The Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost - Matthew 15:21-28 - The Rev. Colette Hammesfahr

 

August 16, 2026 - Matthew 15:21-28

In 1987, Baltimore Gas and Electric decided they needed a better way to teach their customers what a natural-gas leak smelled like. Natural gas is odorless. So people would notice when there was a leak, a chemical called mercaptan is added to natural gas. The chemical has a distinctive rotten egg/skunk smell.

The company came up with a clever idea. They planned to send 300,000 scratch-and-sniff cards to customers so they could learn the smell. But there was a big problem with this idea. Apparently, the cards were made a little too realistic. The mercaptan smell escaped from the envelopes. People opened their mailboxes, smelled what they thought was leaking gas, and immediately called the fire department. The Baltimore firehouses were flooded with calls reporting gas leaks all over the area. This warning designed to teach people, “If you smell this, pay attention!” became so loud that people couldn’t help but pay attention.

Sometimes that’s what it takes to get our attention. A whisper doesn’t do it. A quiet concern doesn’t do it. Something has to become so strong, so persistent, so impossible for us to ignore that we finally stop and say, “Wait. Something is wrong here.”

This is how it is with the Canaanite woman. We meet her in Matthew’s Gospel story when she is already shouting. Her daughter is tormented by a demon. She’s not standing on the edge of the crowd, politely waiting and hoping Jesus will notice her. She’s shouting for help. She’s shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” What Matthew doesn’t tell us is how long she’s been desperately calling out for help. We don’t know how many people she’s gone to for relief for her daughter. We don’t know how many people have already turned her away, shut the door in her face, or walked by her, not listening to her cries for help. All we know is that now, there is desperation in her voice. Now she is shouting. We know now that by the time she gets to Jesus, she refuses to be quiet.

This is one of the hardest texts for us to understand because, amazingly, amidst the woman shouting, Jesus doesn’t answer her. This isn’t the Jesus we know. Just two weeks ago we were amazed by Jesus feeding 5,000 men, plus women and children, with five loaves of bread and just two fish. Last week, Jesus appeared in a violent storm and was walking on water. He rescued Peter from sinking. Just before our story today, Matthew writes at the end of Chapter 14 of his Gospel that people in the crowds were healed simply by touching the fringe of Jesus’ cloak. Right here, in the middle of Jesus’ ministry, he doesn’t answer the cries of this desperate mother. The disciples hear this woman too. In fact, they complain about her shouting. “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us,” they say to Jesus. They hear the noise before they hear the need.

Why do people have to become impossible to ignore before we decide they are worth hearing?

In Genesis, we hear more noise. Noise that comes from pain. Joseph has been carrying his pain for years. If you remember from our readings these past weeks, his jealous brothers threw him into a pit and sold him into slavery. They have allowed their father to believe he is dead. After much hardship, Joseph eventually becomes second in command under Pharaoh. Then, because of a famine, the brothers who had sold Joseph come to Egypt looking for food. Standing right in front of him, they don’t even recognize Joseph. Joseph keeps his identity and his emotions to himself for a while. But in today's reading, he can’t hold it in anymore. He “wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it.” His pain had finally become too loud to contain.

Joseph and the Canaanite woman – two very different stories but both with something in common. Pain has a way of making noise when it has gone unheard for too long. The Canaanite woman shouts. Joseph weeps. Both with different kinds of pain, but neither can remain silent any longer.

Sometimes we ask, “Why are they shouting?” Perhaps the better question is, “How long have they been speaking before they finally had to shout?” Why do people have to make so much noise before we hear them? Whether it be because of race, ethnicity, gender, disability, or class, so often we choose to not hear – to walk right by the noise. Push the noise to the side. Anyone with a pressing need knows the horrible feeling of having their cries met with dead silence. So often, we refuse to empathize with people who have experiences different from our own. If the pain is not happening in our house or neighborhood, it is welcomed as unjustified noise.[1]

Now,  we have to look at what happens after Joseph’s pain is heard. Joseph doesn’t use his voice to punish his brothers. He has the capability to really punish them. Instead, he says, “Come closer to me.” These are the people who hurt him. These are the people he cried out from the bottom of a pit to, asking for help. Joseph, with all the power, could send them away. He could now make them suffer. But instead, he says, “Come closer.”

Maybe this is where compassion begins. It’s not necessarily in fixing everything. It’s not even with understanding everything. It’s in the willingness to come closer to someone’s pain instead of backing away from it. The disciples said, “Send her away.” Joseph says, “Come closer.”

The story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman doesn’t end with Jesus’ silence. It doesn’t end with the disciples trying to send the woman away. It doesn’t end with the uncomfortable exchange of words between the desperate mother and Jesus. It ends with Jesus hearing her, seeing her faith, and responding to her need. “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

Jesus told her that he had been sent to the lost sheep of Israel. That is where his ministry began – with the people God had made a covenant with to bless the world. This woman was an outsider – a Canaanite. This story ultimately shows us something important about Jesus and the direction God is moving in. God’s circle is getting wider. God’s mercy is not confined to one race, group, ethnicity, or class. By the end of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tells the disciples, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.”

God keeps moving toward people. God keeps drawing people closer. God keeps crossing boundaries we create between them and us. God asks us to cross those boundaries too. We hear about someone who is struggling, but we have our own problems. We hear someone say they are lonely, but we're busy. Someone tells us they don't feel welcome, but we've always felt welcome. Someone says they're hurting, and because their experience is so different from ours, we don't quite understand what all the fuss is about. Like the disciples, we hear the noise without hearing the need.

Jesus doesn’t send the woman away. He heals her daughter. Joseph doesn’t send his brothers away. He tells them to “Come closer.” This is how God calls us to act today—not by asking people to become louder so we'll finally notice them, but by learning to listen more carefully in the first place. Learning to notice the person whose pain hasn't yet become a shout. Learning to move toward suffering instead of away from it.

Those scratch-and-sniff cards in Baltimore got people’s attention because the smell became impossible to ignore. People smelled something, knew something wasn’t right, and they responded. But someone’s pain shouldn’t have to become impossible to ignore before we respond.

Our God is a God who hears our cries – the loud ones and the quiet ones. Our God is a God who moves towards those who are suffering and hurting. God's call to us is not to ask, “Why are they making so much noise?” God calls us to listen closely enough that maybe they won’t have to. Amen.

 

 

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[1]Mitzi J. Smith, “Commentary on Matthew 15:\(10-20\) 21-28,” Working Preacher, Luther Seminary, August 16, 2020, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-20/commentary-on-matthew-1510-20-21-28.