Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost - Colette Hammesfahr

 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.  

Please pray with me…. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock, and our redeemer.  Amen 

In 2016 a movie came out starring Jennifer Garner, called “Miracles from Heaven.” It is a true story of the Beam family, devoted Christians, who attend church regularly, and a family who relies on God to care for them. Christy and Kevin Beam had three daughters. One night, the middle daughter, Anna, begins experiencing incredible pain that continues to worsen and worsen. She is rushed to the ER, but no conclusive diagnosis is made. Christy, the mother is determined to find the cause of her daughter’s pain. She takes her from doctor to doctor, but with each diagnosis, the mother feels deep in her gut that it has to be more than what she’s being told. She’s told by doctors that her daughter is lactose intolerant. She’s told that her daughter has acid reflux. Many doctors said, “Your daughter is perfectly fine,” because X-rays and CT scans showed nothing to make them think otherwise. But Christy refuses to give up until she knows what is wrong with her daughter.  

Christy flies her daughter from Texas to Boston to see a specialist. She leaves Texas without even having an appointment with the Boston doctor because she is determined to relieve her daughter of this pain. In Boston, she gets the words no mother wants to hear. Her daughter is very ill. Her daughter has an incurable disease. The parents, distraught, vowed not to give up. There is a scene in the movie where mother and father, Christy and Kevin are in conversation with one another. Christy says, “We need a solution, and we need it now.”  Kevin says, “Then we’ll get it.” She replies, “How?” Kevin says, “By keeping our faith.”  

I imagine that the Canaanite woman in Matthew’s gospel today was a lot like Christy and Kevin.  

Now, this reading from Matthew would not be my first choice of texts to preach on for my first sermon at St. Thomas. It’s one of those texts that when you first read it, you say, “Jesus…..what were you thinking?”  

In the opening of our reading, Jesus is traveling, trying to get away and get some rest. He’s just fed the five thousand with five loaves and two fish and last week, we heard the story of Jesus walking on the water. The Jewish people are following him wherever he goes, and he needs some respite. He needs some quiet and time for himself and his disciples. So, he travels to Gentile territory. Where he knows he can get some needed rest.  

Before today’s reading, in Matthew 10, when Jesus is sending out the twelve disciples, he tells them, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” Jesus was devoted to the Jewish people because of God’s promises and God’s faithfulness. God had made a covenant. God had promised the Israelites a Messiah. His mission was to minister to the Jewish people, not to those who were not Jewish.  

The Canaanite woman we read about has a daughter who is not well. The mother will do absolutely anything to have her daughter cured. Much like the relentless work of Christy Beam concerning her daughter Anna in the movie. Word of Jesus had spread, and the Canaanite woman thought this may be her chance for her daughter to be made well. She comes to Jesus shouting. She wants him to help her daughter. He and the disciples ignore her, but she keeps shouting, “My daughter is possessed by demons.” As much as they ignore her, she is not going away. “Lord help me!” she shouts. This woman is on a mission. A mission to save her child. She is determined and unshakeable.  

Yet Jesus’ mission is different. He’s here to rest. He's not on a mission to save Gentiles. He has come to save the Jewish people. Jesus acts as if he does not have time for her. “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs,” he says. Meaning that it’s not right to take what the Jewish people get from the Messiah and give it to the Gentiles. You are not included.  

Now, this is when we say, “Jesus, what were you thinking?” How can you speak to someone so determined to have her daughter healed, in this way?  

But this determined and unshakeable woman comes right back and says, “Yes Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” She wasn’t offended by what Jesus said to her. She remained faithful to him. She didn’t argue about why her daughter deserved to be healed. She didn’t say that if he helped her, she would do this or do that. She was saying, “I am not Jewish. I believe in who you are. You are the chosen one, the son of God, sent to save the world. And I believe in God’s abundance and grace.” She had faith.  

Hearing her response and seeing her faith, Jesus says, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.  

When Jesus spoke these words to the Canaanite woman, it spoke of what his mission was. Jesus gave her the bread of the children. Jesus shows that he has a self-understanding of ALL who are in need. Jesus welcomes all to the table. Jew or Gentile. Man or woman. Mother or child.   

Faith can be hard. How do we expect Jesus to act when we are in times of need?  Just as the Canaanite woman, we have expectations of how our prayers will be answered. Immediately and to our liking.  

Have you ever cried out, “Lord help me,” but heard nothing back? Those times of silence can be hard. We wonder if God is listening. Those times challenge our faith, don’t they? When we hear a story like this one today, it can make us wonder, “If Jesus does not have time for her, does he have time for me?”  

When God is silent in our lives, that doesn’t mean God is not listening. Perhaps it means, not now, not yet, not this. In the waiting and in the silence, perhaps God is exercising our faith, so that we will hunger even more for the crumbs from His table.  

It all comes down to faith. The Canaanite woman showed her faith in who Jesus was three times. She called him Lord, Son of David. She knelt before him and said, “Lord help me.” She replied to him, “Yes Lord.” Her persistence, based on her faith in a God who can change things for the better, is rewarded. The relationship of faith is essential in Jesus’ healings.  

In the movie, “Miracles from Heaven,” Kevin, the father, says they will get a solution to their daughter’s illness by keeping the faith. Yet, amidst their persistent praying, their cries to God, and extensive chemotherapy treatments, Anna did not get cured.  

One day, she was climbing an old tree with her sister. They were on a very high branch when the branch broke, and Anna fell 30 feet into the hollowed-out tree. She was rescued by firefighters and airlifted to the local hospital. Falling 30 feet to the ground, everyone expected the worst. Yet all Anna came out with was a concussion. And, at ther next appointment with her oncologist, Anna’s disease was gone. Their prayers had been answered. Not immediately. Not the way they expected them to be answered. Not because they made promises to God. It was because they were persistent. They had faith in in a God who can change things for the better.  

This is how it can sometimes be for you and me. Amidst all of our praying, all of our cries out to God, all of our promises of what we’ll do for God if our prayers are answered, we sometimes hear silence. My friends, God hears our prayers and God hears our cries. And there is nothing we can do for God to get our prayers answered when and how we want them to be answered.   

A Lutheran pastor wrote this about faith. He said, “The Christian faith enables us to face life not because we can see, but with the certainty that we are seen; not that we know all the answers, but that we are known.” 

Great faith endures the silence of God in the midst of our suffering. Great faith knows that death is not our final resting place. Great faith brings us hope, it brings us courage, it brings us healing, and it brings us peace. Great faith brings us love and compassion in our community. Great faith comes from believing that Jesus is Lord of all and loves us more than we can imagine.   Amen