Historic First Lutheran Church of Pasadena

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Some of you will remember that I started last Sunday’s sermon with a comment that I have an idea that today’s Gospel is one of those sections of God’s Word that all of us here today need to hear in our daily lives but also one of those sections of God’s Word that most, if not all of us, struggle with in our daily lives. That same statement holds true for today’s Gospel as well.

We all know that words hold power. The old saying is not true: “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” Why we ever developed that little saying I’ll never know because really nothing can be further from the truth. Not only have we all experienced times in our own lives when words have hurt us., but we’ve probably all at one time or another carefully chosen the words that we spoke in order to hurt someone else.

Our Gospel today begins with some words: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” Those were words spoken by an outsider – a Canaanite woman. Those were popular words among Jewish people to refer to the long-expected Messiah. Those were words she had obviously somewhere along the line heard others use in order to set in motion some action from Jesus [Matthew 9:27]. But her words didn’t have the effect that she intended.

Leave it to the disciples to go running to Jesus with an annoying whine in their voices: “Jesus! Tell her to leave us alone! She’s bothering us!”

Then some words from Jesus we don’t expect. He seems to side not with the woman, but with the disciples. In our experience with Jesus’ life and ministry, we’ve come to know Him as a man of compassion, a man who would regularly throw out the scheduled events on the daily calendar in order to meet a need, a man who would often hang out with societal outcasts, a man who seemed to enjoy confusing His own disciples by what He said and by what He did.

For whatever reason, Jesus didn’t respond to His disciples – and to the Canaanite woman – the way we would expect. Instead, Jesus seems to agree with His disciples, giving the impression that the woman was indeed a bother, that she didn’t fit into His agenda because she wasn’t a “lost sheep of Israel.” But that didn’t deter the woman: “Lord, help me!” And then He really seems to go too far. It doesn’t take much interpretation of Jesus’ words to hear what the woman must have heard, to have Jesus look at her and make a comment about good food being fed to dogs.

Those words must have pierced her soul. They had to have hurt – at least I know they would have hurt me and you can probably say the same. The woman had approached Jesus and His disciples respectfully. The woman had intonated the proper mantra: “Jeshua [that’s Hebrew for “Savior”], bar David [that’s confessing Jesus’ royal blood], have mercy on me [she knew she had nothing of value within her to offer Him].”

Jesus’s response? “It’s not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.”

How many of us would have heard that comment and verbally lashed back at Jesus? Or, if we had been trained properly by our mothers, simply turned and walked away, figuring we were wasting our time?

But here’s the part that most of us have problems with. The woman accepted that slam. She owned those hurtful words. She responded, “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs get to eat the crumbs that fall from the table.”
Jesus called those “words of great faith.”

What was so great about them? What do they have to do with faith?

They’re very similar to the words we use so often here in worship, the words that begin many of our worship services, the words that say, “O almighty God, merciful Father, I a poor miserable sinner, confess unto Thee all my sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended Thee.” Those words never feel very good to say. They’re basically saying, “Yes, Lord, we are dogs. We have sinned against You in thought, word and deed. We have absolutely no right to approach You, no right to ask You anything, no right to expect anything from You, but because we know You we’re going to anyway.”

That’s exactly what the woman said: “Just as I am, without one plea but that Thy Blood was shed for me. Just as I am and waiting not, to rid my soul of one dark blot. Just as I am, though tossed about, with many a conflict, many a doubt. Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind. Just as I am Thou wilt receive because Thy promise I believe. O Lamb of God, I come.”

The tough part of those words is checking our egos at the door of the church. The tough part of those words is putting aside all our own accomplishments whenever we approach the Savior. The tough part of those words is being honest with ourselves, being honest with others, being honest with God. But whenever we get to that point – like the Canaanite woman did that day – we discover – often to our surprise – that the doors of God’s mercy fly open, that the wounded and pierced arms of our Savior receive us, that we are greeted with God’s smiles and laughter, that the plate placed before doesn’t hold a few stale crumbs but the richest food we can ever imagine.

Just yesterday I read a wonderful confession. It is admittedly from a fictional novel, but no words can be truer: “Tom, I am free. I could just see that Cross so clearly, just as it must have looked on that bare, forlorn hill two thousand years ago and I was flat on my face before it, so weighed down with my wrongs, my boasts, my choices, my SELF that I couldn’t rise an inch. All I could do was lie there, admitting and confessing everything and reaching out to that rough-hewn piece of wood like a drowning man reaches for a lifeline, and grabbing hold for my very life. And how can I describe it? I apologize, but the words will not capture the experience: I had nothing to offer Him, no incentive at all for Him, not the slightest item of value with which to barter or cajole. All I had was what I was. But He accepted me. I was so surprised and then relieved and then, with the steady realization of what had happened, ecstatic. My offering – nothing other than myself, Sally Beth Roe, pitiful, failing, and wayward – was accepted. I was what He always wanted in the first place and He received me. He lifted the load from my heart and I could feel it go. I could just sense it all drawn away from me and rushing up to that Cross. I felt so light. I thought I would be carried away by the slightest breeze. I was able to raise my head and then saw the closing of our transaction: a trickle of blood running down the wood and puddling on the ground. The payment. Such a gruesome sight, such a discomforting thought, but really, to be honest, quite appropriate considering what Jesus, the Son of God, had just purchased” [Frank Peretti, Piercing the Darkness, chapter 35].

Those may be fictional words in a novel, but they are so true. They are what happened to the Canaanite woman. They are what happen to you and to me every time we confess our sins, every time we allow God to feed us His forgiveness and love.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Pastor Christopher Schaar
Historic First Lutheran Church of Pasadena