Great Faith
St. Matthew 15:21-28
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the holy Spirit.
St. Matthew 15:28 Then Jesus answered and said to her, “O Woman, great is your faith. Let it be to you as you desire.”
Dear Fellow Redeemed in Christ our Lord… Every once in a while a very short sentence or phrase makes a tremendous impact upon a person, a community, a society, or a culture. These brief phrases tend to become part of our everyday life. We have heard many of them before, sentences like, “War is hell,” “I’ll be back,” “I am not a crook,” “Houston, we have a problem,” “Heeeeeer’s Johnny!” or, “The tribe has spoken.”
Today we are looking at two words that made such an impact on the Church that she incorporated these words into her liturgy. The two Greek words are, “Kyrie eleison.” We know these words. We sing them every Sunday, but we do so in English when we sing, “Lord, have mercy.” With these words we are repeating the words our Lord gave the Psalmist, as well as the cries offered up to the Lord in the Gospels. This brief prayer has been part of the Church’s liturgy for about 1600 years.
Over time the Christian Church became so enamored with this prayer that it became the first part of the Divine Service at which the Lord’s Supper is celebrated. As the liturgy of the Church developed, the Kyrie became so prominent that it became a regular part of the Mass which, by the way, is one appropriate way of speaking of the Service of the Lord’s Supper.
The word Kyrie is the Greek word for “Lord.” The word eleison literally means “be an atonement cover for me.” In the original sense of the term Kyrie eleison means, “Lord cover my sins, that I may receive Your forgiveness. Cover my sins with the blood that You shed on the cross in my place.” Indeed, each Christian can rightly pray this prayer so that when our heavenly Father looks at us He does not see our sin, He sees the blood of His only-begotten Son. And by virtue of that blood He declares us forgiven for Jesus’ sake. This was the first prayer of the Divine Service.
For us, the Kyrie is a request that God would hear our prayers and lend us His divine aid. Keep this in mind as we offer the Prayers of the Church. Listen to how the petitions end: “Lord in Your mercy, hear our prayer;” and, “In peace let us pray to the Lord: Lord have mercy.”
This is how the Canaanite woman in today’s text used the phrase in calling out to Jesus. She cried, “Have mercy on me, Son of David.” In other words, “Lord, hear my cry for help.” She prayed that Jesus would heal her demon-possessed daughter. She was a Canaanite, a dog, an outcast. She, a Gentile and a woman, dared to address Jesus calling Him the Son of David, the very name by which the Jews would recognize the Messiah had they not been blind to Him.
Jesus had just finished healing many people, and He was, quite likely, tired. He had withdrawn again, not wanting to be recognized, for His time had not yet come. He sought rest for a while, but word got out that He was in the area. The Canaanite woman came to Him and cried out that He might heal her daughter. But Jesus said nothing and continued walking along.
For their part, the disciples were less charitable to the woman. They begged Jesus to get rid of her; they were annoyed with her crying. But Jesus gave a response that, if given today, would be considered unloving, unfeeling, uncaring, inconsiderate, intolerant, insensitive, and politically incorrect. He said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Even though the Jews had already rejected Jesus, He was still on His mission to complete His work of salvation, for salvation would come from the Jews. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, still sought those who strayed from the fold, and His work would not see completion for another year when He would be crucified.
The woman was a Canaanite, not an Israelite. She was a Gentile, not a Jew. Therefore, according to the customs of the day, she was unclean…but she still wanted Jesus. Jesus pointed out that it was not meet, right, or salutary that she should, at that time and in that place, take the daily bread given to the children of Israel and give it to herself, a dog. The sense of the word “dog” in this case is that of a house pet; and much like it is today, dogs were not to be fed at the dinner table. Similarly, the Gentiles were held in lower esteem than were the Jews, and it was not the Gentiles’ place to take the things God intended to give to the Jews.
But the Canaanite woman knew who Jesus was; she knew Him to be the Son of David, she knew Him to be the Lord. She responded and said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from the master’s table.” She heard what Jesus had said, and she proved that by using Jesus’ own words. Saying back to Jesus what He first said to her, she repeated what was true and sure. In her faith she was willing to be given her daily bread even if it was the crumbs which fell from the table. She was willing to hear any word which came from her Lord’s lips; she ate up whatever He had to say. She believed in Jesus and by faith asked Him to heal her daughter. So, Jesus spoke approvingly of her faith in Him, and He healed her daughter.
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Prayer is God’s work, not ours. God only hears the prayers of the faithful. Faith is also God’s work, and not ours. God answers our prayers not solely because we want Him to do something for us, but because He hears the prayers of the faithful. He heard this woman’s prayer on account of her faith. She had a strong faith, a faith given to her by the Holy Spirit through the spoken Word of God. God has given us His Word, and through this means of grace, as well as through the Lord’s Supper and Holy Absolution and Holy Baptism, He works to create, sustain, and strengthen our faith.
