Second Sunday in Lent, 2010

Text: St. Matthew 15:21-28

The Rev. Jerry Kistler

St. Stephen’s Reformed Episcopal Church

Montrose, Colorado

“Grace to the Unworthy”

“Then Jesus went out from there and departed to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a woman of Canaan came from that region and cried out to Him, saying, ‘Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David.”

Jesus’ fame is spreading like wild-fire, even beyond the predominately Jewish area of Galilee—Jesus’ home-base—and on to the regions of the outsiders: the Gentiles. Tyre and Sidon were located on the coast to the north and west of Galilee, and were the two most important cities in the ancient Phoenician Empire (what in Jesus’ time was called the Province of Syria). These are not Jewish neighborhoods. So why is Jesus traveling there?

Well, perhaps He’s trying to get some anonymous time away from the demands of ministry back home. I think we can all identify with the need for anonymity sometimes, can’t we? He’d just fed the five thousand, and then, after taking a little stroll across the Sea of Galilee, He was instantly recognized by the people of that area, and they quickly sent out an email to their friends to come and bring all their sick and diseased, if only they might touch the hem of His garment. And as many as touched it were made perfectly well. But imagine being thronged like that every where you went.

So He leaves and goes up to Syro-Phoenicia for a while to take a much needed break. But even there His presence can’t be kept a secret. A local woman (called a Canaanite in the Gospel, which is just another way of saying a non-Jew—a castaway from the Land of Promise) sees him there, and she too instantly recognizes him. And she also recognizes in him the solution to her great problem. You see, the woman had a daughter who was possessed by a demon. Actually, the Scripture says the girl was “severely demon-possessed.” I don’t know a different kind, but we’ll take it to mean that the girl was probably completely incapacitated and “out of her mind” with this affliction. Imagine your child in that condition.

And so when the woman recognizes Jesus, it’s like a primal scream wells up and erupts out of her: “Mercy! Mercy, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is badly possessed by a demon!” She doesn’t even add a request. She just lays out her need. You can hear her desperation, and you can also hear just a little bit of excited anticipation. But can you imagine what she hears in response. Silence. Jesus doesn’t speak a word, but just keeps on walking. He completely ignores her.

Not to be denied, she starts in on His disciples. But they too only seem to want to get away from her. And so they finally come to Jesus and ask Him to send her away, because she kept following them and crying out after them, like a little Pekinese dog nipping at their heals. And maybe that was the image that came to all their minds, because when Jesus does finally speak He says, “I was not sent but to the lost sheep of Israel.” “Lord, help me,” she cries. “It is not good to take the children’s bread and to cast it [literally] to the little doggies.”

Is that the Jesus you know? If you were to make up a story about Jesus—about the Jesus you think you know so well—would you have ever made up one like that? Does it fit with your picture of who Jesus really was? I think a lot of us have a hard time with this one. As a matter of fact, many scholars and religious writers view Jesus’ answer to the woman as unkind, intolerant, racially slurred, and generally offensive.

This past week I came across a short commentary on this passage on the agnostic/atheist version of About.com. And here’s what the guy wrote:

“Jesus’ reaction here is odd and not entirely consistent with how Christians have traditionally portrayed him. Instead of immediately showing compassion and mercy towards her predicament, his first inclination is to send her away. Why? Because she isn’t Jewish — Jesus even likens non-Jews to dogs who should not be fed before his “children” (Jews) have had their fill.”

“Jesus’ attitude here is…cruel and haughty, treating the woman as unworthy of his attentions… Here we have a woman begging at Jesus’ feet for a small favor — for Jesus to do something that he appears to have done dozens if not hundreds of times. It would be fair to assume that Jesus loses nothing personally from driving unclean spirits out of a person, so what would motivate his refusal to act? Does he simply not want any Gentiles to have their lot in life improved? Does he not want any Gentiles to be made aware of his presence and consequently be saved?

“There isn’t even the issue of his needing the time and not wanting to make a trip to help the girl — when he does consent, he is able to help from a distance. Arguably, he could instantly heal any person of whatever ailed them no matter where they were in relation to him. Does he do that? No. He only helps those who come to him and beg for it personally — sometimes he helps willingly, sometimes he only does so reluctantly.

Overall, it’s not a very positive picture of the Almighty God we are getting here. What we are seeing is a petty person who picks and chooses which people he helps based upon what their nationality or religion is. When combined with his “inability” to help people from his home area because of their unbelief, we find that Jesus doesn’t always behave in an unreservedly compassionate and helpful manner — even when he does finally deign to leave some crumbs and scraps for the otherwise “unworthy” among us.”

Well, at least the guy is honest. He comes right out and says what some of us maybe wouldn’t admit to thinking. And he makes some pretty convincing arguments. I’d like to give my answers to those arguments this morning, but I have to warn you, the answers I have to give won’t be the easy ones you might read in your devotional books. They’re hard answers, and the ones we don’t always want to hear. But those are usually the kinds that are actually true. So here goes.

First, in response to the writer’s criticism that Jesus treated the woman as unworthy of God’s grace: well, the woman was unworthy of God’s grace. That’s the simple hard truth. All of us are unworthy of God’s grace. For grace to be grace you can’t be worthy of it. For grace to be grace you can’t earn it or deserve. You’ve got to receive it completely without your earning or deserving. That’s why it’s called grace, and not reward. But this also means grace is something we can’t expect or demand. Our unworthiness to receive grace in the first place takes us out of the running, so to speak, to be able expect or demand anything from God, including His grace—which I think is the most fundamental error this writer makes.

