The Lord be with you! The LORD is the strength of his people; he is the saving refuge of his anointed.

This is the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, and with all three readings for today, we note that God has always intended for His powerful and effective call to saving faith in Him to reach all nations in all the world. In the Lord’s Prayer’s 4th petition, give us this day our daily bread, we acknowledge that God gives His blessings and daily bread to all people. The call to salvation through Jesus Christ is similarly spread worldwide, just like the seed of the sower whom we read about last month.

Let us pray:
Almighty and everlasting Father, You give Your children many blessings even though we are undeserving. In every trial and temptation grant us steadfast confidence in Your loving-kindness and mercy; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen.

Isaiah 56:1, 6–8
God calls His place of worship a “house of prayer for all nations.” Take care to read further, though, because God certainly will not allow anyone to use His holy house to promote all the different religions of the world! What He clearly means is described in this whole chapter 56- God will reveal His deliverance to all nations. Those who hear and believe in Jesus, no matter where they live or to what nation they belong, they will believe in the promised Savior and in that way become God’s joyful servants. It’s not that all nations believe in the same God, but the One True God has shown His mercy to all nations so that they would leave their man-made religions of works and receive eternal life from Him.

Romans 11:1–32
We have already heard in Romans chapter 8 how God “works all things together for the good of those who love Him.” Here in chapter 11 we see a particular instance of that wondrous and mysterious truth. The Israelites were chosen by God’s grace to be a chosen people. Paul himself had this pedigree; he was a proud descendant of the youngest brother of the twelve, Benjamin. What tugs at Paul’s heart is that so many of His fellow Jews just don’t see the glaring truth that he has set before them: Jesus is the true Christ! So Paul tirelessly promotes and magnifies His message of salvation for the Gentiles, so that, even if it’s started out of mere jealousy, so what? It still means that some Jews will finally hear with believing ears and be saved, which remains part of God’s big plan anyway: all things work for the good!

Matthew 15:21–28
The Gospel books rarely speak of Jesus being marveled or surprised at anything. If they do, that’s usually because He was marveled at the unbelief of people who rejected Him. This instance is quite noteworthy: a foreign woman hears the news about Jesus of Nazareth, she knows that He is of Jewish descent, so she must be aware that she is not entitled to His benefits, so to speak. Yet, she still pleads to Him with steadfast confidence based on His promise to be the Savior of the people of all nations, including her. This is her great faith that Jesus sees in her and He marvels! He is admiring His own handiwork since He is the author of all faith.

Here’s Hymn 615, stanza 3:
    For You have promised, Lord, to heed
    Your children’s cries in time of need
    Through Him whose name alone is great,
    Our Savior and our advocate.

In the name of the Father, and of the ✝ Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Pr. Stirdivant

Matthew 15:21-28
Trinity Lutheran – Kearney, Missouri
August 16, 2020 – Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost
✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝

Grace to you, and peace, from God our Father, and
from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. This morning’s Gospel is perhaps one of the more disturbing accounts of Jesus’ ministry, for here we find a “woman” – as Jesus calls her – a woman of exceptional faith – a woman quite willing, it seems, to endure even insults from her Lord for the faith she has in Him as Savior. We meet her as Jesus and His followers were traveling along the road which led to Tyre and Sidon. And as they passed by, this woman called out to Jesus, saying: “Have mercy upon me, O Lord, Son of David!” What I’d like to suggest is that this woman is you, me, indeed, every one of us reduced down to one person – a woman after our own heart!

But you might be asking, how can this be? After all, the only thing we really know about this woman is that she was a Canaanite – and according to the people of her day, Canaanites were notorious sinners. Our Lord would have been perfectly within His rights to ignore her completely. But in fact, that’s precisely why I say she’s like you and me. Just look around you! Our sanctuary is a beautiful place where God has promised to come to us, yet even here He can’t come to us as He really is because His unveiled glory would slay us, for we are still yet sinners so long as we live on this side of heaven, where people get angry, tempers flare, and sharp, harsh words are oftentimes exchanged – as was witnessed most clearly over the past few weeks since the killing of George Floyd with all the ensuing riots, looting and attacks against proper authority. The fact of the matter – as Holy Scripture attests – is that not a one of us is righteous, no, not even one! To a person, we have all sinned and fallen short – far short – of the glory of God.

Now I’m sure that more than a few of you might be thinking to yourselves that although others might be pretty nasty, all in all you’re fairly well-behaved – not at all like those people who are rioting, looting and causing all this havok. Chances are you might even be saying to yourself: “I know what the Commandments say. I live my life in accord with the Commandments. I’ve never killed anyone, never committed adultery, never stolen anything – and I never gossip about anyone.” And as true as you might think such statements are, you could easily conclude that overall you’re a pretty good person. It’s true, some of you used to be a bit “rough around the edges,” but you’ve changed, haven’t you? You’re not “so bad” anymore. You haven’t stolen anything since becoming a Christian. You haven’t committed adultery – not really – only in your heart. And in fact, you’ve no doubt done quite a few good things of late.

Chances are fairly good that one of these two scenarios is going cover us all. So how is it that this Canaanite Woman can be said to be like you and me? Well, Jesus’ response to His disciples when He passes her by and seems to ignore her shows us what have in common. He said: “I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” With these words we learn that in this world, there exists no inherent, inalienable right to ask anything of God. Jesus, in passing by and “not answering a word” was saying to this woman, in effect, that her sins separated her from God so much that He was no longer obligated to hear her. Remember, the Canaanites didn’t worship the one, true God. These were the same people God ordered Joshua to destroy when He led His people into the Promised Land. They had influenced Israel to forsake God’s Covenant so that eventually they also began worshipping the gods of their own imagination.

