Bible Text: St Matthew 15:21–28 | Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christian Preus
Our Lord Jesus tells us, “Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door shall be opened unto you.” And it could be taken as a threefold repetition, Jesus stressing, ask, seek, knock, saying the same thing three times, just to drill it into us. But this Canaanite woman shows us that sometimes you ask and you don’t receive, and that can’t deter you, instead you need to seek again from Jesus, and if you still don’t find, then knock and the door will be opened to you. And this isn’t a biblical version of “if at first you don’t succeed, then try, try again.” It’s much more than that. God will purposefully hide himself. He will make himself seem distant, he’ll allow you to feel that his word doesn’t apply to you, he’ll humble you so that you feel lower than a dog, and it is so that you can wrestle with Him in faith and prevail, win, conquer doubt and despair and sin and the devil and fear of death, by wrestling with God and clinging to His Word and demanding from Him that He give you what He has promised.
The picture of this in the Old Testament is Jacob. He literally wrestles with God. It is a strange and beautiful scene. It seems to come out of nowhere. God is transcendent, right? He is far above us, present everywhere and yet contained nowhere, but here He is in human form wrestling with Jacob some 1500 years before the Son of God takes on human flesh in the womb of the blessed Virgin Mary. Why?
Before Jacob wrestles with God, he’s terrified. He is full of worry and anxiety, for himself, his family, his children and little ones. His brother Esau, who has sworn to kill him, is coming with an army of hundreds of men to meet him. Jacob has done everything he can do, he’s split his family in two, hoping that if Esau attacks the one group, the other might survive. It’s in situations like this that you realize you can’t do without God. You can’t fix it yourself. You love your family but you can’t save them from the attack. You trust God but you don’t understand how he’s going to help you out of this one. Despair, worry, anxiety, for yourself and for those you love, and a heavy fear of death all weigh on you. That’s when God comes to wrestle Jacob. And Jacob wrestles back. And he demands, not once, not twice, but without break, constantly, he demands from God what? A blessing. I won’t let you go until you bless me.
Why a blessing? Because God had promised a blessing to Jacob. That’s what’s key. You can’t demand a thing from God. You don’t deserve it. You’re a creature, and a sinner, and He owes you nothing. Except when God binds Himself. Because God is faithful. God is true. God cannot lie. If He promised it, He must give it. Not in the sense that He does so grudgingly, “He has to do it,” that’s not the point, but that this is WHO HE IS. He is true. He gives what He promised. And He promised Jacob that blessing, we have the exact words, “Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” That’s what God promised Jacob at Bethel. And that’s what Jacob wrestles with God to demand. And God gives it.
But what about you? God didn’t appear to you in a dream at Bethel. You’re not like Jacob. You’re like the Canaanite woman. That’s why of the billions of things Jesus said and did, the Holy Spirit records this story of a nameless woman who you wouldn’t expect has any claim on Jesus at all. Not an Israelite, not an especially religious life, just a normal, nameless woman.
But she claims it anyway. She’s our example of faith. Of asking and seeking and knocking until God gives what He promised.
Her daughter is severely oppressed by a demon. And she needs relief for her daughter and for herself. And this is the first thing this woman teaches us about faith in Jesus. It thrives when we suffer. The devil attacks. He attacks you with unbelief, with despair, with anxiety for yourself and for those you love. St. Peter says, Don’t consider it a strange thing when you suffer. Jesus says, Don’t be surprised if the world hates you. It’s actually the opposite. It should surprise you if you have nothing but good times in life. Now there are times in life when a Christian doesn’t feel these attacks, when things are wonderful, but if God gave us nothing but that, it is simply the case that we would fall away from Him. St. Paul says it to the Ephesian pastors, “It is through much tribulation that we must enter into the kingdom of God.” And Jesus says it, “Take up your cross and follow me.” The Christian life must have its sorrows, you must feel the attacks of the devil and of your own sin and pain and mortality, because God uses these to draw you to Himself, to find in Him your greatest good.
