“Great is your faith!” How would you feel if I as your Pastor were to tell someone that about you? I’m guessing that you’d think you must be doing something right. And to be honest, I’ve been around you folks long enough now to be able to say that about quite a few of you. Our congregation is blessed to have a lot of people with a great faith. But what makes our faith great? This morning, Jesus encounters a woman whom he says has a great faith. Let’s look at her faith and find out what exactly made it so great.
The first thing we learn about this woman is that she is a “Cananite woman”, meaning that she’s from outside Israel. Jesus is in the region of Tyre and Sidon, north of Israel. The people he’s coming into contact here are Gentiles, Pagans, people who are outside of the covenant of Israel. While Jesus and the disciples are traveling, they come across this woman who comes up to him and says “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.”
What makes this cry for help important is what this woman calls Jesus: “Son of David”. The term “Son of David” is a Messianic phrase, reserved for the descendent of David who would be the promised Messiah. So it’s clear that this woman, even though she is not a Jew, has some knowledge of the Jewish religion, and knew that there was a promised Messiah from David’s line. We can also believe that she has heard about what Jesus has been doing, the word He proclaimed, the signs that He performed, and from here knowledge of the prophecies of the Messiah, was able to put two and two together, and realized that Jesus was the long promised Messiah. She knew that Jesus had the power to help her. So being the good mother that she was, not wanting her daughter to suffer, saw Jesus, came up to him, cried out, and asked Him to have mercy on her.
Now that’s quite a statement of faith in and of itself, but there’s more to it. At first, Jesus doesn’t answer her. Not only that, the disciples begged Jesus to send her away, because “she is crying out after us.” Perhaps they thought she’s not part of the “club”, doesn’t meet the criteria for admission to see Jesus. Especially considering her behavior here! Now in Jesus’ time, women didn’t go running after Rabbi’s or teachers, and cry out after them like this woman is doing with Jesus. It was viewed as shameful. Yet, she doesn’t care what others think of her, she knows that Jesus can help, and she’s going to do whatever it takes, because Jesus is the only one who can help.
Now Jesus’ response is a bit puzzling at first, he says “I was sent only to the Lost Sheep of Israel.” It seems as if He’s now giving her the brush off. But, we have to remember the focus of Jesus’ ministry was to fulfill the covenant that God had made with the people of Israel in the Old Testament. They were the people of the covenant, God had a responsibility to fulfill that, and Jesus was the fulfillment of it. That was His primary purpose. I’m sure the disciples know that, and view Jesus as an “exclusive” messiah so to speak. However, what often gets lost is that in the prophecies about the Messiah, yes, the Jews are included, but that all nations would be drawn to this Messiah. Jesus wasn’t an exclusive Savior, but He was for all. This woman must have known that as well, why else would she come to Jesus, call him “Son of David”, and ask him to have mercy on her?
In fact, instead of losing heart at Jesus’ reply and going back home empty-handed and disappointed, she says, point blank, “Lord, help me.” A pretty direct request. She’s really humbling herself now. Jesus’ response is “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” Oh great, now it seems that Jesus is calling her a “dog”. I know of no one who would want to be equated to a dog, let alone by Jesus, when you’re seeking help from him, and you’ve pretty much begged him for help. But we see how deep this woman’s faith really is, she’s not leaving. In fact, she responds, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”
I found this part of our reading to be pretty revealing. You see, Jesus got into several debates in His ministry with some folks who were considered to be the “religious elite” of his day, people like the Pharisees. They knew their Scriptures inside and out, and when Jesus would debate with them, they’d come out on the losing end. They couldn’t counter his arguments in the end. You never heard Jesus say “great is your faith” to a Pharisee. Yet here, this woman has a response for Jesus’ argument! She says “Yes, Lord, even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” She knows her place, she knows that she’s not part of the covenant with Israel, she’s content being the dog that gets the gracious crumbs. When you think about this, it’s quite clear Jesus wants to see how deep this woman’s faith really is. When she responds, in faith, to Jesus’ statement, He knows she really believes that He is the promised Messiah, the Savior of the Nations. That prompts Him to say “Great is your faith!”
Now some this morning who would preach on this text would put the focus on the healing. They’d say that “if you believe enough in Jesus, then He will do whatever You want Him to do.” That goes along the lines of prosperity theology. But the healing is not the focus of the story here. The focus is on the faith of the woman, how she got that faith, and how she displayed it.
You’ll remember last Sunday in our Epistle reading from Romans 10, St. Paul wrote that “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the Word of Christ”. Here we have an example of it. This woman had heard the word about Christ, the word created faith in her heart, and she believed that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. It’s the same with you and me. This morning, you have heard the Word proclaimed to you through the Gospel reading, and you understand that Jesus is the Christ. That true faith is in Christ alone for our salvation.
