Text: Matthew 15:21-28
Date: Pentecost XI (Proper 15A) + 8/20/17
Today’s readings from the Bible highlight the universal intent of God’s plan of salvation. After all, when the Bible says, “God so loved the world,” it means the whole world, all nations, every single person. It is not only for those of Jewish descent or for Germans, North Americans, or Lutherans. Isaiah delivered the Word of God, saying, “And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord…these I will bring to my holy mountain…their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” St. Paul is at pains to explain how, though the promised Savior came through the Jews, nevertheless that was no automatic advantage for them. But “God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.”
Today St. Matthew tells us of a Gentile woman, a Canaanite no less, who had great faith. Where did that great faith come from? How did you come to believe in Jesus? Her great faith came from her informed and accurate belief in the person of Jesus Christ whom she called Lord and Son of David.
Our Savior didn’t just pop into the picture claiming to be the Savior. How do you know this man is the Savior sent by God? this man and not Mohammed or the Buddha? How many have come along even in our day claiming merely on the authority of their own word to be God or His minister? This woman’s faith was great because she somehow had gained the accurate knowledge of the Person of Jesus of Nazareth. So today it isn’t enough to point to this man and say He is the Savior without supplying the firm credentials that testify to Him. Those credentials are the revealed plan of God through the Divine, inspired scriptures of Old and New Testaments.
To have a great faith, or any saving faith at all, you need to know, first, why we are in need of salvation. So we are told about the fall into sin of our first parents and how that curse is inherited by every generation since. Faith then begins with God’s promise of sending a Savior which He did immediately, Genesis 3:15.
Then you need to know how God would send this Savior. It all began with God choosing Abraham and promising him that by his seed, that is, one of his descendants, the whole world would be blessed. St. Matthew does a masterful job of listing those descendants in the beginning of his Gospel; from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to David the great king. Then Solomon and his line all the way through to the Babylonian captivity. Finally, through some rather unknown names to “Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ” (Mt 1:16). So this Jesus of Nazareth is the Savior sent by God the one promised from the beginning. All we know is that somewhere this woman came to hear, to know and to believe who Jesus truly was.
Part of that knowledge was how she had heard of Jesus’ miracles of healing the sick. So simply on the faith of that, when she heard that for some reason Jesus was coming through the territory of Tyre and Sidon her faith prompted her to disregard that she was not of the promised people, the Jews, was even a hated enemy of God’s people, and seek out Jesus at least for the sake of her demon-possessed daughter. The reason Jesus took this surprising route was to withdraw from increasing opposition and forestall premature attacks that would lead to His final demise.
So she came. But she didn’t just yell for help. She gave the reason for her coming to Him, because he is the Lord of mercy, the Son of David, that is, the one promised from the beginning to be the Savior, the Savior of the whole world.
Jesus reiterated the plan of God, saying, “I was not sent except to the lost sheep, the house of Israel.” And that’s true. But the ultimate purpose of coming as King of the Jews was so that, by faith in Him, all the nations would be blessed on the basis of faith in the mercy of God. The woman gave witness to the fact that God’s promised Savior would be overflowing with mercy and blessing to such an extent that she said, “Yes, Lord, for even the dogs eat from the crumbs that are falling from their masters’ table.” The fact that the dogs, the Gentiles reap God’s blessing and grace from the food originally intended for the masters’ family does not in any way mean our salvation is an accident or unintended. It simply means, as St. Paul said today, that all, Jew or Gentile, are sinners in need of God’s mercy which is for all, “that everyone who believes in Him should have eternal life.”
Your faith is greater as it is based on the knowledge and awareness of God’s Word, His plan of salvation that is so perfect that God’s original promise to Abraham, that all the nations would be blessed, is perfectly reflected in Jesus’ final commission to make disciples of all nations. We believe that Jesus is the promised Savior because only He and Him alone has perfectly fulfilled everything written about Him “in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms” (Lk 24:44). May this Lord, the Son of David, have mercy on us all and on the whole world.