Bible Passage: Matthew 15:21-28
Seminarian: Nate West
Sermon Date: September 1, 2024

Bulletin September 1, 2024

If you had been walking around a shopping mall in the 1990s you would have seen a particularly odd type of decoration lining the walls of the novelty shops.  These bizarre posters were normal sized, but they didn’t look like much.  No people, no pictures, no slogans, just little bits of color all arranged in perfectly random chaos.  You might describe them as a “colorful-static.”  The promise that went along with these posters was that if you stared at them for long enough, amazing 3-D images would pop-out at you, or that’s what was supposed to happen.  These could be maddening!  You could be sitting there, turning your head right to left, being so close your nose is touching the picture, staring at this for 20 minutes seeing nothing and some Johnny-come-lately walks up, looks at the same thing, “whoa, look at that!” and walks off.  Needless to say, some people could see the hidden picture, some it took awhile, and some never did see it.

In our sermon text today, we see a hidden picture of sorts.  Not hanging on a wall, and certainly not in a novelty shop, but in a man walking amongst sinners, eating, drinking, breathing, healing; Jesus contains that hidden picture.  Some people could immediately see who Jesus was, while others struggled to see it.  In our text we see a most unlikely person being the one who sees Jesus’ hidden image in all its divine glory.  To see this picture there are no cute tricks. You can’t squint just the right way or turn your head slightly to the left to see.  This hidden image within Jesus is only seen through the eyes opened through faith; a faith which recognizes its master and a faith which is recognized by humble confession, a faith that is found in humble places… even under a table?

Jesus and his disciples are getting out of Galilee, the heart of his ministry’s territory.  In fact, he decided to leave Israel all together, but where he went you might not expect.  Jesus left that place and withdrew into the region of Tyre and Sidon.  There a Canaanite woman from that territory came…  A Canaanite Woman?  There is a lot baked into that description; lots of bad blood here.  These Canaanites were the guys who had been a thorn in their side for 700 years.  It was their fault Israel didn’t fulfill its own manifest destiny, it was their fault Israel kept getting pulled back into worship of their heathen idols, it was all their fault.  Didn’t Jesus know he would run into someone like this here?

                        This foreign woman “kept crying out, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David! A demon is severely tormenting my daughter!”  So, they are walking along the road and: “Lord, Son of David!”  Jesus’ entourage probably imagined a lot of things a Canaanite might say to them, but “Son of David?”  David was an Israelite King, not Canaanite.   We don’t know exactly what she knew about that title, “Son of David,” maybe she had just heard it somewhere and thought some royal-sounding flattery would get his attention.  Maybe she had heard tell of the covenant Lord of the house of David.  Although we can’t say for sure how she recognized Jesus at this moment, her words give us a brief glimpse into her heart.  She sought mercy for herself and help of another.

If you thought this whole interaction was fairly predictable, it goes off the rails when we see Jesus’ reaction, he doesn’t say anything!  Even when his disciples try to get him to send her away, he only dismissively replies, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  This foreign woman was undoubtedly in earshot of this apparent rejection… and here is where we begin to see the mettle of her faith.  She knows a test when she sees one, and she doesn’t go home empty handed.  She recognizes Jesus, her master.  From her lowly station she sees his true heart, the one who speaks through his prophets things like, I will bring foreigners to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer.  She recognizes him and his promises, and she holds to them, she holds him to them…and so she persists, still she approaches, still she calls out for mercy.

Can we identify with this woman?  Does our faith recognize Jesus as our God, our master?  Or how often aren’t we tempted to look at Jesus as maybe just our helper?  Maybe the friend we meet at the coffee shop once a week to chat about old times.  Do we insist that Jesus our master be our daily guest and persistently cry out for His help and his mercy in all things?  Because that’s who He is.  On our own how often doesn’t our faith fail to call upon his strength, but even confine him to a “last resort” when all of our own wisdom and scheming fails us, if we look to him at all.

Thankfully, however, he looks to us and through his Word, he gives us eyes of faith and renews our vision to see him.  He gives us a voice to cry out to him, pleading for mercy from the Son of David.  And through our new eyes of faith, we do recognize the veiled attributes of our Master.  Who are His heirs?  Us, defiled sinners.  His strength?  Suffering on a Cross.  His victory monument?  A tomb. His victorious battle cry?  Mercy!  Only with the eyes of faith He gives can we recognize him in this way.  The glorious Godman who takes away the sins of the world.   Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

With eyes of faith, we recognize our master, our Lord, our Jesus.  But faith not only changes our eyes to see Him clearly, but it changes our heart to cry out for Him and his Mercy.  When we clearly see who He is and who we are, our hearts in confidence cry out to him in a humble confession.

