The Tenth Sunday After Pentecost Dogs Are People, Too, & One Crumb Will Be Fine Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen. In today’s Gospel, a woman knelt before Jesus, saying, “Lord, help me.” And He answered, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Dear Christian friends, Whenever the Gospel of Jesus is read in our midst, each Christian has but one job. We must each find a place to stand, so to speak, in that Gospel. You must locate yourself and I must locate myself in that Gospel. If you fail to see yourself in the Gospel, you also will fail to see Jesus. The trouble with today’s Gospel is that it does not give us options. Present here are only Jesus and a woman kneeling at His feet. Jesus calls her a dog. Here is the thing to remember about Jesus, no matter what He might say: your Lord Jesus Christ does not have a mean bone in His body! He NEVER speaks with cruelty. He ONLY speaks love and compassion. Our Lord’s harsh Words are like His rough actions—such as when He make a whip and driving people from the temple (Matthew 21:12-13, John 2:15)—even His harsh things are said and done for us and for our salvation. Do not consider it an insult that Jesus would call this woman a dog. Consider today’s Gospel a proclamation of the holy Christian faith and the salvation that extends to all people. Today’s Gospel teaches us to believe that forgiveness of sins in Christ extends even to those who seem as if they should not be included. Our Lord did not call the woman a dog because of the way she looked or because of how she acted. Jesus only called her a dog because she did not have any more Jewish blood in her veins than you do. This woman was a gentile, a Canaanite, and not a Jew. It was customary for the Jews to call their gentile neighbors “dogs.” To the Jews “belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises” (Romans 9:4). To the dogs—to this woman—belonged nothing. That is how the Jews were thinking. That is NOT how your Lord Jesus thinks. Jesus simply picked up a common way of speaking for His day and said without malice, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” Why did this woman throw herself at Jesus’ feet? She was seeking the benefit of gifts that had been sworn on an oath to someone else. This woman wanted to receive the blessing that had been promised to Abraham and Isaac and their descendants forever. This woman did not pretend that she had any right to receive the things promised. She felt no sense of entitlement. She knelt as a foreigner and stranger in someone else’s house. She made her appeal to “the Lord, the Son of David,” on the solely basis of His grace and mercy; solely on the basis of who Jesus is, rather than who she is. This woman had nothing, but she knew Jesus had plenty: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” I suppose we each could be insulted by this Gospel. No one would choose to be called a dog. But then again, it is probably not anyone’s first choice to be called a “poor, miserable sinner,” either. But as you already know, unless we first become sinners we will never need a Savior. In light of today’s Gospel, it can also be said that, unless we first become dogs we will never see the value of the crumb. This woman’s lack of qualification did not prevent her from receiving the benefit of being with Jesus, and that is a VERY GOOD PLACE for you and for me also to stand (or kneel)! Like this woman, we should not even try to offer Jesus our resumes. Like this woman, we should each grant that many other people are much more worthy to be with Jesus than I am. We should simply kneel in the place where this woman kneels if we want to see Jesus from the angle she sees Him. We need not be insulted by unbecoming figures of speech just because they sting. When I feel insulted by something, that feeling merely indicates that I think too highly of myself. “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” If you should fail to get down on the ground next to this woman and put your feet up into the air like a dog, then you will NOT get a very good view of Jesus. You will only see Him as condescending and insulting and everything that He is NOT. On the other hand, if you can indeed get down onto the ground next to this woman—if you can live with our Lord’s analogy of comparing her to a dog—today’s Gospel will give you a very sweet and comforting picture of your Lord Jesus and His salvation! “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” With these Words, this Canaanite woman spoke the very Christian faith by which you and I are forgiven; the very faith by which you and I are saved. This woman in today’s Gospel was saying, • “I grant that I am not worthy, Lord, but Your grace and mercy, are NOT based upon my worthiness. Your grace and mercy, Jesus, are powerful forces all by themselves, and Your grace and mercy cannot be turned aside or emptied of power simply because I lack worthiness.” • God’s promise of forgiveness and salvation in Christ extend beyond the bloodlines of Israel and reach even to those who are far from Jewish. • “Just a tiny bit of Your infinite mercy will be fine, my dear Lord! A crumb is all I need!” If you are able to agree with this woman and say AMEN to what she has said—if you are able to share her confession of faith—rejoice and be glad! Your AMEN means that God the Holy Spirit has already acted. Your AMEN means that you are indeed on the ground next to this woman, so that you, too, may be lifted up and nourished and satisfied by your Christ. Now let’s take our Lord’s “dog” analogy a little farther than it is customarily taken. There is, after all, at least one very good thing about being a dog: Dogs are interested in those things that nobody else wants. Dogs pay close attention even to tiny morsels of food and they find nourishment where others see only a waste of time. Yet what is the Holy Communion, which we are about to receive? There is present in the Communion only a crumb, a tiny morsel of food. This is a crumb that very few people desire: • The Jews did not want the Body and Blood of their Lord Jesus for the forgiveness of sins. For them it was enough that His body was pierced and His blood was shed in their effort to be done with Jesus. As St. Paul wrote in Romans, to the Jews “belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises… from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ who is God over all, blessed forever” (Romans 9:4). But the Jews did not want Him! To use the imagery of today’s Gospel, the children of the house wanted nothing of the lavish banquet of salvation that God had prepared in the body of His Son Jesus, the very bread that God had promised. What good thing resulted from their disinterest in the banquet of salvation? There are plenty of crumbs left for the dogs to live on. • Tragically, many Christians likewise share the same disinterest in Jesus’ Body and Blood. “The Holy Communion is merely bread!” they claim. “Jesus cannot possibly be present in a crumb,” they complain. These Christians imagine that when Jesus said of the Bread, “This is My body, given for you for the forgiveness of you sins” (Matthew 26:26, 28), He must have been talking about something else. So they have no interest in the banquet laid by the master of the house. • The world is full of people who would be insulted and indignant that Jesus would use the image of a dog to describe them. In their pride and their impenitence, they turn away. Drop a dollar on the ground, and even a guy with a backache will stoop over to pick it up. Serve the Holy Communion, and most people cannot be bothered. Yet this woman was correct in today’s Gospel. This woman gives us a good place to stand because she speaks our faith: “Amen, Lord! Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” _______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list Sermons@cat41.org http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