But what makes us unworthy? What made this Canaanite woman unworthy? It wasn’t because she was a woman (no matter what you husbands might think at certain points). It was even because she was a Gentile. It was because she was a sinner—a sinner, just like you and me. The Scriptures are clear that from the moment we were born, and even from the moment we were conceived, we were already rebels to the Majesty of God. “Behold, I was shapen in wickedness, and in sin hath my mother conceived me.” That, by the way, is David writing about his own in-uteral guilt, not the guilt of his mother. “Through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation,” says St. Paul. For “by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners” (Rom. 5:18, 19). That one man was Adam. We call it Original Sin, and we’ve all got it. So we don’t have a claim on God’s grace, because from the very start we’re going in the opposite direction from God.

But God’s grace comes to those who are unworthy of it. That’s the message of this passage. Those who want to point the finger at God, and find the blame with him, rather than with themselves, will never be able see this passage as displaying anything but the immeasurable, amazing grace of God to those who are unworthy of it.

Well then, secondly, to the writer’s charge that God is petty to pick and choose whomever He will to receive His grace: God does have a right to choose. That’s may be a very hard answer, but it’s also the truth. If no one is worthy of His grace and no one has a claim on His grace, then God doesn’t have an obligation to give His grace to anybody. That He chooses anyone is the really amazing thing. In His justice He could have by-passed us all, and left us to our own devices. That would have been the just thing to do. But God is a God of grace, and He did choose to give His grace to those who were unworthy of it.

He did choose, out of all the nations and tribes and families of the earth, the one nation of Israel to establish Hhis covenant with, and to place His covenantal love upon.

“For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a treasure above all peoples on the face of the earth. The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples; but because the Lord loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers…” (Deut. 7:6-8).

Jesus, when He was speaking to the Gentile woman of Samaria at Jacob’s well, said plainly: “Salvation is of the Jews.” Why, because He didn’t like Gentiles? Nothing could be further from the truth. As a matter of fact, God chose Israel first so that they would be His emissaries to bring salvation to the whole world. That was Israel’s mission. That’s why we hear the constant refrain through-out the New Testament that the gospel promise was for the Jew first, then the Gentile.

In his great sermon to the Jews in the temple, after he’d healed the lame man at the Beautiful Gate, the apostle Peter appealed to them by saying, “You are the sons of prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers…To you first, God, having raised up His Servant Jesus, sent Him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from your iniquities” (Acts 3:26).

Of course, the Jews as a body—as a nation--rejected the offer of the gospel, though there were always individual Jews who did receive it. And so later on it was the apostle Paul who said to the unbelieving Jews that “It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken to you first, but since you reject it, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, behold, we turn to the Gentiles. For so the Lord has commanded us” (Acts 13:46, 47).

So in this story of the Syro-Phoenician woman, Jesus is not rejecting the Gentiles. As a matter of fact, the story is a foreshadowing of how the grace of God would, in fact, go to all the Gentiles. It wouldn’t go to them through the Old Israel, but through the New Israel—the Church. But that time had not yet come.

Well then, third, to the writer’s criticism that, if He really wanted to, Jesus could have ministered His grace to anyone, no matter where they were in relation to Him, but that He didn’t do that, and He doesn’t do that, but only helps those who come to Him and beg for it personally, I say: Jesus is merciful to those who come to Him personally—that’s the really amazing thing—and we shouldn’t expect Him to be merciful to those who don’t. That again is a hard answer. But once again, we can’t expect Jesus to be merciful at all. We’ve forfeited that right. So how can we find fault with Him if He expects us to come to Him. In fact, He invites us to come to Him, who, if I were in His shoes, might look at you and me at tell us all where to go. The Scripture says, “He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become the children of God, to those who believe in His name” (Jn. 1:12). That’s what He gave to this woman: the right to eat the children’s bread, because she humbled herself to come to Him and beg for it. And why would we think it should have been any different?

So here’s a great paradox: our worthiness to receive the grace of God comes by accepting our unworthiness to receive anything from Him, but we come begging for it nevertheless. You see, those are the people in the Bible whom Jesus commends as having the greatest faith, and who receive what they seek. It was the sinful Publican, not the self-righteous Pharisee, who returned to his house justified—right with God—because he counted himself unworthy even to lift up his eyes to heaven, but cried, “God be merciful to me the sinner.” It was the Gentile centurion, who protested that he was unworthy even for Jesus to come under his roof, but all He needed to do was say the word, and his servant would be healed, of whom Jesus said He had not seen such great faith, no not even in Israel. And the man’s servant was healed that same hour.” It was this Canaanite woman, who said, “Yes, Lord, I am a dog. But even the dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their master’s table,” to whom the Lord replied, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done even as you as you have desired.”

But it’s those who insist on standing upon their own righteousness; it is those who refuse to accept their need of grace and think they are worthy of receiving the blessings of God, that the Word of God comes to them and says that they have actually made themselves unworthy of receiving the grace of God.

So what category do you put yourself in: the worthy, or the unworthy? Lent in is the time to rediscover our unworthiness before God. That may sound like strange way of putting it, but it’s the truth—that is what Lent is for, or at least part of what Lent is for—so that by the time Easter rolls around again, we’re prepared once again to receive God’s grace as just that: as grace, as the totally unearned, undeserved favor and love of God. God’s grace is for those who are unworthy of it. Let’s accept our unworthiness, and beg His grace.

Let’s pray,

ALMIGHTY God, the fountain of all wisdom, who knowest our necessities before we ask, and our ignorance in asking; We beseech thee to have compassion upon our infirmities; and those things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask, vouchsafe to give us, for the worthiness of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.