Reminiscere

In the Gospel text for Reminiscere, the Second Sunday of Lent, Jesus calls a Canaanite woman a dog. As you might imagine, this passage causes a lot of trouble for some Christians. I’ve even heard one woman try to preach a sermon about this, saying, “Jesus was having a bad day. He lost His temper and said mean things to a poor woman. But in the end, He apologized and did what she wanted. And if Jesus can say that He’s sorry, then so can you.” But this is blasphemy. Jesus is perfect. Jesus is without sin. Jesus is love. Jesus is God.

So what do you think of Jesus? Do His words cause trouble for you? The woman said to Jesus, “Lord, help me!” But He answered and said, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs” (Mt 15:25–26). What do we do with that? I suppose we could just try to skip over this part of the Bible, but the Church Fathers made that hard to do when they appointed this text to be read every year on the Second Sunday of Lent.

What do you do when you encounter Jesus and you don’t like what you see or hear? Some people make their own Jesus. “I don’t believe in a god who says harsh things. What? He scatters the proud in the imagination of their hearts? He casts down the mighty from their thrones? He sends the rich away empty? Not my god. My god is a god of love.” The only difference between the pagans of old who fashioned gods with hammer and chisel and modern pagans who create the Jesus they want in their hearts and minds is that the old pagans were honest about what they were doing. But today’s idolaters are sneaky. They may even call themselves Christians, but they don’t worship the God of Scripture. They worship the god who is only what they allow him to be. “My Jesus is loving and accepting. He gets us, exactly as we are, with no need ever for repentance.”

Which Jesus do you worship? The one who calls a woman a dog? Or a different Jesus. What do you do when you don’t like the God you find in Scripture? Do you get out your mental chisel and fashion a new god? When the words of Jesus are offensive to your ears, do you demand that He change? Or, do you allow your thinking to be reshaped by the Word of God? Do you pray, “Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in Your truth” (Ps 86:11)? When you encounter God and don’t like what you see or hear, it is you, not God, who must change. This is why Jesus teaches us to pray, “Thy will be done.” We ask God to change our thinking, to change our understanding, until it comes into alignment with the good and perfect will of God—even when His will does not seem good or perfect to our own eyes.

Imagine yourself for a moment as the Canaanite woman. You came to Jesus to beg His mercy, not even for yourself, but for your daughter. First Jesus ignores you. Would you have given up then? “I prayed, but nothing happened. What’s the point?” Then Jesus says, “I’m here for the other people, for the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Would you have turned back at this point? And what about when Jesus calls you a dog? Surely this would be the last straw. “I’m not here to be insulted! I’ll go somewhere else to find help!” Most people would say that, but what about you? To be honest, I’m not certain my faith is as strong as this woman’s. Is yours? In this regard, our sinful world in its catechetical bombardment has not done you or me any favors.

The world teaches you to think highly of yourself. “You’re a winner. You’re a fighter. You’re a lioness. You’re smart. You’re beautiful. You’re strong. You’re independent. Don’t listen to the haters who say otherwise. Don’t associate with people who bring you down. Don’t allow toxic negativity into your life.” You’ve heard all this a thousand times, and, yes, there can be a right time and place for “positive thinking.” But you know what the world doesn’t teach, what the so-called “Christian” self-help books don’t teach? How to wrestle with God. How to hold on to the promises of Jesus, no matter what you see or hear. How to believe that God loves you and has promised you a blessed future no matter the circumstances you find yourself in today.

I said there was a right place for positive thinking. So let me explain the difference between worldly positive thinking and biblical positive thinking. Worldly positive thinking says, “I am good, therefore I deserve good things.” Biblical positive thinking says, “God is good, therefore He gives good things to the underserving.” Do you see the difference? The first is based on faith in self. The second is based on faith in God. Had the woman come to Jesus full of faith in her own worthiness, believing that she deserved good things because she was a good person, she would have been utterly offended at Jesus and gone away angry. But she comes to Jesus full of faith in Him, in His goodness, in His promise to be merciful to the underserving. And when He calls her a dog, this only confirms her faith. “I knew I was undeserving! And since You are merciful to the undeserving, I know You must, according to Your promise, be merciful to me!”

How did the woman know that she was undeserving? For that we must go back hundreds of years in the history of the Canaanite people. This woman was a descendent of the original occupants of the Land of Canaan, a daughter of tribes so wicked that God had commanded the Israelites to utterly destroy them. In case that seems harsh, consider that God first gave the Canaanites 400 years to repent, during which time His own people had to live as slaves in Egypt. Talk about undeserved mercy! But finally, after four hundred years, the time of judgment came. And who was it that told Moses and Joshua to annihilate the Canaanites? It was Jesus, God from eternity. And now this woman, having somehow survived the extermination of her people, goes to find the God who commanded it and begs Him for mercy!

The woman doesn’t deserve to still be alive and she knows it. So when Jesus calls her a little dog, she hears this as wonderful news. Little dogs don’t get exterminated. They get petted and fed and loved. Little dogs have a master who takes care of them. “Truth, Lord,” she answers, claiming Jesus and her Lord and Master. “Truth, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their master’s table” (Mt 15:27). Jesus had said that He had only come for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. With these words, she shows herself to be such a sheep. How does one become a member of Israel, a child of Abraham? She may be a Canaanite by birth, but she is a child of God by faith, and this faith grants her all the rights and privileges God has promised to His own dear children. Jesus praises this faith, and grants her desire.

Now, in closing, where our sinful world sees in this story only reason to be angry with Jesus, the Christian mind, informed by Holy Scripture, rejoices at the great mercy of God. Remember that at the beginning of the service, every one of us confessed that have justly deserved temporal and eternal punishment. Deserving eternity in hell is far, far worse than being called a dog. Yes, everything about this is offensive to the sinful nature, but you have been given a new nature. You have been given faith. And faith recognizes two important truths: your own unworthiness, and God’s great mercy to the unworthy. We sometimes call these two truths the Law and the Gospel. The Law is terribly offensive to the world and to the sinful nature. But those who have been brought by the mercy of God to confess the truth of their own sinful state, are then prepared to hear and believe the truth of the boundless and overwhelming grace and mercy of God. Of course, I’m a sinner. Of course, I’m a dog. Of course, I’m undeserving. But this leads to the best news ever: God has promised to be merciful to sinners. He has promised to give grace to the undeserving. And this means that He has promised Himself to me. Confess this by faith and know that it is true. Nothing else matters—not what your eyes see, or your ears hear, not what circumstances or troubles you encounter. One crumb from the Lord’s Table would be enough, but He has promised far more than that. He has promised the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. He has promised you a place at His table, not as a little dog, but as a dear child of God. Hold onto this promise, for it is the promise of your Lord and Master, and His words cannot be broken. Amen.