Bible Text: Matthew 15:21-28 | Preacher: Pastor Harold Ristau
What constitutes the greatness or littleness of someone’s faith?
Is this greatness a human achievement which makes a person more admirable or better than another person?
Does this question of great or little faith mean we are in a competition with each other where one person is made out to be more worthy of honour and praise than another?
Is it like a beauty pageant where people come to be preferred over others because of their striking physical appearance, and where some of us would not even make it to the starting gate?
Is the distinction between great and little faith like the grading of people on a scale of genious and mastery, where we say that J.S. Bach or Beethhoven or Mozart or Goethe were four of the absolutely greatest masters of their art that ever lived, and in comparison with whom you and I and the rest of the human race appear to be at the very bottom of the ‘greatness scale’?
Is getting great faith something like getting larger and larger muscles the more I work out and gradually increase the amount of weight I lift?
Is it like a high jumper who must progressively hurl him or herself over a bar which is set just a little higher each time so as to increase the strength and intensity of the high jumper’s efforts?
If having a great faith, like Jesus said the woman in our text had, is like any of these things, then I don’t think any of us has much of a chance of qualifying. In fact, we, as followers of Jesus, must deliberately resist any temptation to think of the greatness or littleness of our faith in terms of competition, or dog-eat-dog one-up-manship, or where the one person’s faith entitles him or her to greater honour or praise or glory than another person (because its all self-righteousness).
We must also resist the temptation to make the greatness or littleness of our faith an occasion for the devil to attack us with doubts about our being in God’s grace and mercy. For there are Christian groups in our world who make the measure of one’s faith depend on the existence of miracles and signs and wonders and other so-called supernatural, spiritual manifestations of God’s power in our lives. Such groups imply that if these miraculous phenomena are not present in your life, there is something wrong with your faith, and your faith is not great enough. For instance, if you are sick, and pray for healing, and don’t get healed, your faith is too small (faith healers). Is God like a dog owner who holds a piece of food just above his dog hoping to teach that dog to jump a little higher? God was holding the ‘healing pill’ above your head, yet you weren’t able to jump high enough to get it. Not enough faith. Too bad. Better luck next time. All that is a fear-based, success based, performance view of faith, and is very damaging to our trust in Jesus.
Well, then, what is this whole question of great or little faith really about? How can we get a handle on it? How can we see this issue, not as one where we beat ourselves up over the supposed littleness of our faith, and feel guilty and alienated from Jesus, but rather see it as an occasion of reconnecting and renewing our relation with Jesus who is the object of our faith?
We can begin by realizing that when Jesus told someone that their faith was little, such as He did to the disciples on the stormy night He walked to them on the water, He did not say this to put the person down, or make them feel bad, or ream them out with guilt or scorn or ridicule. He pointed to the littleness of faith to show someone that they were missing the fullness of the wonderful spiritual reality of His love, mercy and friendship for them. He was inviting them to pass through a door of blessing, rather than slamming a door in their faces.
And again, when Jesus commended someone for having great faith, such as the woman in our text, He was not praising them for something they had accomplished, nor was He ascribing to them faith as a status symbol which made them more worthy of His love than someone else. He was, in fact, affirming to the person that he or she was trusting in the right Person, in Jesus Christ. He was telling the person that their faith and trust had found the right object, Himself. He was encouraging the person to keep looking to Him, to abide in Him, to cling steadfastly to Him, to keep on returning to Him, to never give up on Him.
For it is, in fact, the greatness of the love and grace of Jesus Himself that makes faith great, and not some strenuous spiritual exertion or effort on our part. We see this in Jesus treatment of the woman in our text. Jesus had been sent by God to minister first to God’s chosen people, whom Jesus calls, “the lost sheep of the house of Israel”. His first priority was to call Israel back to God, and He would accept no less than faith from them. It was in fact Jesus’ call to the people of Israel to come to Him with nothing but faith that hardened their hearts against Him and made them withhold that faith from Him, and finally reject Him. It was His call for faith in Himself that ultimately led to Jesus’ separation from Israel and brought about His crucifixion at the hands of the very people to whom He had come to call to faith.
