SPEAKER_00: Grace, mercy, and peace be yours from God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: All right, you got to see one picture of a dog already.
SPEAKER_00: Um, so let's do another one.
SPEAKER_00: This is Chance.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, many of you know him.
SPEAKER_00: He's become a little famous at Trinity from the uh Chance Fries illustration from one of my sermons a while back.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Chance is our dog, and Chance is old.
SPEAKER_00: Uh in Chance's younger years, such as uh those pictured here, uh, this photo was taken just uh a couple weeks ago.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody was saying, look how different he looks and how different you look.
SPEAKER_00: And I said, I don't I don't think I look different at all, do I?
SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, back in the day, Chance and I were both uh quite more spry, spry or what's the word there?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: He was very spry back then.
SPEAKER_00: Um chance and I would wrestle every day.
SPEAKER_00: I had a hard time keeping up with him when we would go for walks.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, even when we moved here, I don't know, six, seven years ago, uh, he ran ahead of our family while hiking Black Butte.
SPEAKER_00: But things have changed.
SPEAKER_00: Chance turned 14 a couple weeks ago, basically a centenarian in doggy years.
SPEAKER_00: He spends most of his time these days lying around the house and sleeping.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes he'll mix it up.
SPEAKER_00: He'll get up and he'll move from the spot where he was sleeping and go to another spot where he can sleep.
SPEAKER_00: He's not too active these days.
SPEAKER_00: But every now and then, but for a fleeting moment, his youthfulness returns to him in full force.
SPEAKER_00: He'll jump up, he'll run across the room, he'll exude all the energy of the sprightly young puppy that he used to be.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, strangely, these moments always seem to happen in perfect sync with our family meals.
SPEAKER_00: When one of us gets up to take our plate into the kitchen to dump any scraps into the garbage.
SPEAKER_00: Well, to us, they're scraps.
SPEAKER_00: Crumbs.
SPEAKER_00: But to chance, they are delectable delicacies beyond compare.
SPEAKER_00: They're the highlight of his day.
SPEAKER_00: I dare say almost the highlight of his life these days.
SPEAKER_00: For chance, our crumbs are so much more than enough.
SPEAKER_00: And today I'd like to talk with you a little bit about crumbs.
SPEAKER_00: Today we've heard Matthew's somewhat unsettling account of one of Jesus' unlikeliest of disciples, someone that Jesus shockingly calls a dog.
SPEAKER_00: Someone who teaches us that the crumbs from our master's table are more than enough for our every need.
SPEAKER_00: Let's walk through it together step by step.
SPEAKER_00: It begins in the district of Tyre and Sidon.
SPEAKER_00: This is way up north, Gentile country.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus has decided to withdraw from Galilee because he's just had a conversation with the Pharisees that they didn't like so much.
SPEAKER_00: Tensions are running high.
SPEAKER_00: But his time has not yet come.
SPEAKER_00: And so, rejected by his own people, Jesus intentionally travels to this foreign pagan land.
SPEAKER_00: The district of Tyre and Sidon is a Gentile country, city-states that belonged to the Phoenicians, descendants of those who had inhabited the promised land before the Israelite conquest under Joshua.
SPEAKER_00: Sidon, for instance, is the hometown of Jezebel, a famous villain from the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: The prophet Elijah had retreated up to that area when Israel had rejected God's word, and he ended up bringing great blessing to a woman there.
SPEAKER_00: You might remember that story.
SPEAKER_00: Well, Jesus is about to do the same.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew tells us that a Canaanite woman comes out to him.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in one sense, this is hardly surprising.
SPEAKER_00: This is her homeland.
SPEAKER_00: But the way that Matthew describes her is surprising.
SPEAKER_00: Canaanite.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody in Jesus' day really used that word anymore.
SPEAKER_00: It was archaic.
SPEAKER_00: Mark's gospel uses the much more contemporary Roman term Syrophoenician.
SPEAKER_00: But Matthew describes her as a Canaanite.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like if we today were to refer to someone in the American South as a Confederate.
