In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Three-In-One who gives us salvation, despite who we truly are.
Dear Brother and sisters in Christ. When have you been persistent? Have you ever been persistent, with God?
There is a very old old story about a woman, a mother – a wife. She had grown up a very poor, but very religious girl. One day, an older man’s eye fell on her beautiful face and fell into a real powerful infatuation. Months later they were married. Now she had everything she needed, she was taken care of. Still, as often it goes when you have what you need, everyone around her seemed to be more into what they had rather than what they really needed.
Her husband was a louse. He was a drunkard. He found himself spending his money away like it was water. He would spend his money on booze for himself, and for his friends. He would spend his money on booze for his…entertainment…the girls and women that he surrounded himself with so that he wouldn’t have to think about himself, about how awful he really was. His wife knew who he was though. His wife knew, and she prayed for him.
Not too long after they were married, this couple had a child, a beautiful baby boy with his mother’s eyes. This boy grew up; he had his father’s intelligence and his mother’s good looks. This boy was what any mother would want. Sure, this boy made her happy for a while. There were the early years. There were the years when every little action this boy did seemed so innocent, even when he was doing wrong.
But later on this boy, like all young boys do, left the warmth of his mother’s side. He left and decided that he would find out about the world on his own. He could make a killing out in this world. He went off to school and he was a natural. He got great grades, and even on top of that, he was a hit with the ladies. He had the natural ability that made others feel like he could do anything he wanted. But his mother knew better. His mother saw the hurt inside of him. His mother saw the possession in him that he didn’t want to talk about. He didn’t want to talk about the emptiness that plagued him, just as it plagued his father. He didn’t want to talk about trying to fill up that emptiness the same way his father had – by drinking and womanizing. But he didn’t have to talk about it. His mother knew. His mother knew, and she prayed for him.
Years and years went by, and this woman’s face, which used to be so lovely, so young and energetically upward looking had been scarred by hard lines and wrinkles. This woman’s body, which used to be so young and able to do anything, was now old and hunched over from years and years of praying.
It didn’t look good. It seemed as if nothing was changing. Years upon years spent on her knees, only for answer from God that seemed to say, “wait.” Years upon years spent praying for what she knew was His will, only for an answer that sounded like a simple “no.”
This is what the woman in our reading for this morning must have felt like. A Canaanite woman, a mother whose daughter was suffering terribly, standing…no…kneeling before this man who she knew could save her daughter right then and there. You can imagine what this woman must have felt like, how struck to the heart she must have been when she neared this man and he said nothing. You can imagine how she must have felt when the disciples told her to go away.
Have you gotten this response? Have you come to your Lord in prayer and felt like you got no answer at all? Maybe it has been about a sickness in your family like this Canaanite woman was experiencing. Maybe it has been about a friend or a coworker who has turned down every advance you’ve tried to make in Christ’s name. You’ve felt left out and denied.
This woman didn’t quit. She kept going. She kept after the disciples and Jesus, all the while crying out, “Lord! Help me!”
Jesus looks at her square in the eye and tells her, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” This could have been enough to make the woman cry. She knew she wasn’t a part of these “lost sheep of Israel.” She was just a poor Canaanite woman, a foreigner, and an intruder.
Shouldn’t we feel the same way? We’re nothing but intruders into God’s grace here. Sure, we pray all the time expecting nothing but good things back from our God – but on what basis. Do we really think about what it is that makes us able to get on our knees and climb up to the throne of God? Do we think about how truly awful our sins make us look to God?
Still, the faith of this poor outsider, this sheep outside of the fold kept her going. She dropped to her knees and pleaded, “Lord, help me.”
Jesus still didn’t give in. He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and give it to the dogs.” Not only was this woman ignored. Not only was this woman denied. She was a dog. Not the kind of dog you like to come home to. Not your loving and beloved pet. Jesus was telling her, you are nothing more to me than a dog, covered in mange, foaming at the mouth – ravenous stray dog that no one would touch, or even look at.
We come to that point too. We take a look at what and who God is. Mark Twain once said, “Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.” Christ was the good example that the Pharisees hated to look at because while they were trying to be perfect, they couldn’t be. We see that perfection isn’t really in us either. We look at our perfect Christ who fulfilled the law that we could never, and because of his perfection, we know we are wholly imperfect.
You remember that woman I began talking about before? The woman with the husband and the son?
For years upon years this woman came to her God, in humility – knowing that what she could do was nothing. She knew she couldn’t stop her husband treating her like one of many possessions he had, a dull brass lamp that lost its sparkle. She knew she couldn’t keep her son from going out and drinking and womanizing, although he had become a lecturer now. But she knew there was someone she could go to. That there was someone who saw her for as weak as she really was, but offered her His power. She prayed. She prayed long and hard and without stopping to wonder “if” God would send what she was praying for, but holding on fast to knowing that “when” it happened, it would be marvelous.
Her faith, like the faith of the Canaanite woman in this story, went right up to what seemed like impossible odds, against even what everyone else was telling her God’s answer already was and she said something different. She said, “I’ll trust in you anyway.” She said, “Even the dogs get the crumbs from the table and maybe I’m just a dog but I’m here. I’m here for my crumbs.”
It’s statements like that. Statements like getting down on your knees and praying one last time for that person to come to church or for that sickness to be healed or that unbelief and doubt in your own heart to be mended. Statements like that turn it all around. Jesus takes those statements and rewards them. To the Canaanite woman he says, “Woman, you have great faith.” Great faith. Faith that is unlike any other. The only other time in the Bible that “great faith” is used, it is about a Roman Centurion, another dog.
It is that great faith in us that stands up to what seem like the world’s “no’s”. It’s that great faith that stands up to what the world is throwing at you to keep from spreading the good news of Jesus. It’s that great faith in us, that is worked by the Holy Spirit, by God that stands up to cover us while we are on our knees praying. It is a faith, a faith in standing up. It’s a faith that Jesus has stood up for us – stood up high on a cross for us, to cover us while we look up at him like so many dogs at the great dinner table. We wait for the crumbs, but what He gives us is the whole meal.
That great faith knows that our prayers will be answered. That great faith knows that our prayers will be answered because any prayer that we could send to God is significantly less difficult than what he has already done for us in His Son’s death and resurrection. He forgave our sins. A God who is a just God, a God who is concerned about giving people what really is fairly theirs has to look down on our dog like selves, cowering in the corner, whimpering and see all the dirt and disease on our bodies. But instead of wanting to send us away, instead this God wants to take us, and heal us. He wants to give us His forgiveness, His pardon.
That gift is the greatest gift we could ever pray for, and we receive it from Him without price, without even having to pay for it. We receive it because He died on that cross for all of us, and all we can do is believe. And so, when the world is telling you that your prayers won’t make a difference, when the world is telling you that your prayers can’t change anything – you can tell them that even before you were born your prayers for forgiveness were answered. You can tell them that any prayer after that can be answered.
You see, that old, bedraggled woman’s prayers were finally answered. Her husband finally agreed to be baptized, on his death bed only hours before he expired. Her son, her son was Baptized too. He became a monk, and then a preacher, and then a bishop. Today we know that son as Saint Augustine, one of the greatest religious minds ever on this earth, one of the most influential thinkers that inspired Luther. Amen.