So now that we’ve gone over the Gospel reading for today, let me ask you, how great is your faith? Does your faith compare to this Cananite woman? Would you be willing to suffer ridicule, embarrass yourself, do whatever it takes, to be in the presence of Jesus like she did? We’re quite blessed to live in a country where we’re free to come to church each Sunday without obstacles or people threatening our lives. Yet, statistically speaking, nearly 2/3 of the people who are on our membership rolls do not attend church each Sunday. I’ve noticed a lot of you haven’t been very regular in being here this summer, either, and that number is even worse. It begs us to ponder the question, why? What’s wrong with our faith, that we don’t want to be in the presence of Christ each Sunday? If Jesus provides forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation through His Word, and this is the place where His Word comes to us through preaching and the Sacrament, then why would we want to be anywhere else on Sunday morning? What’s more important than the gifts that Christ gives to us in this place?
We also learn what the real object of faith is. Too many times in today’s world, Christianity is treated as a “how to” religion. You can go to churches, and hear sermons with topics like “How to be a better spouse”, “How to raise perfect children”, “10 Easy steps to building relationships with others”, “15 Steps to Living Your Best Life Now”, and so on and so forth. What is the object of that kind of faith? While these messages may seem more “practical”, are they messages that can save? Look back at this Cananite woman. Did she on her own have the power to heal her daughter of demon possession? No. Any of those “practical” messages wouldn’t do her a bit of good. Likewise, we can’t fix our main problem. We all have a sin problem. We have our sinful natures, and ever since the fall into sin, things in this world don’t work the way they are supposed to. For this little girl in our reading, she was severely oppressed by a demon. For others, bones get brittle and broken, organs shut down, tumors grow in places they aren’t supposed to, we get sick. And it’s not because of any one specific sin, that’s just life in a sinful, fallen world. While God gives us medicine and other things to help cope with these issues, it will only prolong the inevitable, that someday, we face death. I know of no one who can, in the end, get around that, and I have yet to find a preacher who can give you a 10 step sermon on avoiding death.
But the Good news in our Gospel reading is that this woman found healing for her daughter in Jesus. This woman didn’t believe in her own strength, she didn’t think that “if I believe hard enough, then Jesus HAS to heal my daughter”, she simply believed that Jesus had the power to heal. The object of her faith was Jesus. Faith in herself or anyone else wasn’t going to help her one bit. Likewise, when our faith is Christ-centered, when everything we say, everything we do in this place, points us to the cross, we ensure that our faith is in proper perspective. This morning, we confessed in the liturgy that we are sinful in thought, word, and deed. In the Kyrie, we repeated the cry of the Cananite woman Lord, have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy! We sing those words because we know that only Christ can save us from sin, death, and the power of the devil.
Jesus took care of our sin problem for us when he lived the sinless life we could not, went to the cross, died for the sins of the world, and rose again to defeat the power that sin, death, and the power of the devil had on our lives. And now, He gives that forgiveness, life, and salvation to us freely. He gives it right here, in this place, where we hear His Word proclaimed. In a few moments, you will come to this altar rail, and hear Him say “Take, eat, this is my body, take, drink, this is my blood, given and shed FOR YOU for the forgiveness of ALL of your sins.” Jesus doesn’t leave the job half done. He doesn’t just forgive the little sins and leave you to suffer for the really big ones. He forgives you for ALL of yoru sins, every single one of them. Even the sin of looking in at ourselves, or thinking that our church is some “country club” that only those who fit a certain description can have access to.
And how do we learn about what Jesus has done for us? Through His Word! Remember, “faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the Word of Christ!” You’re only going to hear it by staying in the Word. Great Faith stays that way by staying in the Word of God. That means we have a desire to be here on Sunday morning to hear that Word proclaimed to us in worship. We want to study our Bible in Bible class on Sunday morning and during the week. We want our children to have that great faith, so we enroll them in Sunday School, and get them in the habit of being here for worship, too. I am going to challenge you parents of Sunday School age children to show them how important a great faith in Christ is by not just dropping them off for Sunday School and picking them up, or that church is something you do on Sunday morning when you don’t have anything else going on. By bringing your children here on a weekly basis, you will instill in them the realization that there is nothing more important in life than a great faith in Christ.
“Great is your faith” Jesus said that about the woman in our Gospel reading today. She didn’t let anything get in the way of being in the presence of Christ. She knew that Jesus was the promised Savior, the promised Messiah. For you, the saints entrusted to my care at Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church, it is my prayer that all we say and do in this place keeps us centered on Jesus Christ, the true and only object of our faith, so that when our lives are complete, Jesus will indeed look at you and say “Great is your faith.” May God grant that faith to you through His Word for Jesus sake. Amen.