One of the reasons that our faith may not be as strong as this woman’s is that we have listened to our so-called friends and their bad theology rather than to God’s Word and His called servants who proclaim it in its truth and purity. We know and believe that God answers prayer, but we fall into the devil’s trap every time we do not get what we pray for. We begin to think, as some may tell us, that God did not hear our prayer.
God answers all our prayers, but sometimes He says no. Sometimes He says, “Not yet, it is not the right time.” And anyone who tells you that God did not give you the answer you wanted because you did not pray hard enough or that your faith was not strong enough is lying to you; those people and their words are tools of the devil. Those lies turn prayer into our work, and we can never do enough to please God, we can never do enough to earn His favor, and we can never do anything to make Him answer our prayers.
Those lies do us no good, and serve only to terrorize our conscience, destroy our faith, and drive us to despair. And then we get mad at God because He did not give us what we wanted. Then we begin to pout and act like a spoiled three-year-old. We become so absorbed with ourselves that we then fail deliberately to accept the fact that God gives us all that we need to support our bodies and lives. We fail to grasp that God gives us what we need, in His time, and according to His good and gracious will. We forget that God is not obligated to our schedule. We forget that He is the Creator, and we are His creatures. But we don’t like to hear that because it means that we are not in charge.
And it gets worse. Sometimes we want what we want when we want it so badly that we fail to believe what God clearly says in His Word about other things. And when He desires to teach us through His Word as He gives it to us in the Divine Service – when he desires to teach us in the sermon or in other opportunities the Church offers to catechize us – we can become indifferent or even hostile to His Word. We complain about the Scriptural truth of baptismal regeneration. We grumble about the teaching and faithful practice of the Real, bodily Presence of our Lord’s Body and Blood in His Supper and that indeed not everyone should be invited to partake for very sound, biblical and loving reasons. We perceive a need for more “jazzed-up” worship services instead of appreciating the clear and strong Scriptural and Gospel-centered liturgies of the Church.
And then we arrogantly starve ourselves and refuse to be fed on God’s Word. “I’ll show God; I’ll show the pastor; I’ll show that congregation – I won’t go to church there!” And guess what happens? Faith withers, it weakens, and eventually it may die. Kyrie eleison! Lord, have mercy on us! Lord, save us from ourselves lest we drive ourselves to eternal damnation!
The prayer, “Lord, have mercy,” prayed in faith, is answered. In fact, it was answered even before you prayed it. For God has shown His mercy by sending His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, who went to the cross and paid the price for all our sins – a price that was required of each and every one of us. Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, has had mercy on us and grants us His peace. As the liturgy so beautifully proclaims, “Almighty God, our heavenly Father has had mercy upon us, and has give His only Son to die for us, and for His sake, forgives us all our sins.” It doesn’t get any better than that.
In light of that pure, saving Gospel, and the many applications of Scripture and Gospel in the historic liturgies of the Church, I cannot for the life of me understand how anyone would ever want to get rid of our historic liturgies and assume that there is something better out there. Out of ignorance some of the following accusations have become commonplace in the last 30 or so years: “Liturgy is irrelevant. It is a hindrance to the evangelistic mission of the church.” Or, as one member of the Rabbi Abraham Heschel’s congregation was reported to have complained to him, “The liturgy doesn’t say what I want it to say,” to which the good Rabbi responded, “You’ve got it backwards, for you need to be saying what the liturgy wants you to say.”
The answer to the perceived need for “other things” in the church is not to give in to those demands, but to teach all the more clearly about the value of what we have and what has been given down through the ages, and how beautifully and clearly the Gospel and the Scriptures and the Sacraments are delivered.
Today we heard in the Gospel reading about Jesus having mercy on the Canaanite woman. Through the reading and proclamation of the Word we read and hear God’s mercy being shown to us. God is not giving us crumbs; we get the full meal deal. He does not show His mercy, or grant us forgiveness, or bless us fractionally or partially. No, dear friends, He gives us the whole lot – nothing more, but certainly nothing less.
There is nothing crumb-like or crummy about the holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, or the life everlasting. These are God’s gracious gifts to you delivered freely, lovingly, and fully through and in the Divine Service. God the Father has had mercy upon us. Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, has had mercy upon us. The Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son has had mercy upon us.
Christ has suffered and died to pay for your sins. His mercy is that He has taken sin’s punishment upon Himself instead of letting it fall on you. He guarantees that, by faith, we will be with Him in heaven when our bodies give out. He is merciful.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holly Spirit.