But that did not keep His mercy from reaching beyond the confines of Israel even during the time when He Himself was fulfilling God’s commission to deal first with God’s covenant people. For Jesus asked for nothing more than faith, and when He found it in the Gentile woman of our text, or the Roman centurion whose servant He healed, or the Magi who worshipped Him at His birth, He showed Himself to be truly the Lord and Saviour of all nations.
It was His call for nothing more than faith that led to the inclusion of the Gentile nations in the salvation Jesus had come to bring. Jesus’ great mercy put no faith to shame, whether it be the faith of a Jew or Gentile. And so, when Jesus puts seeming roadblocks in the way of the Canaanite woman who had come seeking His mercy, He was, in fact, just being true to that stage of His mission in which God had sent Him first to His own people of Israel. And part of the greatness of her faith was her complete, humble submission to Jesus’ own obedient fulfillment of His mission at this stage of His ministry.
We see this, in part, in her acknowledgment of Jesus with the Jewish Messianic titles, “Lord” and “Son of David”. She sees that He is the Jewish Messiah and accepts and believes in Him as such. She acknowledges and submits to Jesus’ statement that Israel has first claim on God’s mercy and she does not try to rob those children of the bread God meant to give to them.
And yet, as she herself says, “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs feed on the crumbs that fall from the table”. What humility! No defending her pride when Jesus calls her a dog, no attitude, but just an honest, childlike trust that God is faithful and true to His word. Her answer to Jesus is altogether wonderful and an example of what Jesus will immediately call ‘great faith’. For her faith could see nothing in Jesus but what she had so earnestly sought from Jesus from the very first, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me!” And he does. Because though she’s a filthy dumb dog, she’s also his precious beautiful child.
When you search the internet for Christian art on the subject of Jesus calling the Caananite woman a dog, you’ll find some breathtaking classical portraits that are deeply devotional. Then you’ll find the new stuff, and well, get ready for a bunch of contemporary pictures of Jesus hugging poodles, petting labradors. The Lord and his cute doggie cuddling together on a sofa. Both Jesus and puppies smiling in pure delight for the schmaltzy photo shoot. Now I’m not saying God doesn’t love dogs. He made all animals, and even when they are annoying, he still loves them, like all his creatures, including us. But the trend among many today, especially among Gen Zs and millennials, to prefer pets over children, should concern us. There’s even a name for this “pet parenting” of “fur babies”: “zoophilists”. So when modern religious art makes it seem that God equally prefers animals over people, well it’s not true, and it’s dangerous. The rhetoric of population control and mania over climate change never suggests exterminating animals, only people. The devil hates people, especially children, and finds all kinds of evil, yet clever and creative ways, of preventing their births and, thus trying to decrease the population of heaven.
But the classic, superior, art on the subject of Jesus calling people dogs, always shows the woman, who was just called a dog, on her hands and knees begging for Jesus mercy. That is us. We are dogs.
Today, when Christian pray, they normally pray standing up or sitting down, sometimes kneeling, and the decision is often just one of preference based on tradition or just random patterns. But in Bible times, prayer was usually done standing, especially prayers of thanksgiving, praise and communal petitions. Kneeling, on the other hand, was only done for two kinds of prayer. Firstly: adoration. While in the presence of a king or royalty, it’s appropriate to kneel (In Zambia, Africa, when the youth are in the presence of the elderly, or even just a guest, they kneel out of respect). Secondly, kneeling was connected to pleas: pleading for help; begging for mercy; appeals for the forgiveness of sins. In our text, the Canaanite woman is crying for Jesus’ help. So she kneels.
