SPEAKER_00: Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, to him who loves us and has washed us clean from our sins with his own blood, and made us to be a kingdom of priests to serve God and his Father.
SPEAKER_00: To him be all glory, honor, and dominion forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to be a Christian?
SPEAKER_00: In one way, being a Christian is about confessing one's faith.
SPEAKER_00: Just as St.
SPEAKER_00: Paul said in last week's epistle reading, he said, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
SPEAKER_00: Here, to confess means to speak the truth as God has declared it to you.
SPEAKER_00: Confessing our faith is what Christians do.
SPEAKER_00: It's what Lutherans do.
SPEAKER_00: Every Sunday we confess what we believe with our mouths, in the words of the Creed.
SPEAKER_00: I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.
SPEAKER_00: In this body of believers, you'll hear things like, This is what we believe, teach, and confess.
SPEAKER_00: Lutherans use these words to describe our teaching because Scripture demands that we use them.
SPEAKER_00: Because our doctrine, our teaching, is what we believe, teach, and confess that Scripture actually says.
SPEAKER_00: These are the same words we use in our Lutheran confessions because together the Lutheran confessions are our joint confession of faith.
SPEAKER_00: They say what we believe, teach, and confess together as the church, with no ambiguity.
SPEAKER_00: There are biblical words for biblical people.
SPEAKER_00: Confessing our belief before the whole world about what God says in his word.
SPEAKER_00: So, what is it that we confess, dear saints?
SPEAKER_00: What is it that we believe?
SPEAKER_00: Well, we confess Christ and Him crucified for the forgiveness of sins.
SPEAKER_00: These are the words spoken to us by God in the Holy Scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: Just as a parent teaches a child what to speak, so also God teaches us what to speak, even pray in his holy word.
SPEAKER_00: These very words are gifts from God.
SPEAKER_00: It is by God's word that we confess what we believe, that we confess our faith.
SPEAKER_00: And this is why confessing Jesus is always a gift of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: As the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit, speaks into our ears and into our hearts, so we in turn confess it with our mouths what we believe in our hearts, just like St.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says.
SPEAKER_00: So then, what are we to learn from today's gospel reading?
SPEAKER_00: Again, none of our Lord's actions are by accident.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus puts himself in a region where Gentiles live, Tyre and Sidon, ancient pagan cities of Phoenicia.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't just wander there, not knowing where he was going, but having put himself in this region, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, son of David, my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.
SPEAKER_00: Now, you should know that just before this encounter in Matthew's gospel, Jesus had a discussion with the Pharisees about cleanliness and the blind leading the blind.
SPEAKER_00: He was talking with these Jews, and they neither recognized who Jesus was, nor did they believe in who he revealed himself to be.
SPEAKER_00: But now, in this foreign region, a Gentile woman confesses him for who he is and who he is revealed to be.
SPEAKER_00: That is to say, this woman confesses with her mouth who she believes Jesus to be in her heart.
SPEAKER_00: The people that should have recognized him, the Jews, did not.
SPEAKER_00: And yet this Gentile woman, who shouldn't have, did.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to what happens next.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus did not answer her a word, and his disciples came and begged him, saying, Send her away, for she's crying out after us.
SPEAKER_00: Now, it appears that the disciples were just trying to get rid of her.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus' response reveals something more.
SPEAKER_00: He answered, I was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: But this is interesting because the disciples didn't just want to get rid of her.
SPEAKER_00: They wanted Jesus to do something to get rid of her.
SPEAKER_00: Kind of like, hey, Jesus, fix her problems so that she'll leave us alone.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus is not Miracle Max.
SPEAKER_00: He's not present there just to grant wishes or make people feel good.
SPEAKER_00: That's not his earthly mission, nor his heavenly one for that matter.
SPEAKER_00: Nor is that his mission today.
SPEAKER_00: His mission is the payment of the sins of the world on the cross and the deliverance of that forgiveness where he gives it.
SPEAKER_00: But his words sound harsh, don't they?
SPEAKER_00: Aren't we commanded to love our neighbor?
SPEAKER_00: Aren't we commanded to love our enemies?
SPEAKER_00: But our Lord rightly says, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus doesn't lie.
SPEAKER_00: That is his earthly mission.
SPEAKER_00: He is fulfilling all that the Father has sent him to do.
SPEAKER_00: Nevertheless, the lost sheep are his concern.
SPEAKER_00: And it is the lost sheep that he seeks.
SPEAKER_00: But this begs the question: who are the lost sheep?
SPEAKER_00: Are they only found amongst the children of Israel?
SPEAKER_00: To answer that, let's consider St.
SPEAKER_00: John's gospel for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: In it, Jesus says, I have other sheep that are not of this fold.
SPEAKER_00: I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.
SPEAKER_00: So there will be one flock, one shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: So there are sheep who must be brought into the fold of Israel, so there will be one flock and one shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: So then the house of Israel doesn't only include the children of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: But let's listen further.
SPEAKER_00: So the woman came and knelt before him, saying, Lord, help me.
SPEAKER_00: And he answered, It's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.
SPEAKER_00: Indeed, this sounds like an insult.
SPEAKER_00: Is our Lord calling this woman a dog?
SPEAKER_00: And what's this bread that he's speaking about?
SPEAKER_00: But the woman is quick to respond.
SPEAKER_00: She says, Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat crumbs that fall from the master's table.
SPEAKER_00: And it is in her response that reveals everything.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the bread, it's not about the bread or the children.
