Sermon: Reminiscere (Lent 2) – 2022

13 March 2022

Text: Matt 15:21-28

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

Of course, Jesus is our Lord and our Redeemer.  He is God in the flesh, the Son of God and the Son of Man, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, the King of the Universe, and the Christ, the Messiah, the Savior.  He is all of these things.  But typically, people addressed Him as “Rabbi,” which means “Teacher.”

Our Lord did not come into the world to teach us Algebra or History or how to program the clock on your stove when the time changes.  He came to teach us about the kingdom of God.  He came to teach us how to understand the Scriptures.  He came to teach us how we poor miserable sinners become saints.  He teaches us that we are saved by grace alone, through faith, and He teaches us all of these things in many and various ways.  And He teaches us that He does it.

Jesus teaches us through the Scriptures – all of them, from Genesis to Revelation.  He teaches us by means of His called representatives: prophets and apostles and men whom He calls into the preaching office.  He teaches us by means of miracles, in which people who suffer the effects of sin, whether disease or deformity or even death – are made new.  He teaches by means of parables and sermons. He teaches by forcing His students to think and debate and defend their positions.  For once again, let us not forget that our Lord Jesus Christ is indeed a rabbi, a teacher, a professor. 

In fact, He is the teacher of teachers.  He is the Word, which in Greek is the Logos.  And this is the same word from where we get the word “Logic.”  Jesus is the very logic of God, which is why we poor miserable sinners in this fallen often don’t understand Him.

And so how beautiful it is when this Canaanite woman turns out to be one of His top students, who teaches us how to learn from Jesus.  What we heard in our Gospel reading was one of the greatest classroom exchanges of all time.

There is a similar scene in the new movie about the great Christian writer C.S. Lewis.  Lewis remembers an incident with his beloved teacher, William Kirkpatrick.  Mr. Kirkpatrick, known affectionately as “the Great Knock,” asks the young Lewis a question about one of the classical writers, but he has the citation wrong.  Lewis then corrects his tutor, who is beaming ear to ear.  For it was all a set-up.  It was the teacher’s trick.  The teacher was testing his pupil.  And so the teacher delights in being “corrected” by his student.

This is what we are seeing with Jesus and the Canaanite woman, dear friends.  How sad that feminist theologians, who claim to be Christians, regularly accuse our Lord of being a sexist and sinning against the Canaanite woman.  Can you imagine?  Accusing Jesus of sin?  They understand neither Jesus nor the kingdom.  But what’s also sad is that these theologians are so ignorant and lacking in intellectual training that they don’t even recognize our Lord’s classical classroom technique here.  It is known as the Socratic Method.  And this is what happens when theologians worship at the altar of wokeness instead of at the altar of our Lord Jesus Christ, our Rabbi and our Master.   Unlike the Canaanite woman, these so-called theologians do not know Him.

For like the Great Knock, our Lord tests His students.  He tests our faith.  For this woman prayed to Him for help.  And His first response was to ignore her.  Have you ever prayed and thought that Jesus is ignoring your prayer?  “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David” is her plea. She cries out to Jesus as God and King.  “My daughter is severely oppressed by a demon,” she says.  “But He did not answer her a word.” 

Often, when people pray, they expect some kind of sign.  They want Jesus to do a trick for them to show them that He hears their prayer.  C.S. Lewis spoke of taking this kind of approach to prayer when he was a young boy and his mother died.  He expected God to be a kind of magician, and when He did not raise his mother from the dead, he became an angry-at-God atheist.  Which, of course, makes no sense.

The disciples want Jesus to send the annoying Canaanite woman away.  But He doesn’t.  For He is teaching her, and them.  “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  This is not true, dear friends, but it is not a lie.  It is a test to see if His student knows her material.  And she does.  For she refused to accept this brush-off.  “She came and knelt before Him, saying, Lord, help me.”  Jesus challenges her to make an argument that He is the Savior of the world, and not merely a Jewish king.  For she truly believes this.  She believes Jesus is her Lord.  She understands the kingdom.  And Jesus essentially says, “Prove it!”  He challenges her: “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” 

And here the student triumphs, which means the teacher triumphs.  She retorts: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”  Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith!  Be it done for you as you desire.”  And “her daughter was healed immediately.”

For she passed the test with flying colors.  Her faith in Jesus is not in vain.  He answered her prayer when it looks to all the world that He ignored her and insulted her. 

And in this epic exchange with Jesus, the student becomes a teacher to the disciples, and to all of us – to the delight of her professor.  For Jesus is the teacher, the Rabbi, who teaches us about the kingdom.  And this Canaanite woman understood the kingdom better on this day than did the Israelite disciples who begged Jesus to send her away. 

It is a lie for theologians to say that Jesus hates women, when in fact, He loves all of mankind universally: the Jew, the Greek, the man, the woman, the free person, and the slave.  It makes no difference, as St. Paul teaches us, for “are all one in Christ Jesus” and we are all “Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.” 

And notice that the Canaanite women mentions the “Master’s table.”  If you want a sign to know that the Lord hears your prayers, dear friends, you will get it here, at the Master’s table, the altar, where the sign of His true body and His true blood are given to you to eat and to drink, and by receiving Jesus with the faith of the Canaanite woman, you are released from your demons, and you are healed, your prayers are answered, and our Lord commends you for your faith.

Jesus is no magician.  He is the Lord God Almighty.  He has come to free us from evil, to teach us about the kingdom, and to bring us to life eternal by His blood and through His Word and Sacraments.  He comes to bring us to the Master’s table, not merely to serve crumbs, but to give Himself to us unto forgiveness, life, and salvation.

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.