Kneeling is not a posture of equality. When people are desperate or despairing they can’t stand on their feet, even when they want to. They naturally fall on their knees, often coupled with weeping and grasping their fists together in folded hands. Like when watching a loved one die. Of the shock of unexpected news. Sometimes they faint. It’s like we are hardwired to kneel, or at least not to stand, when we experience true crisis, grief, or pain. As the stubborn sinners that we are, we don’t do this enough because we don’t think we need to, or feel we need to, sins things with our souls are not that bad, right? Like a patient with a disease that hasn’t yet felt the symptoms, we live in denial of the truth, however unintentional that may be. Well kneeling while praying is good practice because it helps you play the part with your body, and then your heart often follows afterwards. Lent encourages us to let our bodies help teach and guide our souls. It’s a bit like fasting. We are spiritually starving in our souls as sinners. That is a fact. But we don’t notice that to be true inside, because we don’t feel it outside. Yet when we fast with our bodies, we are reminded of that reality in our spirits. Fasting and bodily preparation prior to the reception of the Holy Eucharist are fine outward training precisely because they make us feel in our bodies a hunger that we don’t, but should, feel in our souls. So Jesus breaks our fast with his feast at his supper table. We are cured of our disease within moments of noticing that its there. In other words, our bodily postures are catechetic or didactic. They teach us.
In any case, kneeling is a natural way of being when we really need something from somebody else. A criminal in the court room begging for mercy from the judge, falls on his knees. The passionate lover who doesn’t want his beloved one to leave the relationship, falls on his knees. And when we do it, as beggars before our king, we look less like an autonomous two legged human being, but more like a four legged desperate dog. The Canaanite woman doesn’t mind being called a dog. Its basically true. Its true for her and us.
Lent drives home the reality, in spite of what we don’t want to hear. Being called a dog!? It’s insulting. It’s demoralizing. It’s dehumanizing. Parents get upset when the kids calls each other names like cow or pig while eating. Well “dog” falls into that category. Its embarrassing….. Its in-ap-pro-pri-ate!? ..is it? It’s totally appropriate when you realize what God is trying to teach us. Its an insult, but well placed.
Because only when we realize that we are undeserved dogs, and should be happy with crumbs, that we are elevated as princes and princesses at the table of the king, children, not just adopted, but truly children by the very blood of God, Jesus’ blood, who himself became a dog, to make us those kings, seated at the table equally with him. “He came to His own (the Jews), and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”
When we kneel at our bedsides, or kneel at the communion rail, we associate ourselves with that woman. A dog. Yes. But we also associate ourselves with a Bride, the bride of a bridegroom who he paid the brideprice with his royal blood and perfect death that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. Great faith is believing all that, in spite of feeling, and often looking, like a dog: whether it be as individuals or even as a congregation.
This woman is our example of what great faith in God looks like. A persistent humble plea of not seeing ourselves as equal with God. Not letting our hearts tell us we deserve better. It’s the same great faith when Jacob wrestled with the “angel”, like dogs in a pit, but wouldn’t let go, even though God looked like he was trying to get away. It’s the same great faith of Job, licking his wounds like a dog, yet trusted in the Lord in spite of the fact that God appeared to have abandoned him.
This downcast simple sad and hurting woman, was a model to faith to even Jesus’ disciples.
Her faith was great because, in her culture, her being a woman, her not being a Jew, none of those took away her faith vision of Jesus’ mercy.
Her faith was great because it saw that God is great, greater than His Law which excluded her from being a member of the covenant nation.
Her faith was great because it saw the greatness and fullness in God’s grace and mercy which made that grace and mercy sufficient for Jew and Gentile.
Her faith was great because, in spite of the appearance that Jesus was putting obstacles in her coming to him, she humbly persisted in her prayer, and refused to leave Jesus’ table.
And because she came to Jesus with no less than faith, His mercy went out to her. Great faith is just simply faith that will not give up on Jesus’ mercy.
