Pentecost IX - Edwin C. Pease, Jr.

How many of us have been in a situation in which you have to ask someone for help. As a child having to ask your teacher permission to leave the class to go to the bathroom. Wanting to return something you bought in a store. Asking one of your parents for something you want, or asking your boss for a favor or a raise. Going through customs at the border.

There’s a lot of tension in these moments. You may get brushed off. You may get told “no” before you even get through asking.

People have learned some coping methods for dealing with possible rejection, some more successful than others: the gruff approach, r the persistent whining approach, or when asking your question you imply in the wording that the person would look really bad if they refused you, preparing to stage a tantrum if you are refused.

So many of us come from a place in which we feel that we are further down on the food chain to the person whom we are asking for help. I think this applies not only to our requests to people for help, but also in the ways in which we ask God for help.

For all of those who have difficulty in asking for help, we have this great treasure in the story of the Canaanite woman asking Jesus for help.

A preacher named Todd Weir has listed some of the obstacles faced by the Canaanite woman in asking Jesus for help.^[1]

1. She is used to being overlooked. Even in the gospel lesson she does not get a name.
2. She has broken several social taboos. She is a Gentile approaching a Jew, and the boundaries between Jew and Gentile in Jesus’s day were enormous.
3. She was a woman approaching a group of men. Think about the current rigid male and female boundaries that exist in some Middle Eastern states today—women in birkas, constricted to the home, she risked much to talk to Jesus in public.
4. Jews were wary of the residents of the Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon from which the woman came. In that day the poor rural Jewish peasants of Galilee grew food for the rich Gentile cities like Tyre and Sidon. We do not know the social class of this Canaanite woman, but she would have been seen as coming from the culture of people who oppress the Jews.

Everything was working against her as she came to Jesus, shouting, as the text says, with her request for help for her daughter. Weir says, “It must have been quite the spectacle to have her throw herself at the feet of Jesus. Disciples and spectators alike must have been embarrassed to have her there… Maybe now we can better understand [Jesus’] original negative response, when he says, ‘Let the children be fed first (referring to Jews) for it is not fair to give the children’s food to the dogs.’”^[2]

Here she is, turned away by God. We can sympathize with her. “How could Jesus compare anyone to a dog or say a thing like that? This story hits us in a place of fear that maybe God finds us to be really annoying. We don’t belong, we don’t deserve the bread, others are more important.”^[3]

Her response is immediate: “Yes but even the dogs under the table deserve the crumbs.” And then Jesus gives her the help she needs.

It’s wonderful to read a story like this in which God changes his mind. People are used to thinking of God as one who never changes, but in this case, God does. There are other places in the scriptures in which God changes his mind. There is the story of the person who came in the middle of the night to knock on the door of the person who owned the bakery to get bread for his family. The story ends by saying that God may answer your requests, not because God wanted to but because you were persistent in asking. You showed God that your request was important to you.

The most important thing about this encounter is that the woman believed in God. She had faith. She did not let any feeling of inferiority in herself get in her way. She did not let any concern that others might not approve of her keep her from asking for what she wanted. She may have had these feelings and concerns but if so she was able to override them and make her request plainly known. She was singleminded!

She approaches Jesus not as someone who devalues herself, and of course, not as someone who feels superior. She approaches on a level of equality. This may seem odd. How can a person be on equal footing with God? 

First, it is because of faith. Her faith, to use the words of the scholar Alfred North Whitehead, was the vision of something that stands beyond, behind, and within the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts.” It is a vision of life in its completeness in the presence of God.^[4]

Second, it is God’s acceptance of us flaws and all. God is most forgiving and accepting. God has made us worthy to stand before him. By God’s grace we have a relationship with God, and can make our requests to God, just as the Canaanite woman did. God’s grace makes it possible for us to view life in its completeness in the presence of God.

In her case her daughter was healed. In some cases, requests for healing are not answered in ways that we would like. No doubt many have prayed for healing for Jim Windhorst. But because we have this relationship with God we are better able to receive “no” as an answer to prayers, than we would be if we thought ourselves to be outsiders or inferior. We know that it is impossible to understand everything about God. We know that God was present at the death of Jim, and was the first to shed a tear at his passing. And we know that even when our prayers receive “no” as an answer it is far better to have our living and dynamic relationship with God than it is to live without God.

The Holy Communion which we will receive this morning is a sign of God’s care for us, and especially of the permanent bond between us and God. One that cannot be broken by anything. We know that God listens to our prayers and answers them. May we rest in God’s love and acceptance. And when people come to us with their requests may we listen to them as God listens to us, and give to them as God gives to us, because we embody God’s love and acceptance.

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^[1] The Rev. Todd Weir: Matthew 15: 21-28 "Overlooked and Under-Considered" for Sunday, August 14, 2005
^[2] Ibid.
^[3] Ibid.
^[4] C. Hoffacker, A Matter of Life and Death, p.77