11th Sunday after Pentecost
August 20, 2017
Matthew 15:21-28
I had wanted all week to talk about healing this morning.
The gospel story is one of healing, how Jesus heals the woman’s daughter. The
Old Testament story is one of healing in a family. What Joseph’s brothers meant
for evil, selling him into slavery in another country, God used for good,
putting Joseph in a high position in Egypt so that he could save up grain for
the coming famine and thus save many people, including Joseph’s family, from
starvation. However, the sermon never came together. It wouldn’t come together.
So I read yet another commentary on the Matthew passage and this one pointed
out that the woman didn’t ask Jesus
for healing. She did not say, “Jesus,
please heal my daughter.” She said, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering
terribly.” She didn’t ask for healing; she asked for mercy. She didn’t ask Jesus to take away the demon from her
daughter; she asked Jesus to show kindness and compassion to her.
In my effort to focus on healing this morning, I even
reread part of Henri Nouwen’s book, The
Wounded Healer. Henri Nouwen wrote
that much of healing occurs through the gift and offer of hospitality. He said
that many people suffer because they look for the one person or event or
medicine that will take away their pain. Yet he wrote that it is a “false
illusion that wholeness can be given from one to another.” I cannot offer you
wholeness; I can offer you Jesus. A doctor cannot offer you wholeness; a doctor
can offer you a treatment. A politician cannot offer you wholeness; a
politician can offer you a course of action. What each of us can offer each other is hospitality, a
place where you can share your pain. Not to take it away or to stifle it, but
to say, “I hear you. I love you. You are not alone. You are loved.” Not
thinking about what can I get from you or how can I use you, but focusing on
that other person. Showing mercy, showing kindness and compassion and just
sitting with that other person in all their hurt. Not for a pity party, not for
a time of woe-is-me, but to listen. I found a quote, either from the author
Robert Benson, or one I heard him share at a seminar, “Sometimes being
listened to is much like being loved, and sometimes there’s no difference.”
Let’s go back to our story with Jesus and the woman.
Jesus is traveling since we last saw him on the lake last week and has now
entered the region of Tyre and Sidon. He is greeted, he is shown hospitality,
by a woman who is from there and who comes out to greet him. She’s a one-woman
welcoming committee! And she already knows who he is. She knows he’s the Son of
David. And she knows his reputation for healing, for compassion. So she
addresses him practically by name, there is nothing anonymous going on here.
Jesus doesn’t get to be incognito. Sign of a good host to know your guest,
right? And yet then she asks her guest for mercy. She gets right to the point.
Her daughter is suffering terribly, please have mercy. This man, this foreigner
in her land, this person from a different background, different religion, she
knows her people need this bread that comes from another country, from another
religion, and this man is the only one who can offer it. She extends
hospitality to him, and asks for it to be extended back to her. Not in a
give-and-take or a I’ll-scratch-you-back, you-scratch-mine type of way. Simply
a welcome, and a please have mercy. My daughter is suffering, and you are the
only one who can help.
And Jesus, who has been welcomed to a different country
by this woman, who knows he can help, tells her NO. This is one of those stories
where you really wonder at Jesus. That he saved Peter out on the lake, yeah,
not a surprise. We expect Jesus to save, to help, to have compassion, to show
mercy. But he tells her no! WHAT?! We’re not used to Jesus saying NO, to Jesus
rejecting people, to Jesus calling someone names. That’s not the Jesus we know.
I had a seminary professor who pointed out that our only
place in this story is with this woman. We, at least most of us, are Gentiles.
We are not Jews. Jesus saying he came only for Israel excludes us. We are the
outsider, the foreigner, the immigrant, and we are on our knees with her,
begging Jesus to have mercy on us, too! We show hospitality to those who are
not like us, we listen, but we cannot offer wholeness, we cannot offer life.
Only Jesus can do that. And I have no doubt that each of us, in some area of
our life, could use wholeness. Could use compassion. Could use kindness. Could
do with some mercy. Jesus, son of David, have mercy on us! Someone close to us
is suffering. Maybe it’s us who’s suffering. Lord, we know we risk rejection.