SPEAKER_00: The term calls to mind old, longstanding animosities.
SPEAKER_00: The Canaanites were the ancient pagan enemies of Israel, the most morally despised of them all.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew is reaching back into Israel's scriptures to show us that this woman is as big an outsider as anyone could possibly be.
SPEAKER_00: And she has come to Jesus for help.
SPEAKER_00: And don't miss the significance of what she says.
SPEAKER_00: Have mercy on me, O Lord, son of David.
SPEAKER_00: My daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.
SPEAKER_00: Like so many, she's coming to Jesus for help.
SPEAKER_00: But boy does she stand out.
SPEAKER_00: It is incredibly striking that this unclean, outsider, Canaanite woman calls Jesus what she does.
SPEAKER_00: First, she calls him Lord, which on its own could simply be a polite way of saying sir.
SPEAKER_00: And she'll call him that three times in this text.
SPEAKER_00: But paired with what she calls him next, it becomes massively significant.
SPEAKER_00: Have mercy on me, O Lord, son of David.
SPEAKER_00: This Canaanite woman calls Jesus by a Hebrew title.
SPEAKER_00: Not just that, a messianic Hebrew title.
SPEAKER_00: This Canaanite woman is demonstrating knowledge that Jesus is Israel's Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: This Canaanite woman who shouldn't have a clue has greater insight into Jesus' identity than almost all of the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: She speaks not only like a true Israelite, but as a true disciple of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Last week I suggested that Peter was standing in for us as our representative as he walked on the sea and showcased his weakness as he fell beneath the waves.
SPEAKER_00: I think the woman here stands in for us as well.
SPEAKER_00: So let me ask you a question.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to dive into more next week.
SPEAKER_00: Whom do you know Jesus to be?
SPEAKER_00: Are you crying out to him for help?
SPEAKER_00: Are you praying to him in accordance with everything he is and all the promises that he has made and fulfilled?
SPEAKER_00: Because she did.
SPEAKER_00: So how does Jesus answer her?
SPEAKER_00: Silence.
SPEAKER_00: She's crying out and crying out and crying out, and Jesus doesn't answer her a word.
SPEAKER_00: It's unbelievable, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: That's not the Jesus we know.
SPEAKER_00: His silence here is deafening.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Is it to test her?
SPEAKER_00: Is it to test the disciples?
SPEAKER_00: Or is he serious?
SPEAKER_00: Does he really have no intention to listen to her or to help her?
SPEAKER_00: One church father confidently says it was not that the Lord was unwilling to heal her, but that he might reveal her great faith and humility.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe so.
SPEAKER_00: But through heartbreaking, excruciating silence?
SPEAKER_00: I bet you have felt at times like Jesus is silent.
SPEAKER_00: That he seems to have no interest in your needs or your prayers.
SPEAKER_00: You know better.
SPEAKER_00: And your experience doesn't seem to jive with your theology.
SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, heaven seems unbothered and uninterested.
SPEAKER_00: What do we do in times like this?
SPEAKER_00: Well, what does this Canaanite woman do?
SPEAKER_00: She persists.
SPEAKER_00: She keeps crying out, so much so that the disciples ask Jesus to send her away.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like when they had told Jesus to send away the 5,000 men, plus women and children on top of that.
SPEAKER_00: The night of that great miracle.
SPEAKER_00: Here it's pretty clear that they're asking Jesus just to kind of give her what she wants so that she'll leave him alone.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus breaks his silence.
SPEAKER_00: He answers his disciples, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Israel is the flock that Jesus was sent to shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is Israel's Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: Back in chapter 10, Jesus had sent his disciples out on a mission, and he had told them explicitly, Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but rather go to the same phrase here, lost sheep of the house of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And so here Jesus is practicing what he preached.
SPEAKER_00: The dividing wall between Jew and Gentile that he's going to obliterate with his resurrection from the dead is still up for now.
SPEAKER_00: And so he makes it clear right in front of her that he's not there for people like her.
SPEAKER_00: Surely that's going to break her spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Surely that will send her away.
SPEAKER_00: Well, surely not.
