Jesus, distraught over her troubled daughter. She is not Jewish, but she addresses Jesus as a Jewish king: Have mercy on me, Son of David, my daughter is suffering. Yet Jesus does not answer her.
The disciples of Jesus urge him to send her away – she’s making too much noise, she’s making a nuisance of herself. That’s not a surprise; the disciples of Jesus are always trying to send people away. They wanted to send away the 5000 rather than feed them, so that’s nothing new. But Jesus answers the disciples by saying, I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. Is Jesus saying he will deny her mercy, because of her ethnicity? Really?
The woman interrupts this conversation, falls to her knees at the feet of Jesus, and says, Lord help me. And Jesus says “It’s not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Did Jesus just call this woman a dog? Because of her ethnicity? I’m sorry, I don’t care if he is the Son of God, that’s unacceptable.
What are we to make of this gospel story? This pagan woman seems to know the gospel better than Jesus does. She has no doubt heard about how Jesus has healed many, freed many people from their demons, how Jesus has fed thousands and taught the radical abundance of God’s kingdom of mercy and compassion for all. And having heard all this, she comes to Jesus with confidence and trust, because her daughter is suffering. So how can Jesus treat her so badly? It’s hard to understand.
Some say perhaps Jesus was just testing this woman, holding back to see what her response would be. For me that’s not a very satisfying answer. She is clearly distraught over her daughter’s suffering, that is no time to play games. I hope that I would never do that to anyone, and I have to assume that Jesus is at least as compassionate as I am – probably a lot more compassionate, actually – so that explanation doesn’t do much for me.
Others have suggested that this woman actually taught Jesus something about how the kingdom is more expansive and inclusive than even Jesus had realized at first. We often don’t think about Jesus having to learn things – but obviously he did. When he was a baby in the crib at Bethlehem he didn’t know how to be a carpenter, he had to learn those skills along the way. If Jesus is fully human, he must have had to learn at least some things he didn’t know before. As John Newman once said, to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often. So it’s not out of the question that Jesus could have learned something here.
Especially in our own time, when people who have historically been looked down upon are speaking up and when there are many voices among the disciples of Jesus saying, I wish those people would be quiet! Go away! – maybe if our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was not above having to learn from a pagan woman, maybe we too should listen and learn from people who are different from us, especially people who have been often looked down upon and not listened to – women, people of color, gay people, immigrants.
Other interpreters have taken a different approach. They point out that Jesus is not in Israel, that he’s left the territory of King Herod after the execution of John the Baptist and all the events we’ve been reading about in the gospel passages the last couple of Sundays. That Jesus is the refugee, taking shelter among his own people who are immigrants and marginalized in the district of Tyre and Sidon. And perhaps it’s a woman of the majority group who comes to him, like an American woman coming to a Central American migrant who says to her, Our children are hungry and sick, and you expect me to care about your daughter? After what your president says about us?
Whether that’s what was actually happening, I don’t know, but this interpretation is definitely onto something: How you hear this story depends on who is the insider and who is the outsider, and it’s not necessarily clear who is which. And that is the key to the best interpretation of this passage that I have yet seen, which comes from a sermon preached in the year 1522 by our old friend Martin Luther.
Luther found the words of Jesus to be as harsh and shocking as we do; it’s not just that Jesus is being politically incorrect by 2020 standards. And yet, Luther says, pay close attention to what Jesus does and says in this story, and notice that he never tells the woman No. It sure sounds like No, and you can see why someone might think Jesus is saying No, but he is not saying No and this Canaanite woman understands that he’s not saying No.
So, she comes to Jesus saying, Have mercy on me Son of David, my daughter is in trouble. And at first Jesus says nothing. This is something we have all experienced: we bring our troubles and needs to God in prayer, and God seems to be silent. Someone could hear that silence as a No. Look, I prayed, and nothing happened. But if we have faith – if we trust that Jesus is who he says he is, that God is who God says God is, full of love and mercy, slow to anger and abounding in compassion, desiring that we have life and have it abundantly – then even when God is silent for the moment we know that God has heard our prayer, that God knew what we needed even before we asked for it, that God is watching over us and caring for us whether we feel it or not. So silence is not No.
In the story, the disciples of Jesus say, Let’s tell her to go away. When the disciples wanted to send the 5000 away, Jesus didn’t say yes or no but asked a leading question: Why don’t you give them something to eat? And here Jesus replies to the disciples who want to send away this pagan woman: I came to save the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Which sure sounds like Jesus is agreeing with the disciples – but is he really? Who are the lost sheep of the house of Israel? Just because this woman is not one of the Jewish people, who is to say that she’s not one of the lost sheep of the house of Israel?
Unspoken in the words of Jesus are passages like today’s first reading from Isaiah: “The foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to love the name of the Lord and to be his servants, these I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful, 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.” Jesus may not have spoken that promise, but the woman knows it. She’s the one who comes to Jesus, calls him Son of David – the title of a Jewish king – and trusts in the promises of Isaiah that the disciples seem to have forgotten. She trusts that she is one of those for whom Jesus came, even if the disciples of Jesus don’t see it that way.
And so she isn’t deterred by what Jesus says to the disciples, she approaches him, falls to her knees and says, Lord, help me. The answer of Jesus: It’s not good to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs. Which, again, sure sounds like No, but is it? We may assume that the Jewish insiders are children and the pagan outsiders are dogs, but Jesus didn’t say that.
And the woman’s response is not to say: It’s not fair to discriminate like that, I’m just as good, I’m just as worthy as those people over there. She is a woman of faith, she knows it’s not about what she’s entitled to, but it’s about who God is. She hears the words of Jesus and smiles, because she knows Jesus is saying Yes. She knows that Jesus fed the 5000 and there were baskets and baskets of leftovers. She knows that the generosity of God towards God’s children is so great that there’s plenty of leftovers for the dogs too. So what if I am a dog, she says, I know there’s enough mercy, I know there’s enough grace, I know there’s enough of a place at this table even for me, whether I’m worthy of a place or not. And so it is, and Jesus commends her faith, and her daughter is set free as she had asked.
This passage sets before us the question: Do we come before God as insiders or as outsiders? Luther’s answer to this question is Yes. We don’t come before God saying, I deserve this, I’m entitled to this, I’m just as good as they are, God doesn’t want to hear any of it. We are all outsiders to the family of God. But the moment we come before God trusting, not in what we deserve, but in what God has promised even to those who have sinned and fallen short – when we trust that God is who God says God is, that’s when we discover that God has chosen in Christ to make us God’s own children. And like the Canaanite woman, like any mother whose child is suffering, God will crawl over glass for you. God will endure any humiliation, God will pay any price, God will not take No for an answer from the disciples of Jesus or anyone else, so that you can be set free and find your place as a child of God.
In this gospel passage, the disciples who thought they were insiders actually didn’t have a clue; the woman of Canaan knew she was an outsider and therefore received the mercy she sought. We are outsiders because God is just and we are not; but we discover ourselves to be God’s beloved children because God is love, if only we have faith to trust God. And if we do, then with the woman of Canaan and her daughter, with all of those who have – despite themselves – discovered that they are children of God, we make our own the psalm written centuries ago:
May God be merciful to us and bless us;
may the light of God’s face shine upon us.
May God’s ways be known upon the earth,
God’s saving health among all nations.
Let the peoples praise you, O God;
Let all the peoples praise you.
May God give us blessing,
And may all the ends of the earth stand in awe.
(Martin Luther’s sermon is available here. )