Pentecost 13 - The Crumbs

13th Sunday after Pentecost – August 14th, 2005
Matthew 15:21-28
“The Crumbs from the Master’s Table” – Vicar Matthew Peters

Grace, Mercy, and Peace from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

In this morning’s Gospel lesson from Matthew 15, we hear of the faith of the Canaanite woman.

Canaanites in the land of Israel deserved what they got. Canaanites were despised and largely ignored by Israelites. The Jews acted in most cases as though they didn’t even exist. In fact, they really weren’t supposed to exist according to the commands of God.
Back in the days of Moses and Joshua, as Israel was about to conquer the lands of Canaan - after the Exodus from Egypt and 40 years of wandering – it was God’s intent to rid the land of ALL it’s inhabitants; These were the people of Canaan - the Canaanites.
The Canaanites worshipped false gods, led terrible lives of sin, and led the Israelites astray. For any upstanding Jew, even the sight of a Canaanite would send shivers up and down the spine. Its no wonder God had wanted the people to rid them from the Promised Land.
And here in our Gospel text is a Canaanite trying to plead to Jesus for mercy. Not only a Canaanite, but a woman! For any woman to initiate a conversation with a Rabbi like Jesus was bad enough, but this woman was a Canaanite as well. An unacceptable foreigner – a female, unacceptable foreigner – terrible! It’s no wonder that after the woman’s initial plea for assistance Jesus does not say a word.

But what happens when you’re trying to ignore someone and they persist? After a while of it, the annoyance sets in. They just don’t seem to get the message – take a hint! This is how the disciples felt. “Ugh! Why won’t she leave us alone? Can’t she see that Jesus doesn’t want anything to do with her? Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us!”
Just imagine that you were walking down the street in a big city. You’re walking along and you see one of those bums, those guys who beg for money – money that you highly doubt is going to end up anywhere but the liquor store. You try not to make eye contact, but as you glance at his filth he looks up and asks for change. You take wider path around him as you pass by, you think that you’ve got by safely – then out of the corner of your eye, you see him start to get up. He follows you, he’s crying out, “Please help! Just a quarter, anything!” Walking faster doesn’t work, he’s still right on your heels – what are you going to do?
“Cut it out! Stop following me! Leave me alone!”
This is the reaction that we would be likely to give. This is the reaction that the disciples had expected to hear from Jesus. But that wasn’t quite how he answered;

“I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” Ooh, good one Lord! Even better! Put her back in her Canaanite place! You are not an Israelite, you aren’t worthy of His time.
But the woman was not satisfied. In fact, Jesus stopping to respond only gave her the opportunity to make her cries heard more plainly. She fell on her knees at his feet and said once again, “Lord, help me!”
“It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.”

Since Abraham’s covenant with God, the Hebrew people had been appointed the ‘chosen people’. Isaac, Jacob, the twelve tribes of Israel… all of these had God’s promise and favor. These were the children of Israel; the children of God… and these were the people to whom Jesus had been sent to do His ministry on earth. In order to fulfill the covenant of His Father, Jesus was the Messiah from and to the Jews.
To take His power, and give it to just any sinful Canaanite would be like taking the very food from His hungry child, and giving it over to a dog. Jesus was calling this woman a dog! There is no disguising it, her place in the pecking order was low – just like a dog.

This poor Canaanite woman, didn’t she realize that there wasn’t any hope for her? Jesus wasn’t there to help her, or her kind. Where does she get off even asking for a favor from such a person as Jesus? He is a Jew, sent to save the Jews, she is a Gentile – and a Gentile of the worst kind. Why would God help her? Why doesn’t she give up? She just isn’t a Jew.

I don’t know about any of you, but I am certainly not of Jewish descent. There is not a drop of Jewish blood in my ancestry that I am aware of. Where does that put people like me? If you’re not an Israelite, you aren’t a Jew. I guess that makes us Gentiles … and does that mean that Jesus would have considered us as dogs as well? No, certainly not. Not us! We were far better than Canaanites! Right? Well, the Italians ruled the world with an iron fist, and had no real religion other than government. The British Isles were filled with warring clans of semi-agrarian people. And the beloved motherland of Germany was a cluster of barbaric states that were being brought into the servitude of the Romans. None of these people were promised by God to be part of His chosen people, and there was certainly nothing in any of their cultures – or our modern culture either for that matter – that would gain them any credit in God’s eyes. Just generation upon generation of lost and condemned sinners – poor and miserable sinners. …Being a Canaanite, at least you were neighbors to the Jews.
That all sort of changes the picture a little, doesn’t it? Instead of rooting for getting rid of this woman, we realize that we are no better than she. We don’t deserve Jesus’ time or efforts any more than this Canaanite. We were not part of the covenant, we do not deserve God’s goodness. Our lives are imperfect, sinful messes – and we deserve nothing! Our ancestors rejected God way back around the time of the Tower of Babel. Our nation has no special relationship to God! We are little more than dogs!
Suddenly you have to realize, that however this ends up for the woman… it might be how things end up for us as well!

