Series A 14th Sunday a Pentecost (Proper
15) Rev. Ron Brauer
Texts: Isaiah 56:6-8 and Matthew
14:21-28 August 17, 2008
“Kyrie Eleison,
Silence, and Puppy Chow”
Kyrie Eleison. Lord, Have mercy. Amen.
Jesus continues to seek safe haven from the crowds whom He
fed and the Pharisees whom He has apparently offended, and enters the region
north and west of Galilee. He exits the country of Israel and enters the land
of the Canaanites.
As He arrives a woman seeks Him out. She leaves her pagan
country and heads toward the land of Israel, and her path intersects with the
promised Messiah. How she knows this is not given in the Scriptures. Perhaps
the Centurion whose servant Jesus healed by merely speaking the word has spread
the news from Capernaum. Perhaps those around Galilee who had been possessed by
demons had given her hope. Although we won’t know this side of heaven, we do
know that she was drawn to Jesus by the Spirit’s guiding, calling on Jesus.
“Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David. My daughter is wickedly demon possessed.”
Matthew’s “And behold” calls attention that even far
from the region of Galilee this Canaanite woman, also referred as the Syro-Phoenician
woman, calls to Jesus from behind His disciples. The Canaanites were a race of
people whom God told the Israelites that they should exterminate upon their
conquest of the land. But Israel failed to obey God, and as a consequence, they
have had to endure the pagan religion that surrounds them and detracts them from
true worship.
But the woman knows whom Jesus is and where to find Him.
How she longed to have the Messiah help her in her plight! Her physical
condition is not known, but her daughter’s condition is described as serious.
Because her daughter is wickedly demon possessed, we can safely assume that she
also is distraught, having tried what she could to reclaim her daughter from
Satan’s influence.
Her confession of Jesus as both Lord and Son of David shows
she acknowledges Jesus as her Lord as well as the expected Messiah. This is
over and above the crowd whose stomachs were filled just days before and those
Pharisees who should have known the Law and the Prophets who foretold the
compassion and teachings of the Messiah. Instead the crowds wanted a bread
king, and the Pharisees wanted a messiah they could control. Herod would just
want Jesus dead like John the Baptizer. Jesus would need to seek seclusion from
these threats, for it was not His time to save mankind from sin, death, and the
power of the devil. He would go to Jerusalem to fulfill the Father’s will.
Jesus could not go unnoticed. Just like fragrant perfume,
He is found by this woman who loudly laments her plea. Jesus hears her lament.
The Greek word used here is an imperfect verb, meaning she continued to call on
and on following Jesus and His disciples. Jesus, however, gives no reply. It
was as if Jesus wanted to avoid attention.
Jesus’ silence is used, however, for a divine purpose. The
disciples, by this time, are greatly annoyed by this unwanted attention. Jesus
had dismissed the crowd of 5,000 to spare the disciples of their demands for
more food from the 12 baskets they collected; now the disciples respectfully and
continually beg Jesus to dismiss this one woman. “Send her away. Dismiss
her. She’s getting on our nerves.”
Jesus replies, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the
house of Israel.” Jesus would work out salvation in the Jewish nation and
not elsewhere. But once this salvation had been accomplished, it would be
carried on for the whole world. Jesus is not being malicious or hateful to this
woman. He is being direct in fulfilling the will of His Father in heaven. He
knew that in order to completely defeat Satan He would have to go the way of the
cross and the grave.
The disciples have witnessed Jesus’ healing of other demon
possessed people, and this woman’s daughter would also be a worthy recipient of
Jesus’ attention. If only Jesus would deal swiftly with this woman so they
could slip back into the background and go unnoticed.
Now this woman comes before Jesus, worshipped Him by
kneeling in submission before Him and pleads, “ Kyrie Eleison. Lord, Have
mercy.” These are words we speak in the Divine Service. These are words
we speak in the Prayer of the Church. These are words this woman speaks to call
upon the Lord who made heaven and earth. She would renounce the pagan god, be
heartily sorry for her sins, and sincerely repent of them. She would not be
discouraged; she would continue to take her request to God in her prayer.
Jesus breaks His silence to this woman and plainly says to
her, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little
puppies.” This strange one-sentence parable sets a challenge before this
woman. Would she understand what Jesus was saying? Would she grasp the
heavenly meaning to this earthly illustration? Remember, Jesus would frequently
speak in parables wherever He went, beyond the boundaries of Galilee, and
including this woman.
For the third time, we hear her confession of faith.
“Yes, Lord, yet even the little puppies eat the crumbs that fall from their
master’s table.” The woman shows her understanding of the saying put to her
by Jesus.
She knew and she understood! She would be considered as a
little household puppy common in Gentile lands. Unlike the Jews who consider
dogs as scavenger animals, the Gentiles would domesticate dogs and treat them as
family pets. This woman considered her worthiness to receive what kept coming
from her master’s table, recognizing the True God of Israel as her master, and
the crumbs were that which continually gave life. She would see Jesus as the
Bread of life, and even a crumb, smaller than the fragments gathered by the
disciples earlier, would sustain her faith and lead her to confess Jesus as
Lord. She would then intercede for her daughter, just like the foreign
Centurion had interceded for his dying slave.
