SPEAKER_00: Well, our gospel reading today is a very controversial passage, actually, to modern readers, which I'm sure as Steacon Jane was reading, you may have been curious about this dialogue between Jesus and this Canaanite woman.
SPEAKER_00: Modern interpreters who even go so far as to have racist or sexist overtones in this dialogue between Jesus and this woman.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of these readings do create what I believe is a foil out of the dialogue in this encounter, a foil out of Jesus, that is who Jesus actually is, who we know Jesus to be just thus far in Matthew's gospel, the way he relates to outsiders, to non-Jews, and to women.
SPEAKER_00: And it also creates a foil of this Canaanite woman and the concerns that are actually bearing out.
SPEAKER_00: I think actually, whenever we read this encounter between Jesus and this Canaanite woman, that we see it in the context of the drama unfolding in Matthew and in just the larger history of Israel, that what comes to the surface is actually more controversial than what a modern reading would be.
SPEAKER_00: It's controversial in regards to the claims that are being made about faith here, the power of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Faith is everything in the Bible, especially the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: If you see Jesus' ministry just in the Gospels, Jesus will actually praise faith more than he'll praise love.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is very serious about love.
SPEAKER_00: And when Jesus praises faith and he sees faith, faith seems to be very rare, which may sound odd to us, but Jesus will speak, and it's as though faith and Jesus' ministry is as powerful as it is rare.
SPEAKER_00: Which is odd considering people are walking around, there's angels and demons and spirits and praying, and yet so little faith.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that wild?
SPEAKER_00: And I think in our times, times modern, though for different reasons, faith has come on hard time.
SPEAKER_00: But here in the ministry of Jesus, faith is often portrayed as as powerful as it is rare.
SPEAKER_00: And we use this word right all the time.
SPEAKER_00: We describe ourselves as a faith community, a family of faith.
SPEAKER_00: We're a people of faith.
SPEAKER_00: And this is because we're born out of the new covenant, right?
SPEAKER_00: The new covenant that was prophesied by Jeremiah, Jeremiah 31, 31, that Paul speaks about in 2 Corinthians 3.
SPEAKER_00: This new covenant people, or New Testament people, it's the same word.
SPEAKER_00: New Testament, New Covenant, it's just a Latinization.
SPEAKER_00: But the New Covenant, as is attested to in Scripture, is not like the Old Covenant, in that the New Covenant is not written down.
SPEAKER_00: It's not codified in any written catalog or system of laws.
SPEAKER_00: What we call, right, the 27 books of the New Testament, this is not the codifying of the new covenant law.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what this is.
SPEAKER_00: It's the scripture, the inspiration, commentary on the testaments of old and how this new covenant is made manifest in Jesus and how that's working out in the community we call church.
SPEAKER_00: But what the new covenant is, the new covenant is a work done by God, by the Spirit, whereby God transforms individuals and whole communities such that they would be capable of delighting in the blessings of the covenant.
SPEAKER_00: This is what the new covenant is it's a work of God by the Spirit, where people, individuals, communities are transformed such that they can delight in the covenant blessings of God, promise to Abraham long ago.
SPEAKER_00: The height of this blessing is peace.
SPEAKER_00: It's a deep, profound peace.
SPEAKER_00: It's a peace with God, with each other, and with the land.
SPEAKER_00: That's the vision in the prophets.
SPEAKER_00: But it's this incredible blessing that's poured out on individuals and communities such that they can experience the blessings of the covenant across generations in real time.
SPEAKER_00: And what this means is that God has uprooted hatred and envy and fear and guilt out of our lives and has made mercy and forgiveness possible, has made friendships possible with God, each other, our neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: This is the vision.
SPEAKER_00: But what we see in the New Testament is the way that this new covenant is manifest and accessed and actualized, is faith.
SPEAKER_00: It's the X factor, it's everything.
SPEAKER_00: This is why Paul says, right, the righteous, uh, in repeating the old covenant, the righteous shall live by faith.
