Lent 2 March 8, 2020 The Sunday of the Canaanite Woman’s Faith
Lent 2 Reminiscere
Matthew 15:21-28
March 8, 2020
“More and More”
I’ve said before that we often act today like God is our Grandpa and not our Dad. We’ve changed the Lord’s Prayer to “Our Grandfather who art in heaven.” Grandpas and Grandmas are easier than Dads and Moms (generally speaking, of course). They let you get by with a whole lot more. They often give you whatever you want. When you do something stupid or evil they usually overlook it (because they think Dad and Mom will handle that). That’s the way we’d like to think of God—as a friendly Grandpa or Grandma that just wants us to be happy and overlooks all our foibles and evils.
But God isn’t a Grandpa. He’s our Father. Our Dad. And very often Dads and Moms have to be stern, have to discipline, have to teach, have to test and try, and have to make their children stronger. Good parents don’t give their children anything they want and gush over them no matter what they do. Good parents teach and strengthen and discipline. So our God does with us. As a good Father, He wants more and more and more for us. He wants us to grow. To grow in humility, in grace, in faith, and in a holy life. Your Father wants more for you.
This Gospel reading today often bothers us because Jesus doesn’t act like a Grandpa doting over his granddaughter. He seems very stern with this poor, Canaanite woman. And this ruffles our feathers. How could Jesus talk to her this way? How could He ignore her? Tell her she wasn’t worthy? Call her a dog?
But lest we forget, Jesus loves her far more than we would ever be able to love her. Jesus is a loving Father to her. He using her as an example for all the rest of us. He wants us to see her faith more and more and more so that we too will have faith more and more and more.
Your loving Dad in heaven wants this for you. He wants more for you. This phrase I’m using is from the Epistle today, 1 Thessalonians 4:1. Paul says, ‘As you received from us how you ought to live and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more.” God wants you to be more and more and more. It is very much a struggle and wrestling just as we see Jacob wrestling with God in the Old Testament reading today and as we see the Canaanite woman struggling with Jesus in the Gospel today. God, your loving Dad, wants you to struggle and wrestle in this life so that you grow more and more and more. This is what any loving Dad does.
Your loving Dad wants more and more for you in four places—He wants you to see your sin more and more and confess it. He wants you to receive His grace and forgiveness more and more and more. He wants you to believe in Him and your faith be more and more and more. And He wants you to live holy more and more and more.
First, we must see our sin more and more and more. God only loves sinners. He doesn’t love perfect people. Think about how crazy it is that Jesus would use this Canaanite woman as His example of faith. Compare her, for instance, to Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a great Pharisee, a leader of the Jews. He should be a hero and example. But instead, when Jesus meets him, Nicodemus looks like a bumbling fool. Yet here this woman from way out in the region of Tyre and Sidon is the hero of the story. She’s not even a Jew! Are you kidding, Jesus?!
Do you see the point? God’s heroes aren’t perfect people. They’re people who completely know how sinful they are. Like King David. Have you ever thought how ridiculous it is that David is the hero of the Old Testament? The guy is a terrible sinner. His sexual sins make us look like angels. Yet he is the one after God’s heart. A terrible sinner who knows he’s a terrible sinner. The guy who sang, “I am a worm and not a man.” (Ps. 22:6)
This Canaanite woman knows she’s a sinner. She never questions Jesus. Jesus says, “It’s not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs,” and she says, “You’re right. I’m a dog.”
So this is first for you and me. God wants us to grow in humility more and more and more and see our sin more and more and more. We don’t deserve anything from our Dad. Take the worst person you can think of and then realize that you’re even worse than that. If Jesus says, “You’re a dog,” you answer, “Yes, I am. Lord, have mercy on me.” All of us need to grow more and more in this. We will never stop growing in this. All our lives is a recognition more and more that we don’t deserve our Father’s love and yet He still loves us. This Canaanite woman gets it.
Secondly, we must then receive God’s grace more and more and more. We can never get enough of the Word of God, of forgiveness of our sins, of the Lord’s Supper, of Divine Service, of prayer. So you have to think counterintuitive. You would think that the longer you’re a Christian the less you need forgiveness and grace. But the opposite is true. The longer you’re a Christian the more and more and more you need His grace. It’s not any coincidence that when someone you know starts become a stronger and stronger Christian, then you start to see them more and more and more in Church and Bible Study and prayer and at the Lord’s Table. This is what God wants for you—to have more and more and more of His grace and forgiveness all the time. Luther says in the Large Catechism that our life is like one long continuous, uninterrupted flow of forgiveness. More and more.
Thirdly, then comes more and more faith. Stronger and stronger faith. Faith like this Canaanite woman. This is where our Dad, not our Grandpa, comes with the testing and trying and disciplining. It was testing that drove this Canaanite woman to Jesus in the first place. Her daughter is severely oppressed. When your child or your grandchild is in trouble, then your faith gets a workout. God tests you so that you will lean into Him more and more and more. So that you will call upon Him more and more.
So He does with this woman. Her trial drives her to Jesus. And then comes the silence. You often pray and pray and it seems as if God isn’t saying anything at all. Seems as if He’s completely ignoring you. He’s strengthening your faith more and more so that you will trust His word and His love. Then comes the thought, “Maybe God doesn’t love me. Maybe He loves other people, but not me.” That’s what Jesus does with the woman when He says, “I was only sent to Israel. I can’t take the bread and throw it to the dogs.” But here again he wants to show her faith more and more and more. She says, “Yes, but I just want the crumbs from the floor.”
God will test you. Count on it. He’s your loving Dad and that’s what Dads do. He will test you to strengthen your faith more and more and more. It will be different for all of us. Illnesses, deaths, depression, temptations, addictions, enemies. Yet we rejoice as Peter says, “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, as was necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. God will test you so that your faith may grow stronger more and more and more.
Finally, then, your Dad has this as his ultimate aim, that you grow in a holy life more and more and more. This is from our Epistle today, “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality.” God wants you to wrestle and struggle against sin more and more so that you be more and more holy in Jesus. Now he specifically mentions the struggle of sexual sins. God wants us to be more and more holy with our bodies. And that’s a struggle for all of us.
It’s the same whether it’s homosexuality or adultery or pornography or lust or polygamy or any sexual sin that you can think of. God allows all sorts of feelings and thoughts in us that He wants us to fight and wrestle against. He wants us all to be holy more and more and more. And that means fighting and wrestling against all thoughts and feelings that are opposed to Him and His Word. And this is very hard. We all know how hard it is. But God supports us in this fight with His Word and Spirit.
This is God’s will for you. That whatever sins you struggle with, and Paul especially mentions here sexual sins, that you fight and wrestle more and more and more against them to become more and more holy in all we think and say and do. And for this He will give you His Holy Spirit.
Your Dad loves you dearly. That’s why He wants more for you. More repentance and humility. More grace and forgiveness. More faith. And more holiness. He wants the exact thing Jesus wanted for the Canaanite woman, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.”