Matthew 15:21–28 (EHV)
Jesus left that place and withdrew into the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22There a Canaanite woman from that territory came and kept crying out, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David! A demon is severely tormenting my daughter!”
23But he did not answer her a word.
His disciples came and pleaded, “Send her away, because she keeps crying out after us.”
24He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
25But she came and knelt in front of him, saying, “Lord, help me.”
26He answered her, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to their little dogs.”
27“Yes, Lord,” she said, “yet their little dogs also eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”
28Then 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.
“We Have a Listening Savior”
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I’ve never been especially handy. I think in the 14-plus years that Karen and I have been married, I’ve improved a small amount in that regard, but doing plumbing or landscaping or woodworking has never been anything that comes naturally. And, because those things don’t come naturally the temptation is strong to avoid them completely, or give up on them at the first moment of friction or frustration.
And yet, not bailing on something immediately can lead to great blessings righT? If you stick with a problem and try to solve it, you might figure something out, acquire a new skill, or at least learn that, yes, for sure, in the future, I should hire a professional to handle this problem. But to get to that point, you have to be persistent.
Through the great faith in the Canaanite woman, Jesus teaches us about our prayer life and how we should bring requests to our God. He doesn't want us to give up or to question whether we have permission to ask for him help. No, Jesus assures us that We Have a Listening Savior. That's true regardless of who we are, and so we pray with persistence.
The Gospel for today takes place close to the midpoint of Jesus' earthly ministry, just after the events from the previous weeks’ Gospels coming after Jesus finding out about John the Baptist’s execution by King Herod, the feeding of the 5,000, and Jesus going out to meet the disciples on the water in the middle of the storm. At the beginning of our lesson, Jesus withdrew from Jewish region of Galilee and headed northwest, to Tyre and Sidon, two prominent cities for the Phoenicians. Jesus was now in Gentile country.
The Jewish people very often saw themselves as above the Gentiles. Despite God making clear that his promises were for all people, you rarely see the Jewish people showing spiritual concern for the Gentiles. Instead, they tended to flaunted their superiority. They were God’s chosen people after all!
That helps to add some color to the disciples' attitude toward the woman who was crying out after Jesus. They didn't want to be bothered by this woman, let alone a Gentile. Even Jesus' words, initially, can put us off a bit and make us wonder what he was doing and why he was acting that way. Despite the cold shoulder the woman was getting from Jesus and his disciples, she was still confident that Jesus not only could, but would heal her daughter.
It was pretty brazen of her, a Gentile woman, to ask Jesus, a Jewish man, for anything. She had no right to even talk to him, culturally speaking. Yet she makes this great request of him. But there was a much bigger divide between she and Jesus than just cultural norms: she was a sinner, and she was talking to God.
You and I had the same wall separating us from God as well. And this isn't little chain-link fence that you can see through. This is a solid wall, hundreds of feet tall, covered in razor wire. It's an unscalable and unconquerable wall. We can't talk to God, we can't see God, we can't get any help. We can't do a single thing to bring that wall down.
And yet that woman still prayed and sought Jesus' help. Because our Listening Savior didn't care where she was from or who her parents were. He was concerned about her. He himself tore down that wall of sin that was between them. That was his whole reason for being here. He was to bring and be the bread of life to all people, including this humble and persistent Canaanite woman!
That gives us food for thought too. It can be easy to slip into stereotypes and prejudices. What do we think about people who are different than us? Does race change what we think about a person before we even meet them? Do socioeconomic differences change what we think about a person? Do we think someone is not worthy of our time or attention because of how different they are from us? Do we think, like the disciples might have, that they're not worthy of our Savior?
And really, that's true. They are not worthy of Jesus. But it’s not that we are and that aren’t. We are not worthy of Jesus either. In the end, there is no difference between any of us. In God's sight we were all sinners, walled-in by our willful disobedience.
Praise be to God, though, that he didn't just come to save a select group of people! Jesus came to save all people! He made that point very clear as he praised the woman's faith. Jesus’ death and resurrection is for all people, everywhere. Jesus death is for you and me, your neighbor and coworker, the person who loves you and the person who despises you—the entire world! All the things we did wrong? They're gone, nailed to his cross! All the things we should have done right? Jesus did them in our place. The wall has been broken down and we are now God's children, dearly loved by our Heavenly Father!
But there's something else striking about this woman's plea for help beyond her ignoring of cultural norms. Did you notice how persistent she is? Jesus completely ignores her request, and she keeps crying out after him. She races ahead and kneels down before him and begs. Jesus even insults her by calling her a “little dog”, a dog that would've been permissible in the house as a pet but not of any use in hunting. Yet still she doesn't swerve from her request. Her desire to have her daughter healed was that great, and her faith that Jesus could do it was that strong.
Why did Jesus behave like that? Is Jesus betraying some hostility to the Canaanite people himself? Is Jesus himself being the racist that we just warned each other against? Hardly. Jesus had a two-fold purpose to his attitude and his answers here. The first was to test the woman's faith. The second, and perhaps more important, was to teach his disciples, including you and me, how to be persistent in our prayers.
The temptation is there, in our prayer life, just as it might be for me doing home repairs: try once, and if nothing happens, give up. “I prayed about it,” we might say, “and nothing happened. God must either not want to give me what I asked for or simply wasn't listening.” How much farther from the truth could we be? God wants us to pray with confidence to him, knowing that he does indeed hear and answer our prayers.
So God didn't answer us 15 seconds after we prayed about something once? Pray again, and again, and again, and again. And then what do we do if it seems like Jesus isn't answering our prayers? We ought to examine what we are asking, and how we're asking it. Are we praying like Jesus prayed, that above all else God's will would be done in our lives? Are we praying that whatever is best for us, that's what Jesus would allow to happen to us?
We pray confidently, boldly, and persistently because God has attached such awesome promises to prayer. The apostle Paul urges us to “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17) because, as James wrote in his letter, “The prayer of a righteous person is able to do much because it is effective” (5:16). The power doesn't rest in the prayer itself, but in the one answering it. The prayer isn't just a good mental break and exercise for us, it's asking our heavenly Father for the things we need, or even the things we'd just like to have happen. We don't pray hoping God will hear us; we pray knowing God will answer us. James said that the prayer of a righteous person is able to do much, to be effective. That has nothing to do with our worthiness to come to God, the strength of our faith, or how well we pray; it has everything to do with God making us righteous in his sight through Jesus' death and resurrection.
And that's where our comfort lies. It doesn't matter who we are or where we've come from. God loves us. It doesn't matter what we've done or the guilt we carry with us. God's forgiven us. And it doesn't matter how unworthy we think our prayers and requests are. God will answer us. Sometimes it might be a resounding yes, sometimes a no, and sometime God might simply be telling us to wait for something better to come. Regardless, we continue to pray persistently, with confidence, and in Jesus' name because he’s forgiven you according to his will because he loves you. How awesome it is to be heard, day or night, by our listening Savior! Amen.