Now this does not mean that great faith is not at times sorely tempted to give up on Jesus’ mercy. We see this clearly in the temptations that came upon Jesus’ own disciples. But such temptation is never to be taken as to imply that there is something wrong with our faith. It is in fact a proof of the genuineness and God-given nature of the gift of faith that the devil attacks it and tries to destroy it through lies such as the suggestion that faith must have signs and wonders accompanying it and that simple trust in God’s mercy is not enough: “If you are God’s Son, cast Yourself down from the temple for God will miraculously deliver you!”, “Work a miracle of turning this stone into bread”, “Perform a sign for us and then we will believe that You are God’s Messiah”, “Come down from the cross if you are the Son of God”.
Such demands do not prove the greatness of a person’s faith as Jesus Himself shows in rejecting all of them. Great faith does not seek to control Jesus like some kind of miracle-working machine in which we are in charge of the gears and the buttons (as a way of getting what we want from God), but, in utter humility, obedience and submission, great faith is that which casts itself solely and completely on His mercy (knowing that He will give us what we need, which is not always what we want).
And Jesus Himself is the ultimate example of such great faith. For He Himself on the night of His betrayal, and later, on the cross, looked to, and trusted nothing but His Father’s mercy; no coming down from the cross, no summoning legions of angels to deliver Him, no defiance of God as being unfair and unjust, no calling down of fire to destroy His enemies and mockers and accusers. If you want to see the greatest faith of all, look at Jesus on the cross. For, as Jesus hung there on the cross, not even with the status of a dog, but more like a worm, as the sin and curse of the whole fallen world bore down on Him, and His earthly vision was filled with only death, suffering, the abandonment of His own disciples, and the monstrous evil of the Satanic forces gathered against Him. And yet, His was a great faith which called down mercy on His murderers “Forgive them for they know not what they do”, His was a great faith which said, “Not My will, but thine be done…Father, into Your hands I commit by Spirit”.
Jesus carried faith to its absolute, perfect extreme; that faith which we see on a small scale in the woman of our text. It was the faith and trust of Jesus in God’s mercy that carried Him through that unimaginable ordeal of the cross by which He atoned for our sin and guaranteed the unfailing mercy of God to us.
The greatness of the faith of the woman of our text stands as an example for us, in that it points us to the faith of Jesus Himself, the faith that casts itself totally and completely on God’s mercy and makes such trust in His mercy its final and unquestioned resting place, and lets Jesus be the saviour He is, and does not force Him into some mold of our making as a condition of our trusting Him, and following Him.
Take the relation of faith to baptism as an example. You don’t get baptized because you have reached a certain level of faith on the faith scale. That only until your faith reached, say, a 7 out of a perfect 10, would you then be ready and worthy enough to accepted into God’s Kingdom. Some people view salvation that way! But Jesus uses no such scales to prevent the baptism of anyone: “Believe and be baptized, every one of you”, the Word says. He says “come” and we say “no, your not ready yet, or faith isn’t big enough!” But have any of you moved a mountain? I haven’t! Our faith must be smaller than a mustard seed! Instead, God simply says, if you believe, then that very faith is a gift of God and Baptism is a means of God’s saving mercy for you. No conditions on the ‘size’ of one’s faith. You either believe or you don’t.
Now, okay, there is a way in which we say our faith “increases” or is “strengthened”, but again, that really has to do with certainty in God’s promises; a fuller understanding of what God has done in Christ, as opposed to this substance in us that gets bigger and smaller, making us less or more Christian, or less or more accepted by God. You see, just like salvation, great faith has less to do with us, and more to do with God. It’s not the size of our faith, but rather the size of God’s love and goodness for you and me, that is important.
For great faith is great because it sees and seeks nothing but the infinitely great depths of Jesus’ mercy, and which, in true humility, obedience and submission of the woman in our text, it is content to make its final and ultimate plea of that same woman, “O Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me” .
This morning, once again, we approach our God at a table, and we come as dogs searching only for crumbs. But, instead, our Lord, in His Body and Blood, gives us loaves: loaves of mercy, a feast of answered prayers, and mountains of comfort, speaking to us in very much the same way, as he did to that woman at Canaan. Great is YOUR faith. Amen.