But then the woman runs to Jesus, she cries out, does exactly what the pain is meant to lead her to do, go to Jesus, because He cares for you, and what does Jesus do? He ignores her. He literally doesn’t answer her a word, just walks away. And this test of faith is again what we all experience. You pray and God doesn’t seem to answer at all. You ask and you don’t receive. And that’s the first challenge to faith, and what, if we respond to it correctly, will strengthen our faith. God seems far away, distant, He may as well be non-existent, because we ask and we don’t receive.
But He is there. And the Canaanite woman sees it. She knows it. He can hear. And you know it. You know it from creation. He’s there. You know it from His Word and His promises, from the cross of your Lord Jesus Christ. He’s there. I don’t know why He’s not answering, but He’s there, He’s hearing, He cares. So she seeks again.
And that’s what faith does. You don’t hear God answer, seek again. And you will hear His word. It’s significant that in the Gospel of Mark, we learn that this woman went into the house where Jesus was staying. Jesus wouldn’t answer her, so she followed Jesus straight into his house. That’s what you do. Go to His house. You’ll hear Him speak here. Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them. That’s the promise. He can’t break it. He speaks.
And He does speak to her. But what does she hear? Words that seem to exclude her. “I have been sent only to the lost children of Israel.” She’s not an Israelite, not by race, she’s a Canaanite. And here’s the second test. The word doesn’t apply to her. And that is again, what the devil will tempt you to believe. The words are sweet, forgiveness, eternal life, child of God, God laying down His life for sinners, but do they belong to me? Does God say those words to me? Because sometimes you don’t feel it. And you certainly don’t deserve it. This Christian is racked with unbelief, with doubts, with fear of death, and the question continually springs up, am I really His, do I belong to this chosen host called Israel, called the Church? Because if I look at my heart and my life, it sure doesn’t look like it.
Seek and you will find, and when it seems you haven’t found, knock and the door will be opened unto you. The woman won’t take no for an answer, she won’t be excluded. And she teaches us not only persistence, but why you can be persistent, why faith is always persistent. Because Jesus calls her a dog – she is lowered, insulted, treated like the offscourings of the earth by the very One that she needs to help her – and she owns it. That’s what faith does. It’s the hardest thing to admit but it is the only way to get anything from Jesus. He did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. His mother sings, “He fills the hungry with good things, but the rich He sends empty away.” Those who are not sick have no need of a physician. So she owns it. I’m a dog. But even the dogs get the scraps that fall from the masters table.
Faith never claims any right, based on what I have done. It always claims what Jesus has promised. That’s the basis from which we beg from God. I’m a sinner. I’ve got no right to claim anything from God based on me. But based on His promise, I have every right. He promised, He must give, because He is faithful.
And He has promised, and He has promised specifically to you. You haven’t heard him in a dream at Bethel, but you have heard Him. He put His name specifically on you at your Baptism and promised to be your Father and blessed you and made you His child. And He knew exactly who He was saying that to, a sinner, the chief of sinners, someone who would fail time and again, but someone whom He would love no matter what forever. And He gives you, specifically, His body and His blood, not crumbs, but the eternal life He is and won for sinners on the cross. He gives that to you.
We don’t believe in “name it and claim it” theology. That’s the sort of gross caricature of Christianity pedaled by millionaire televangelists, that if you just believe hard enough, God will give you whatever you ask. Name it and then claim it. Money, job, house, car, success, health, if only you believe hard enough. No. But if Jesus named it. You can claim it. And He named forgiveness for you, because He suffered to win it, and He gives it to you to claim it as your own. And He named victory over the devil, because He crushed him under His feet. And He named you His child, and that means He will be with you wherever you go, and He will not leave you until He gives you what He has promised. I am with you always, even to the end of the age. And that means His constant care, the protection of His angels, the Holy Spirit, strength to live life as a child of God, the patience to ask, and to seek, and to knock, until He gives you the joy and peace and relief He has promised, here in time and forever in eternity.. Amen.