This woman, and her people – like you and me – were terrible sinners. For thousands of years – like you and me – they were under a death order – God’s death decree – that is, that they – we – deserved nothing from God other than His wrath and hot indignation! Now I hope you didn’t miss the fact that I said, like you and me, because I don’t want anyone to get the impression that any of us should walk away from here today thinking we aren’t the ones who are being spoken of here when the Scriptures speak about sinners who deserve God’s wrath and judgment. The Scriptures will not let anyone escape with a false impression of this truth. For it is none other than God Himself, in His Word, who says that all “our righteousness” – all our good deeds – all our good works – “are nothing more than filthy rags.”

Your standing before God, you see, isn’t based upon what you do or don’t do. It only concerns who you are. The bottom line is that you can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. If I were to take a nice clean glass of crystalclear, charcoal-filtered mountain spring water, and then add just a tiny, teeny-weeny, microscopic pinch of cow manure, could I then – with a good conscience – offer it to you to drink? And would you drink it if you knew what was in it? Of course not! But that’s precisely how appealing our so-called “good” life looks to God. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of taking a tour through a hog house – and I have – by the time you come out the other side, the smell of that place – like the smell of our sins rising into the nostrils of God – is in your hair, your clothes, and even in your skin.

So while all of us have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory, there is still something deep down inside, that wants to protest, saying: “But I’m still okay!” You can hear that voice, can’t you? Even now it’s saying: “Hey! Look at me. I’m here aren’t I? I’m here in Church showing respect for God. I’m remembering the Sabbath – at least this week!” It’s time, perhaps for you to recall that time when you didn’t love God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind – when you did what you wanted, and didn’t really care all that much what God thought. You see, it’s not just our sin – although that’s certainly an issue, to be sure – but rather our attitude toward sin. All of us should know by now that in God’s sight all sin is the same. It separates and keeps us from God. But what about your attitude toward sin? Do you approach your sin, saying: “Hey, I’m not so bad! Everyone else is doing the exact same thing!” Or do you approach every sin rather like the Canaanite woman, saying: “Lord, Son of David, have mercy upon me?”

That’s why this woman is like you and me. We are like her because our sins have also separated us from God. They have made our prayers unworthy of being heard. Just like her – on our own – we are also under the heavy hand of the penalty of God’s death decree, for “the wages of sin is death.” And even though you may call upon God’s name – yes, and may even pray, praise, and give thanks – apart from Christ, God has no reason to hear you. You have no rights on your own before God, for as Jesus reminded the woman here in this text: “It isn’t proper to take the children’s bread and throw it to dogs.”

Can you imagine how you would feel if Jesus said something like that to you? And yet this woman of great faith doesn’t bristle or grow angry. She knows who she is. But she also knows who Jesus is – and what He’s like. She knows that He’s “gracious and kind,” “slow to anger” and “merciful” – a “God rich in mercy” – but One who also has promised to “punish the sins of the Fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Him” while still showing love “to a thousand generations of those who love Him and keep His Commandments.” That’s why this Canaanite woman can cry out: “Lord, Son of David, have mercy.” Obviously the Word had taught her heart to properly fear and love God – and that such fearing and loving of God must be lived out by going to the One whom the Father has sent – this One who was now passing by along the road. And so she went to Him – and indeed, she never quit going. And even though Jesus preached the Law to her – reminding her that she was not worthy of His Gifts – she continued coming and cried out all the more at His seeming rebuke: “Yes, Lord but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the table of their masters.”

Our culture, of course, teaches that it’s insulting and unloving to speak negatively or harshly to people about sin. Yet, look at what Jesus says – this One whom most of the world – even the unbelieving world – holds up as the Standard for loving one other. “Lady,” He tells her, “you are a dog!” And at His words You’d think this woman would have run off in disgrace. But she continued to come boldly to the throne of grace so that she might obtain mercy – so that she might find grace to help in time of need. Isn’t that why you’ve come here today? We all know who we are and what we are. We know full well that our lives are full of sin. Spiritually we’ve all been harassed, beaten about, dashed against the wall, slapped, kicked, punched, and abused. Our evil inclinations and our own wicked nature sometimes get the best of us so that we do exactly the opposite of what God wants. Deep down inside you know it – and I hope you hate it.

Dear Christian, He who has all you’ll ever need or want is passing by. And what He wants you to know is that you who cry out to Him will get what you’ve come for because you trust that this Jesus is who He claims to be – God in human flesh. That’s the reason we cry out each week in the Liturgy of the Church: “Lord, have mercy upon us, Christ, have mercy upon us, Lord, have mercy upon us.” We come here to cry out to Him who passes by, simply saying: “Help me!” And what does Jesus do? He comes to you with His holy, precious Word and brings you His eternal rest. You who are tormented by sin He saves by covering you with His Hand from which flows forth the sound of Baptismal grace as it sprinkles your head and washes you anew in the fount of His grace. There He reminds you of His great love for us sinners by forgiving all your sins. And then He holds out for you His very body and blood, given and shed for you to eat and drink as the medicine of immortality through faith in Him as the only Savior from sin and death.

God, on account of Christ, has forgiven you all your sin. And though we are all sinners through and through – yet Christ has still washed and cleansed you from each and every one of them. It matters not a whit how great your faith is, nor how strongly you believe, but rather how faithful is He who passes by. That was why the woman cried out – and that’s why we cry out. For it’s this One alone who promises to “give us rest” – this One alone, as He passes by, who turns and says: “Let it be to you as you desire.”

In the Name of the Father, and of the ✝ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

And now that peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and minds in that one true faith in Christ Jesus, unto life everlasting. Amen.

Pr. Drew Newman