SPEAKER_00: Rather, it is about her recognition of who the master of the house is.
SPEAKER_00: In this statement, the woman's previous confession of who Jesus is is solidified.
SPEAKER_00: This means she's not merely repeating what she may have heard from some Jew that Jesus was the son of David, but she confesses him to be her master and her Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And in this confession, Jesus affirmed her faith and recognizes her membership in the household.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, then Jesus answered her, O woman, great is your faith.
SPEAKER_00: Be it done for you as you desire.
SPEAKER_00: And her daughter was healed instantly.
SPEAKER_00: So then today's sermon could almost be called part two from last week's sermon.
SPEAKER_00: Last week we witnessed Jesus walking on the water, revealing to the disciples who he was in the Greek words egoemi, which means his I am, his I am statement, revealing that in fact Jesus is God in the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: And the result of this is witnessed by the disciples confessing their faith in Jesus' true identity by worshiping him on the boat.
SPEAKER_00: Because one only worships God, right?
SPEAKER_00: Last week we heard Jesus call Peter a little faith one.
SPEAKER_00: Because just for a moment, Peter doubted the source and the sustainer of his faith out on the waves.
SPEAKER_00: But in the end, returning to Jesus as the only one who could save him.
SPEAKER_00: In contrast, this week we hear something very different.
SPEAKER_00: We hear Jesus say to this Canaanite woman, Oh woman, great is your faith.
SPEAKER_00: So what then is the difference between Peter from last week and this woman?
SPEAKER_00: How can the great disciple and apostle Peter be a little faith one and this woman a great faith one?
SPEAKER_00: What's the difference?
SPEAKER_00: Is it the size of their faith?
SPEAKER_00: Is it the amount of their faith?
SPEAKER_00: These are both wrong questions.
SPEAKER_00: If it were about the size of their faith, then Jesus couldn't say, faith the size of a mustard seed, can move mountains.
SPEAKER_00: So then what is the difference between them?
SPEAKER_00: The difference is quite simple, really.
SPEAKER_00: One received the gift of faith and then doubted its authenticity just for a moment out on the waves.
SPEAKER_00: But the other, the other received the gift of faith, and in an act of desperation, she would not let go.
SPEAKER_00: The truth of who Jesus was should have been clear in the eyes of every Jew, but they were often blind.
SPEAKER_00: Even when they received the truth from their very own scriptures and in front of their own faces.
SPEAKER_00: Their culture, their belief, their trust in their bloodlines, they all got in the way.
SPEAKER_00: But on the contrary, this Canaanite woman who recognized Jesus for who he was, even though she was not an Israelite.
SPEAKER_00: But then nothing else mattered to her.
SPEAKER_00: She confessed Jesus for who he really is, the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed one of God, sent to save his lost sheep.
SPEAKER_00: Notice what she called him.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, Kyrie in the Greek.
SPEAKER_00: The same word for God in the Old Testament, Yahweh, and Jesus as both God and man is the Son of David.
SPEAKER_00: When we hear words like, Great is your faith from Jesus, we often have desire, desire to have great faith.
SPEAKER_00: We may even wish he could say something like that of us.
SPEAKER_00: We're often tempted to think that who among us doesn't want great faith?
SPEAKER_00: What woman in this congregation wouldn't love to hear their Lord say to her, A woman, great is your faith.
SPEAKER_00: What man here wouldn't love Jesus to say to them, with no one in California have I seen or found such faith?
SPEAKER_00: But then again, we know ourselves, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: We often feel incredibly weak in our faith.
SPEAKER_00: We doubt like Peter.
SPEAKER_00: We fail to believe our Lord's simplest command and promise.
SPEAKER_00: We may even compare ourselves to Peter and the Canaanite woman and think to ourselves, I am so much more like Peter than I am this Canaanite woman.
SPEAKER_00: And the truth is, we will let the cares of this world, the devil, and even our own flesh rob us of the gift of faith in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We'll even listen to the logic spewed by a scientific community that attempts to explain how God just can't be real or how every miracle is really explainable by some natural phenomenon and not performed by God.
SPEAKER_00: We'll let our own sinful flesh turn our eyes away from Jesus, and we'll desire the things of this world over where our Lord's gifts are given, even right here.
SPEAKER_00: We'll let our own whims, succumbing to our own sinful desires, telling ourselves, it's okay if I just do it this once.
SPEAKER_00: When you know God's law bears witness against all of you.
SPEAKER_00: Satan will whisper in your ear, just like he did Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_00: Did God really say?
SPEAKER_00: Or worse yet, you can't trust God.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't really have your best interests in mind.
SPEAKER_00: The truth is, you can reject this gift of faith.
SPEAKER_00: And when it happens, you will stumble and fall, just like Peter did.
SPEAKER_00: But thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_00: He has delivered the whole world through the bloody death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: In him we have hope and salvation.
SPEAKER_00: In him all things are made new.
SPEAKER_00: He is always there where he has shown himself to be.
SPEAKER_00: Because, just as our Lord exposes all our sins and doubts with his holy law, he resurrects you to new life through his holy gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And as you leave here, as his new creation, you confess your faith in Christ Jesus to the whole world that he is your Savior.
SPEAKER_00: This is who we are as Christians.
SPEAKER_00: This is who we are as Lutherans.
SPEAKER_00: Where Jesus is, there is your faith.
SPEAKER_00: You're baptized, it's always about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Take heart.
SPEAKER_00: Your sins are forgiven in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Now the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.