We know we risk being called names. Yet Jesus is the only one who can offer
true life.
The
NO comes first. It’s hard to say NO in this day and age, isn’t it? From Jack
Bauer to Olivia Pope, the intense “I need you to do this” and figuring out how
to get around or how to make people say yes to what you want, maybe what you need. Jack Bauer didn’t
take NO for an answer. And you know? The woman doesn’t take NO for an answer,
either. She persists. And so do we in our prayers. Lord, have mercy on me.
Lord, hear my cry. How long, O Lord? Perseverance is one of the traits of love
in 1 Corinthians 13 that famous chapter on love. In many other places, Paul and
the other authors of the New Testament encourage the faithful to persevere.
Persevere in the faith. Persevere in your prayers. Persevere during hardships. Persevere.
Persist. Because the YES will come.
Jesus says, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And we’re
told her daughter was healed at that moment.
Jesus’
nature is to show mercy. It is to have compassion. There are so many times
we’re told he had compassion on the crowds and healed them or fed them or
taught them or all three. Our God is a merciful God. Even the dogs eat the
crumbs that fall from the table. In a Jewish household, the dogs wouldn’t have
been anywhere near the children while they ate. Gentiles, ancient Greeks, it’s
more likely that dogs would have been household pets, getting fed under the
table while the children ate.[1]
Kids and dogs getting fed at the same time. And so Jesus relents and out of
that initial NO, there’s a YES hidden inside. Jesus doesn’t always come through
for us how we expect. Jesus first told the woman NO. Martin Luther said that this is sometimes how
Jesus helps us, by killing us to give us life, by hiding the YES inside the NO,
which has to come first. Sometimes God will continue to humble us before saying
YES and remind us that our salvation and wholeness comes from God alone.
Yet, the woman didn’t pray for wholeness; she prayed for
mercy. Earlier in Matthew, Jesus told the Pharisees, “It is not the healthy who
need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy,
not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”[2]
“I desire mercy, not sacrifice” is from the Old Testament book, Hosea, chapter
6. The chapter begins with God’s people saying, “Let us return to the Lord. God
has torn us to pieces but he will heal us. He will revive us and restore us.”
Then God speaks, “What am I going to do with you? Your love is like the morning
mist, like the early dew that disappears. For I desire mercy, not sacrifice,
and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.” Did you hear that? God
doesn’t want us to focus on doing everything right! God doesn’t want us to make
sure we’ve got every box checked on how to be a perfect Christian. God wants
mercy. God wants us to acknowledge and remember that he is God and we are not.
God asks for mercy, for kindness, for compassion. This is the opposite of
hatred. This is the opposite of saying, we’re better than you. This is the
opposite of the rudeness that is pervading our society. Jesus didn’t come to
call the righteous but sinners, not the healthy but the sick. Jesus came for
the sick. Jesus came for those in need of mercy. We are those in need of mercy.
Our neighbor is those in need of mercy. The poor are those in need of mercy.
The immigrant are those in need of mercy. The LGBTQI person is those in need of
mercy. The person in jail is in need of mercy. The person on the street is in
need of mercy. They are not in need of condemnation. They are not in need of
judgment. They are not in need of criticism. They’re in need of those crumbs
that fall from the table even to us. There are enough crumbs to go around, by
the way. There is no shortage on Jesus’ love. One of the hymns I almost picked
for today was “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy.” Listen to the first few of the original stanzas:
There’s
a wideness in God’s mercy,
Like the wideness of the sea;
There’s
a kindness in His justice,
Which is more than liberty.
There
is no place where earth’s sorrows
Are more felt than up in Heaven;
There
is no place where earth’s failings
Have such kindly judgment given.
There
is welcome for the sinner,
And more graces for the good;
There
is mercy with the Savior;
There is healing in His blood.
There
is grace enough for thousands
Of new worlds as great as this;
There
is room for fresh creations
In that upper home of bliss.
For
the love of God is broader
Than the measure of our mind;
And
the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.
Thanks be to God.
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