SPEAKER_00: She responds to this by kneeling down before him.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew actually uses the exact same Greek word here that he does to describe the worship of the magi.
SPEAKER_00: And she says, Lord, help me.
SPEAKER_00: So finally, Jesus acknowledges her.
SPEAKER_00: He answers her.
SPEAKER_00: It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.
SPEAKER_00: Now before his silence was deafening.
SPEAKER_00: His articulation of his mission to Israel seemed dismissive of her, but this is downright insulting.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying it is not right.
SPEAKER_00: It is not fitting or appropriate or salutary to take what belongs to the children, that is, Israel, and throw it to the dogs.
SPEAKER_00: That is Canaanites like her.
SPEAKER_00: Is Jesus calling her a dog?
SPEAKER_00: It's hard to get around it.
SPEAKER_00: Though many have tried.
SPEAKER_00: Like the church father Hilary of Poitiers, he writes, The disparagement of dogs was mitigated by the blandishment of a diminutive name.
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm not sure if blandishment is even a real word, but it is true that the word Jesus uses here clearly describes house dogs rather than stray dogs that you'd find on the street.
SPEAKER_00: It's sometimes even a term of endearment.
SPEAKER_00: But then again, a dog is a dog.
SPEAKER_00: And what he says is shocking to our modern ears.
SPEAKER_00: Though it would have struck his contemporaries as unremarkable.
SPEAKER_00: So again, we're left to ask, does Jesus mean it?
SPEAKER_00: Or is he maybe aping the common Jewish sentiment of the time so as to critique it almost as if he's doing satire?
SPEAKER_00: Again, is Jesus testing her?
SPEAKER_00: Is he testing the disciples?
SPEAKER_00: Is he leading her to further reveal who she knows him to be?
SPEAKER_00: Well, she does.
SPEAKER_00: Her response jumps out from the page like a puppy jumping up for a treat.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, Lord, for even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Jeff Gibbs points out a mistake that most English translations tend to make here.
SPEAKER_00: There's usually a yet or a but inserted into her reply, but it's not there in the Greek.
SPEAKER_00: And that's huge.
SPEAKER_00: This Canaanite woman is not disagreeing with Jesus, not at all.
SPEAKER_00: She takes no offense.
SPEAKER_00: She offers no challenge to the idea that Israel takes priority.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, what she's doing here is very much agreeing with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And precisely because she agrees with Jesus, she makes her request with both great humility and confident hope.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, Lord, for even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table.
SPEAKER_00: She's essentially saying, Yes, Lord, son of David, I agree with you.
SPEAKER_00: I know who I am, and I'm not pretending otherwise.
SPEAKER_00: I am not after the children's bread that you've rightly come to give them.
SPEAKER_00: But when the children eat, dogs like me get to eat too.
SPEAKER_00: This woman knows so much about Jesus, about his mission, about his mercy, about his might, that even after he seemingly rejects her three times, she remains confident that she will receive what she's asking for.
SPEAKER_00: Because she knows that the crumbs are more than enough.
SPEAKER_00: The thing about children is they can tend to be messy eaters.
SPEAKER_00: And she knows that at Jesus' table, grace runneth over.
SPEAKER_00: It is excessive and overflowing.
SPEAKER_00: It spills forth with reckless abandon.
SPEAKER_00: Like a beloved dog eager for a treat or a morsel from the table.
SPEAKER_00: The Canaanite woman refuses to stop believing that the mercy of Jesus will pour out even on someone like her and her daughter.
SPEAKER_00: She knows who she is.
SPEAKER_00: But even better, she knows who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_00: A quarter of a century before Paul writes his letter to the Romans, she knows the truth that we heard from him today, that God's grace is for both Jew and Gentile, that the death of Jesus has come to rescue all people, that we Gentiles have been grafted into the family by the mercy of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: It's just as Isaiah wrote in our Old Testament reading today: God is going to bring foreigners to his holy mountain, and his house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.