But just as you might expect her to walk away – Jesus has, after all, just called her a dog – But just as you might expect her to walk away, or perhaps respond in anger or frustration, she gives this humble reply:

“It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.”
“Yes, Lord,” she said, “but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”

The woman knows that she is not worthy. She agrees with Jesus that she is little more than a dog. Nothing about her lineage or history, her life or her family, there is nothing to grant any credit or can make her deserve anything that Jesus would give to her. All she asks for is a crumb. Just a crumb! Not even the leftovers or the table-scraps, but merely the unnoticed morsels that fall to the floor.

“Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.”

What’s this? All of a sudden she gets what she wants? Why the sudden change of heart? Was Jesus’ goal to drive this woman to despair? No. Did he finally get too fed up with her and give her what she wanted? Not in this case. Why would Jesus take the conversation the way that He did, only to give her what she wanted in the end?
Looking back on her words and actions more carefully, we are able to see a little better what Jesus saw from the start:

“Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
This woman knew that she was addressing one of royal status. The ‘Son of David’ is a prophets way of saying that the bearer of such a title is the one who has come to redeem Israel.
The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord help me!”
She is on her knees, this is a prayer, this is worship. This Canaanite Woman could see what so many of the Jews had missed. This is the Messiah, the Savior, God Himself in the flesh.
“Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”

Now my family never had a dog that we kept in the house, but some of my friends did. And between eating over at their houses and watching sit-coms, I know how interested dogs will get around mealtime. Even at a house that never feeds them table-scraps, and never sneaks brussel-sprouts to Fido, that dog is interested in what’s happening because where there are children eating, there are crumbs that fall to the floor.

This Canaanite Woman wanted nothing more than these crumbs. She knew that Jesus was so powerful that even the measly tidbits that weren’t even noticed by most would be enough to change her whole life.

For all of this, Jesus responds to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.”
This whole time, Jesus was testing her faith. Testing her faith, and I daresay, using her faith as an example to those ‘lost sheep’ that He was really sent to deal with. Here is a woman who knows that she is not worthy, she knows that she deserves nothing, she knows that her sinful life and her sinful past have put her on a road that comes nowhere near to God’s glory. But she also knows that God is far greater than her troubles.
The power of God goes far beyond the covenant that he made with the Israelites… and it’s a good thing too! Look how often the people of Israel fell away and had to be brought back to God. If God had wanted to, he could have showed how the people had broken the covenant, and therefore the contract was void – he did not have to send a savior, the world was on their own.
But that is not what God does. God kept his end of the bargain. The Israelites were indeed His chosen people. The Messiah came from their tribes and preached among their people. Jesus was a Hebrew, Jesus was an Israelite. But the promise of salvation did not stop with Abraham’s line – the promise of a savior extends all the way back to Adam and Eve.

Our God is so righteous and perfect that any sin on our account will render us worthy of hell. And ‘If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves…’ But our God is so loving and compassionate that merely a crumb of the grace that Jesus provided for us – as our Savior, as the Messiah who died in our place on the cross – merely a crumb of that righteousness is enough for all of eternity.

This means that you there – you sitting in the pews – you who realize that you have failed as a child of Go You who feel your sin and your shame. You who keep trying to be a better person but just cannot. You who know that your faith is weak and small.
Please pardon the pun, but… You who think that you have a crummy faith?

Rejoice in that crummy faith! Rejoice in that crumb of faith that God has given to you! Even if you have faith like a mustard seed, the Bible says that it is sufficient to move mountains! That little crumb of faith – that crumb that God has provided your sinful life is enough to save it.
This unacceptable Canaanite Woman, whom the Jews would reject and the disciples were so ready to send away, she only wanted a crumb from God – but that was great faith!
And where does such great faith as hers look for these undeserved kindnesses? It looks to Jesus himself, the Hebrew who was both God and Man – the Messiah who fulfilled the promise of the Father to the children of Israel.

The Ministry of Jesus was indeed to the Jews – what good would it have done if Jesus was born to a virgin amongst the Barbarians? The promise was to the children of Abraham, but by Him all nations were indeed blessed. Jesus did his ministry among the Jews, but His salvation was for the entire world. “Jews or Greeks, Slaves or Free…” as Paul puts it. Once there is salvation, there is no one who is more worthy than another.
The fact is that we are all as undeserving as dogs who wait for the crumbs to fall from the master’s table. … But the master has done the unthinkable – he has taken the bread from His child and has given it to the dogs. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus, the Son of God, was left without God’s favor as he hung upon that cross. He was handed over by those whom he came to save, and killed in the manner of the lowliest of the dogs – being crucified as a criminal by the Romans upon a cross. And this was all to lay before each one of us, sitting at the master’s feet, more than crumbs – but a great feast!

Grace abounds! Our cup runneth over! Though we are dogs, and undeserving, we are forgiven! Not because we have earned it, and certainly not because we deserve it – but only by trust and hope in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Faith in the forgiveness that He has given us!
And all of this provided for us dogs by the goodness of God through His Holy Spirit, the Word, and the Sacraments – all given to us by the master.
God’s grace is so great that we need only a crumb, the woman’s daughter was healed by such a hope, but God offers so much more than that crumb – He has given us His all – His life to save ours – His was the punishment that should have been ours…
All so that God can say to each of you; “You are forgiven! You are Saved! Alleluia!”
Amen.

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