SPEAKER_00: This new mark of the covenant, just as the covenant of old was marked out through circumcision, the covenant, the new covenant spoken by Jeremiah, fulfilled in Christ by the Spirit, is marked by faith.
SPEAKER_00: And faith is ubiquitous, it's universal, it's egalitarian, meaning rich people can have faith, poor people can have faith, men can have faith, women can have faith, children can have faith, uh, slaves can have faith.
SPEAKER_00: Jews, Gentiles can have faith.
SPEAKER_00: All kinds of races can have faith, all kinds of cultures can have faith faith.
SPEAKER_00: Faith is this thing that levels the playing field and is at the same time opening up God's blessing to everybody.
SPEAKER_00: This is the power of faith.
SPEAKER_00: This is how Paul understands faith.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the faith that we see that it's brimming over in this dialogue with Jesus and foreshadowing the fullness of the new covenant that's coming.
SPEAKER_00: It's the faith that Isaiah in our reading today is speaking about with this inheritance of eunuchs.
SPEAKER_00: So eunuchs, right, are castrated males who are not able to participate in Israel's system of circumcision that was linked to families to keep your name in the land and to have an inheritance in the promises.
SPEAKER_00: So they're actually in the law, they were precluded from being in the assembly.
SPEAKER_00: And yet Isaiah imagines a future, right?
SPEAKER_00: Where eunuchs who by faith keeping Sabbath will have an inheritance in the promises of God.
SPEAKER_00: That's an inheritance that Isaiah says is greater than sons and daughters.
SPEAKER_00: This is actually wild talk from a prophet.
SPEAKER_00: It's absolutely wild.
SPEAKER_00: And this is foreshadowing, right, what we see with the Ethiopian eunuch in the book of Acts, who, upon hearing the message of Messiah, asks, Well, what's preventing me?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer implied in the narrative is, oh, nothing.
SPEAKER_00: Faith.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, move on.
SPEAKER_00: Get baptized, the spirit comes, the fullness of the presence is poured out.
SPEAKER_00: Well, here in this encounter with Jesus and this Canaanite woman, Jesus is approached by this woman whose daughter is suffering from a demon possessing her.
SPEAKER_00: And she is asking Jesus to step in and intervene to heal her daughter.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus' words might strike us as really odd.
SPEAKER_00: You might even think cold.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus tells her that he's come, he's been sent, actually, we know this by the Father to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: What does this mean?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus' three-year ministry is not his running about all throughout the Mediterranean.
SPEAKER_00: He's not going into Africa or in India or up through Europe.
SPEAKER_00: No, Jesus' ministry is actually focused to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And finally and fully his face will be set to Jerusalem for the passion.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus says it's not right to take the bread of children and throw it to dogs, Jesus is not saying, look, Jews have more dignity and worth than Canaanite women, than Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: Or Jews are the good guys and Gentiles are the bad guys.
SPEAKER_00: No, what Jesus is saying in this very extreme metaphor that Jesus is pulling here is that the purpose of Jesus' ministry is set in this direction, and what this woman is calling Jesus to do is on the opposite side of where Jesus is actually headed.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus uses this example to speak of the divergence of the purpose and intention and direction of Jesus' ministry and what she's actually asking him to do.
SPEAKER_00: She's asking Jesus, in other words, to take an about face.
SPEAKER_00: And what's extraordinary here is that Jesus, in talking to this woman, her response after Jesus says, You don't take the bread of children and throw it to dogs.
SPEAKER_00: This woman says that, well, even the dogs will eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table.
SPEAKER_00: It's one thing that this woman is not a Jew, right?
SPEAKER_00: She's a Gentile coming to a Jewish rabbi who is the Messiah of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: But she's not just any Gentile.
SPEAKER_00: This is a Canaanite.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're uh conjuring up the history of Israel, you realize that this woman bears in her history, in her body, and her name a tortured history, right?
SPEAKER_00: Violence, conquest, genocide, ethnic cleansing.
