Preached at Salem Lutheran for a tri-parish worship service shared by Salem Lutheran, All Saints Lutheran, and Central Lutheran of Spokane, WA.

Matthew15:21-28

²¹Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon.²²Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” ²³But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” ²⁴He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” ²⁵But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” ²⁶He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” ²⁷She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” ²⁸Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

Sermon – Bp Meggan Manlove

Thank you so much for the invitation to preach this morning and to be with you today. We have quite the gospel passage. It is a challenging story because it makes us wrestle with how we understand Jesus, at least that’s where I have usually gone when thinking about this passage. It is so how I was trained—to make him the focus of every sermon I preach, especially when preaching on a New Testament text. But maybe, just this once, we’re better just focusing on this remarkable woman. 

The Canaanite’s woman’s persistence is both remarkable and inspiring. I think about images from the natural world that compare to her. As I’ve walked the streets of Spokane this week, I’ve stumbled over sidewalks broken by the determined roots of your huge trees; they will not be limited by cement. I think of the Pasque Flower of my home-state of South Dakota, pushing up through the snow each spring. I picture glaciers slowly, but determinedly transforming their environments. 

But for the first time in my life this story had an incredibly personal connection for me. Whose to say why, even though I’ve preached on it multiple times, I never saw my own family of origin in it. I assume I’ve done enough healing so now I can read it with fresh eyes. I was diagnosed with Epilepsy as an eight-year-old in rural South Dakota in the 1980s and my mom had this woman’s persistence—no question about it. 

When a doctor prescribed me the standard medication that every kid was put on then, the drug transformed me into someone my mom did not recognize; she said no. She believed there could be a better more abundant life for me. She went looking for other doctors and treatments. When locals tried to fault her and asked, “What are you going to do about this?” she never let it deter her self-worth or her care for me. She also remained a working mom—not allowing the sexism in the town to alter her path. I suspect that most of you know stories of this fierce love and I hope some of you have even experienced it, if not with your own parents than with another caring adult or friend.

Mom and I have not talked about her faith during this time in our lives, but I suspect her prayers were robust, maybe not for a cure, but for a treatment and for doctors and nurses who would truly listen and see her little girl. My particular story has a happy ending. We found a doctor and a medication that made me seizure-free with no side-effects. Even if we had not, I know my mom’s persistence and fierce love would have helped carry me and give me a full life. 

The Canaanite woman in our story steals the scene with her boldness and daring. I don’t really know how to interpret Jesus’ words in this story, I’ll leave that to your three pastors to sort out in a Bible Study. But he really should not be surprised, and maybe he is not. All he needs to do is look at his own genealogy, which we read at the beginning of Matthew’s gospel. A friend of mine [Dr. Celia Wolff] pointed out that Jesus has four women, similar to the Canaanite, named in his genealogy. These women suffered grief, hardship, and abuse and responded with resilience and strategic action.

First, Tamar, gets into Jesus’ family tree because, when Judah comes along looking for a good time, she has the foresight to ask for three pieces of ID as collateral on her compensation. When she turns up pregnant and Judah wants her burned for prostitution, she pulls out his ID and says, “Mark whose these are.” And Judah must admit, “She is more in the right than I” (Gen 38).

Then there is Rahab. She was a prostitute, and, by the way, a Canaanite. She’s part of Jesus’ family because, when the Israelite spies made their first stop in Jericho at her house, she put them in her debt by boldly shielding them from discovery. She demanded from them a promise of safety for her whole family. She gets a home in Israel and bears a son named Boaz.

That brings us to Ruth. She was a Moabite. Ruth quickly catches Boaz’s eye, but when he seems a little slow to make a move, she takes action that forces him either to disgrace her or take her as his wife. And then she becomes King David’s great-grandmother.

Speaking of David, the fourth woman Matthew names in Jesus’ genealogy is the one who had been “the wife of Uriah” (1:6). Bathsheba. You might think, “this is the exception. Bathsheba is in the story because of what was done to her, not because of what she did.” But don’t forget that her son, Solomon, was not going to succeed David as king until Bathsheba demanded that David swear to it (1 Kings 1:15-31). 

None of these women was born into Israel. They snuck under the umbrella of God’s care by their own wit and cunning. And they were rewarded. The Canaanite woman in Matthew 15 has abundant precedent for both her request and her response to Jesus. Jesus has entered her territory. And, in an important way, through her spiritual foremothers—Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba—she’s already in his house. 

The Canaanite woman’s persistent, single-minded expectation that Jesus will supply her need… this is what Jesus recognizes as faith. And in the face of such expectation, such trust, how could he fail her? 

The disciples want nothing to do with her. “Send her away!” they tell Jesus. That’s also what they tried to do with 5000 hungry people. The woman cries out in language they will all recognize, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David.” Jesus still isn’t having any of it. He says first that has come only for the “lost sheep of Israel” and later, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.

Then we have the rest of the remarkable exchange in which the woman picks up Jesus’ words and throws them back at him: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Elsewhere, Jesus has chastised the little faith of the disciples. Now, in this woman, he meets and names a wondrously strange and persistent faith.

Jesus answers, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” The truth is, it has always been in God’s character, this ever-expanding invitation. We read it in the genealogy in Matthew’s gospel, with the four women who snuck in with cunning. We hear it in the Prophet Isaiah speaking for God, “And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord…these I will bring to my holy mountain.” We witness it in Jesus’ encounter with this woman of great faith.

So then, is this gospel passage about the woman’s persistence and great faith or is it about the extravagant reaches of God’s mercies? I think the answer is Yes. In other words, it is about both. The story of the Canaanite women is preceded by the feeding of the 5,000 and followed by the feeding of the 4,000. To keep the bread metaphor going, they make a sandwich. 

Think of all that is contained in those stories of abundance. The compassionate mercy of God, the persistence of faith, and the gift of that bread which supplies our every need are all bound together. Likewise, gathered together around the table, we will receive a meager morsel today. But by God’s mercy they become for us gifts of finest wheat, hope, nourishment, new life. Thanks be to God.