SPEAKER_00: And before this chapter in Matthew is through, Jesus is going to feed 4,000 men, plus women and children, and a place that the Gospel of Mark makes clear is also in Gentile territory.
SPEAKER_00: Talk about crumbs.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus addresses her again.
SPEAKER_00: And I can't help but picture his face, kind of like that of Ebenezer Scrooge, after his great change of heart, when he's in the cratch at home and he's pretending to still be his gruff miserly self, but he just can't quite keep the smile off his face any longer.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says to this unclean outsider, Canaanite woman, Oh woman, great is your faith.
SPEAKER_00: Let it be done for you as you desire.
SPEAKER_00: Talk about a happy ending.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, the woman gets what she sought.
SPEAKER_00: Her daughter is healed instantly, and the demon is gone from their lives.
SPEAKER_00: But even happier is that Jesus proves to be exactly who this woman has been fervently banking on all along.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is Israel's Messiah, the Lord, the Son of David, and Israel's Messiah has more than enough bread to go around.
SPEAKER_00: Children, dogs, whatever you may be, you have a place in his kingdom, in his house, at his table.
SPEAKER_00: No matter how far away you feel, no matter how unclean you may be, no matter how much even the other followers of Jesus might want to be rid of you.
SPEAKER_00: This Canaanite woman was absolutely right about the overflowing mercy of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus praises her faith.
SPEAKER_00: He calls it great, megale in the Greek.
SPEAKER_00: And this woman's mega faith stands in sharp contrast with the little faith that we saw from Peter last week, the little faith that his disciples have so often evinced.
SPEAKER_00: She has great faith because she knows exactly who Jesus is, and she knows that even his crumbs are more than enough for her.
SPEAKER_00: And so the church fathers, one after another, echo the sentiment that this is where Jesus was leading us all along.
SPEAKER_00: John Chrysostom says, So we might surmise that this is the reason he put her off, in order that he might proclaim aloud this saying, and that he might crown the woman.
SPEAKER_00: Theodore of Mopsuestia writes, For it was for this reason that he postponed, giving a reply, that the woman might cry aloud with this word.
SPEAKER_00: Thereby he would show her to be worthy of a thousand crowns.
SPEAKER_00: For it was not because he did not want to give her the gift that he delayed, but because he sought and took care beforehand to reveal her faith.
SPEAKER_00: You know, these guys just might be absolutely right.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps when Jesus seems silent, he's not rejecting our faith, but revealing it to us and to those around us.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps the persistence that marks this blessed woman's faith is meant to instill the same persistence in ours.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps all of it serves to highlight Jesus as Israel's Messiah and the Savior of the whole world.
SPEAKER_00: Because we were just like her.
SPEAKER_00: We were desperate, we were undeserving, and we were outside the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: And I take this especially to heart because the name Caleb means two things in Hebrew.
SPEAKER_00: One I'm very proud of, and one maybe not so much.
SPEAKER_00: Caleb can mean bold and courageous, but its other meaning, anybody know?
SPEAKER_00: Dog.
SPEAKER_00: And so were we all.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus will prove true.
SPEAKER_00: What Isaiah wrote about Israel's Messiah, that it was too light a thing for him to bring back just Israel.
SPEAKER_00: He was going to be a light to the nations.
SPEAKER_00: He would come and commend Canaanites and centurions for their faith.
SPEAKER_00: He would promise that many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about us.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus instantly healed the daughter of the Canaanite woman that day.
SPEAKER_00: But did you know that was far from the greatest act of mercy that he would show to her?
SPEAKER_00: Because the Messiah who stretched out the boundaries of his grace to envelop her would stretch out his arms and die for her and her daughter and for you and for me.
SPEAKER_00: And then he would break death by rising from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: And so, like her, you know who you are.
SPEAKER_00: You're not pretending otherwise.
SPEAKER_00: You are someone who, in your sin, deserves to be outside the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: But you have been welcomed into the house of the Master, and his crumbs are more than enough.
SPEAKER_00: May he make our faith great.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: May the peace of God which transcends our understanding guard your hearts and your minds through Christ Jesus our Lord now and forever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.