“O woman, great is your faith!” Jesus cried back to
her! “Be it done for you as you desire.” We know the result: The demon
removed, her daughter restored, the woman’s life at peace.
That, of course, is the story. Each of us comes before
Jesus, calling to Him, “Kyrie Eleison. Lord, have mercy.” We confess
our faith in Jesus as Lord and Messiah. Yet we often get the same treatment as
this unnamed Canaanite woman.
There is silence.
And that silence may hinder us from being persistent in our
prayers to God.
There are so many things that will hinder us in our
persistence to seek God’s help. The Canaanite woman was hindered in that from
the very beginning her race was under the condemnation of God. She came from an
idolatrous people. She was a woman making a bold approach to a religious
leader. She was wresting with her daughter’s demon. She was fearful for her
daughter’s well-being. All of these were her obstacles.
Those things that hinder us are no different. We get much
help in falling away from God. Friends, family, and our society, not to mention
Satan and our own sinful flesh, all hinder us from persisting in seeking God’s
help.
We are tempted to give up too easily. We are discouraged
by the long delay in receiving an answer to our prayers. We seldom wrestle with
God as Jacob did at the Jabbok River. In the silence of waiting for God’s
answer, we are tempted to take any answer from any source other than the still,
small voice of God.
“Pray without ceasing,” St. Paul writes to the
Thessalonians. The Canaanite woman gives us a practical example. What if she
had given up just before Jesus would grant her request? What if Jesus had cast
her from His presence and simply dismissed her with no compassion? Thanks be to
God! Jesus gave this woman faith to persist. Jesus would not reject her. He
does not reject us, either. He gives us that same kind of faith to persist in
prayer, even in long silence. Jacob would wrestle with God and would not let go
until God blessed him. That’s persistent faith! It times of waiting we must
wrestle humbly in prayer, communing with God as He speaks to us in His Word,
giving us guidance and hope in our waiting.
It is in times of waiting for God’s answer to prayer that
we remember our place in humility. The Canaanite woman recognized her place and
did not presume to take that which was not hers to take. She accepted God’s
plan for her as it was. We must not presume to tell God how and where to act
on our behalf. We do not prescribe to God how He should answer our prayers.
The Canaanite’s prayer was simply to take pity on her daughter. Jesus knew what
to do. He knows how to answer the needs in our lives. He knows how to answer
the needs of His Church as well.
You join the Psalmist in your time of need. You worship in
submission, and in humility you pray, “To You, O Lord, I call; my Rock, be
not deaf to me, lest, if You be silent to me, I become like those who go down to
the pit. Hear the voice of my pleas for mercy, when I cry to you for help, when
I lift up my hands toward Your most holy sanctuary.” (Psalm 28:1-2)
It was Jesus on the cross who took the ultimate silence of
God in our place when He cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken
Me?” That silence from God to His own Son was deafening. Yet Christ would
commit His spirit into the Father’s hands.
God has had mercy on you in Jesus Christ. Jesus was sent
to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. You, as that lost sheep, and even as
that Canaanite woman and her daughter, have been rescued from wicked demon
possession though the waters of Holy Baptism. In this washing God forgives your
sins, rescues you from death and the devil, and grants you eternal salvation.
Through baptism Jesus has claimed you as one of the sheep in His hand and
includes you as His treasured people in His pasture. He leads you with His
gentle and persuasive call out of the boundaries of idolatry and into His
Church, joining others who believe and confess, “O Lord, Son of David. Kyrie
Eleison. Lord, have mercy.”
It is in this presence of the Lord that you are humbled to
minister to Him, to love His name, and to be His servants. You join those who
reset their compass on the Sabbath, remembering that they are not the center of
the universe, but God is. You demonstrate the sincerity of your relationship
with God by taking a day of your time to confess that all your time is God’s
time, coming as a precious gift from Him. In this you exhibit true stewardship
of your time, as a trust from the Lord who made you, redeemed you, and
sanctified you.
The benefit received, as our Isaiah reading declares, is
God bringing you to His holy mountain. There you will be seated at His table,
joining Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that table set in the presence of your
enemies, the enemies to your faith, where God feeds you with that feast of
salvation. God will continue to gather the outcasts of Israel. He will gather
them into His house of prayer here on earth, just as He gathered the Canaanite
woman, as He gathered that Centurion, as He gathers you and me. He will
continue to gather people from shore to shore where endless prayer shall be
made.
Jesus would know the Canaanite woman’s weakness. She could
not rid her daughter of that wicked demon. Jesus knows your every weakness.
He knows your trials and temptations; He knows your wicked demon. You wrestle
with that pet sin, those times when your tongue speaks words that hurt, those
sins of distrust, those evil desires to reject the food God has given and
scavenge on the garbage of this world.
Jesus would speak His word of command to free this mother’s
daughter. He speaks His word to free you from your sin, your guilt, your shame,
your weakness. He grants even stronger faith as you eat the crumbs that come to
you continually from your Master’s table. It’s not Puppy Chow; it is the Bread
of life, Jesus Christ, your Lord, your Son of David, your Messiah. Amen.
Kyrie Eleison. Lord, have mercy. Amen.