SPEAKER_00: This is Israel's historic enemy.
SPEAKER_00: These are the thorn in Israel's side.
SPEAKER_00: This is why they can't pull the conquest off and get into the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: Because these Canaanites dragging everything down.
SPEAKER_00: This woman is Israel's historic enemy.
SPEAKER_00: And what we see is Israel's enemy coming to Jesus, coming to Israel's Messiah, asking for the blessings and the power of the God of Israel to be poured out in her household.
SPEAKER_00: And what's incredible, and what needs to be absolutely seen in this encounter, is that Jesus does not refuse her request.
SPEAKER_00: This is foreshadowing the fulfillment of all the covenant blessings between Jews and Gentiles, between the whole world, the peace that is to be brought to fruition in the Prince of Peace, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But what's astounding is that Jesus, one does not refuse her, but we might ask why.
SPEAKER_00: The story seems to suggest because of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Well, what I want us to do is see what is what does faith mean in this story of the Canaanite one.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's two things that we see.
SPEAKER_00: That faith is a deep humility that is in union with trust in Jesus of Nazareth.
SPEAKER_00: This is what the Canaanite woman displays.
SPEAKER_00: This is what faith is.
SPEAKER_00: What is faith?
SPEAKER_00: The rare but powerful faith.
SPEAKER_00: Faith is the mingling of humility with faith directed to Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ.
SPEAKER_00: This is powerful faith.
SPEAKER_00: This is rare faith in the Gospels.
SPEAKER_00: This is so powerful, and again, I'm just preaching the text.
SPEAKER_00: This is why I said this is controversial.
SPEAKER_00: This is so powerful that this faith from a Canaanite woman, this faith can occasion something of a detour for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That's what happens.
SPEAKER_00: Now think of that.
SPEAKER_00: Oh my word.
SPEAKER_00: The mingling of humility and this utter faith in Jesus occasions, right?
SPEAKER_00: We're uncomfortable with that.
SPEAKER_00: We're uncomfortable with Jesus saying, it's not right to do X.
SPEAKER_00: Only moments later for Jesus to do X.
SPEAKER_00: What's the difference between the two?
SPEAKER_00: Faith.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is powerful.
SPEAKER_00: It's so powerful, Jesus will even say elsewhere, right?
SPEAKER_00: Just the faith, the size of a mustard seed, can move mountains.
SPEAKER_00: It's how powerful it is, faith.
SPEAKER_00: This is not right, name it and claim it, prosperity, gospel, faith.
SPEAKER_00: Which I think one way that we can kind of scrutinize that is faith that's void of humility.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: This kind of uh pretentious um expectation.
SPEAKER_00: That's not this woman at all.
SPEAKER_00: This woman actually believes that the bread of Israel, the bread of blessing, that just the crumbs are sufficient.
SPEAKER_00: This is the faith that we're called into.
SPEAKER_00: This is the faith I'm convinced that when Jesus says, right, if two or three of you gather in my name, and whatever you ask, it'll be done.
SPEAKER_00: Like that's the image you see, humility, faith, and deep desire.
SPEAKER_00: What does Jesus say after she says this?
SPEAKER_00: He says, Oh my word, woman of great faith, may it be done to you as you desire.
SPEAKER_00: What?
SPEAKER_00: Desire.
SPEAKER_00: And we see the merging of humility, trust in Jesus, and our deepest desire.
SPEAKER_00: That's faith.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it means to come to faith in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: This is the faith that can move mountains.
SPEAKER_00: This is the faith that if we ask of the Father, Jesus says, Yeah, he'll do it.
SPEAKER_00: He'll hear that.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus himself will say, Go.
SPEAKER_00: May it be done as you desire.
SPEAKER_00: This mingling of humility, trust, and desire, I think, is what the Lord is certainly beckoning me into.
SPEAKER_00: A deeper, deeper affection, deeper abandonment to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And that this is the faith in which the seeds of the kingdom grow.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.