Our Canaanite woman is continuing to cry out, making a spectacle of herself before Jesus and his disciples, and finally she “came and knelt in front of him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered her, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to their little dogs.” This isn’t exactly what we might expect is it?  A dog? This woman calls out for mercy to Jesus and he responds with… an insult?  Our pride is taken aback at this.  Only until, however, we stop and look at our God.  We realize we are missing a piece… WE don’t know her heart.  Jesus does.  He knows what is coming and he knows how she will accept such a “blow.”

The woman says, “Yes, Lord,” she said, “yet their little dogs also eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”  Isn’t this amazing?  This woman embraces her position under the table, as long as Jesus is her master.  Her confidence is completely removed from herself and it is completely found in him.  She is basically saying, you can call me a dog, a cat, a bird, old-fashioned, uncool, backwards, or just plain dumb.  What you call me doesn’t matter, You are who You are, and YOU are my identity.  She didn’t care what she was called as long as she was called His.  Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, your faith is great! It will be done for you, just as you desire.” And her daughter was healed at that very hour. 

Talk about getting an A+ on a test.  This isn’t a commendation that Jesus frequently gives.  But what made her faith great?  Was it the fervor with which she approached him?  It doesn’t seem like it. It was the woman’s confession of her relationship with her Lord.  This confession can only be described by the word “humility.”  You, Jesus are everything, I am nothing and I cry out to you for your mercy.  What is behind those words?  Faith. That faith is what Jesus recognizes, and what Jesus commends.  Those are the words of great faith that know the greatness of Christ.  Jesus goes on to grant her the mercy her faith requests and almost as an after-thought, the thing you wish for your daughter, my daughter, you got it. 

Martin Luther, died fairly unexpectedly of a heart attack in 1546.  After he had died the familiar process of going through his belongings commenced.  In searching the pockets of the coat, he was wearing on his deathbed a few scribbled notes were found.  What do you think a man who had spent most of his life defending “by faith alone” left behind as his final thoughts?  Luther, this giant of Christian theology, translator of his own bible, prolific writer and teacher beyond imagination writes simply:  We are beggars, this is true.  He got it! He saw the hidden picture, just like the Canaanite woman.  His deathbed epitaph isn’t a scholarly work on theoretical nuances, all his labor boiled down this humble refrain.  We are beggars before you Jesus, we are dogs under your table, be gracious to us, have mercy on us.           

Is this how we approach our Lord?  We would sure like to think so, but if we are honest, we realize how often we are tempted not to call out for God’s mercy in humble faith, looking instead to myself for my own deliverance.   We convince ourselves we are enough. Look at how much I give!  Look at how much more I do!  Note the recurring words, “Look and I.”   But when we stare at ourselves hard enough, we realize there is only one thing to perceive.  “Look” how much “I” am a lost sinner.

But thanks be to God that He comes to us in his Word, leads me to confess my arrogant self-reliance and to call upon Christ for mercy.  His Word points us to the cross where he humbled himself for us so we might humbly call him, Lord and Savior.

This changes us.  We no longer say I am great, in faith we say, I am a beggar.  We don’t say I am better than them, by faith we say, we are all beggars, and instead of looking at our faults and giving up in despair, we look at his triumph over the grave and we shout out not “I can’t do it” but instead “it is DONE!  Thank you!

When we see ourselves as beggars of Christ our focus shifts from “look, and I” to “Look at Him!” So, we embrace the focus he gives us. We confess HIM, we look at HIM, and we show HIM to others. 

We were all born not able to see who our master truly is . But we have a gracious God who comes out to meet blinded sinners like us.  He finds us and, by the faith he gives us, we see him in unlikely places; among the Canaanites beyond the borders of Israel, under the table, or in the pocket of a deathbed coat.  By that same faith we see the beggars that we are, and the master that he is.  We aren’t in a mall squinting to see some illusion emerge from a funny looking poster, but with the wide eyes of faith focused on our master we see a far greater image revealed: a cross, an empty tomb, a heavenly home with many rooms and a master who says come, see how much I love you.

Amen