Shepherd of the Springs
Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

From the Old Testament lesson: “But Jacob said, I will not let you go unless you bless me.” (Genesis 32: 26)

 From the Epistle: Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 5:1)

 From the Gospel: But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord help me.” And he answered, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” (Matthew 15:25-27)

           There is quite a contrast seen in our lessons this morning between insisting on what you think you deserve, and begging for what you know you don’t.  We want to spend some time here this morning understanding the nature of each and how they are different.  For only then, can we understand how we also might contend with God as Jacob and the Canaanite woman did, and come away with a blessing - a blessing that we don’t deserve and we know it.  Indeed, the season of Lent could be characterized as provided time when we sinners might plot our strategy whereby we can walk the road with Jesus to the cross in such a way, that in the midst of all the injustice and suffering around us and even that which we may have for endure . . . we might come away with a blessing that gives us hope.

           Its fairly easy, emotionally speaking, to insist on what you think you have coming to you.  This really is not hard to do at all, is it? Our sense of fairness and any conviction about what we deserve is always tied to our sense of self-dignity.  Getting our just desserts often seems a necessity to maintain our sense of well-being.  You owe me! - that’s what we think and sometime we say it out loud when we think it may not be coming. And don’t we have lots of impolite expressions to describe when we think we have been deprived of, what by rights, we think should be ours.  Well then, “we’ve been . . .”  You can silently fill in your favorite expression.

           But what does it take to act like Jacob and the Canaanite woman?  It is one thing to receive things that you know you do not deserve - and we all do from time to time. But it is another thing, is it not, to insist on getting them.  What does it take to go begging and become insistent on getting what you know, from the depths of your being, you do not deserve?  That is exactly what Jacob and this outcast woman did.  Jacob wrestles with God who appears in human form and amazingly comes to a draw.  How it is that he even survives such an encounter is hard to image.  But when, God says enough: rather than feeling incredibly grateful for just being alive, Jacob says he is not going to quit the struggle until he gets a blessing from the Creator of the Universe.  And as we read on, one incredible thing follows another.  After Jacob’s amazing survival and outlandish undeserving demand - we get another incredible report.  God actually accedes to the obnoxious demand and blesses Jacob with the covenant promise to be signified by the name change to Israel.  Jacob enters the covenant promise to Abraham, not his first-born brother Esau, and so does his family and descendants. 

           Now fast forward to the New Testament and the ministry of Jesus.  Here we have this renegade Canaanite woman, the offspring of ancestors who squandered the covenant promise by unfaithfulness and intermarriage; and she makes an even more outlandish request.  Would the Son of God and Israel’s promised Messiah be so kind as to bring his mercy and saving remedies to her and her possessed child, even though their lives are completely devoid of any and every provision by which one could qualify as being Old Covenant people of God. Her words inform the Lord that she would like to butt-in on some benefits of the covenant promise to Abraham and his offspring, even though she knows that neither she nor her daughter have any rightful claim to even a shred of it.  And the disciples are not so dim of wit that they do not see her and her request for what they are.  Outrageous!  So they say, Lord send her away!

           But this woman persists.  If Jesus could not see his way to provide any relief to her daughter from the clutches of Satan for reasons of his ministry proper to the children of Israel, perhaps He would not mind if she stuck around to see if there might be some crumbs from the table of the Lord that would fall her way.  So yes! She would plop herself under the Lord’s table with expectation, that just as the dogs get the crumbs that fall, her daughter might obtain some relief from the bondage and torments of the Devil. And should no crumbs fall her way, she might be disappointed - even to the point of despair for her daughter - but there would be no complaints.  She and her daughter are already living the life they deserve, devoid of God’s promises, and she knows it.

           What do we see here?  Do you not see the contrast between a sense of for-granted anticipation over those things that we think we deserve . . . and, on the other hand, a sense of expectant hope for those things we know we need desperately, but understand that they are not in the least deserved?  And the point is this.  If we come to God with a sense of the former - a request or demand for what we think we deserve - we will be terribly disappointed and perhaps, we may think that we are being unjustly treated, picked on, and deprived.  If you should ask the question:  what did I do to deserve this? with a sense of blank indignation, the Lord will be silent and you will be left simply with your own feelings of bitter indignation.  In all, this Lenten Season has a negative message for us this day and it is this: If you would walk the road of the cross with Jesus and participate in the kind of suffering and injustice that he will partake of - yes, even the suffering and injustice at the hands of the Devil -  with a sense of expecting something positive out of it that you deserve . . . you will be terribly disappointed. You will get nothing. There are no rewards for those who would participate in the stations of the cross with their own trials and suffering figuring that God will owe us for our wonderful sacrifice and devotion. 

           But if you come to our Lord, if you will walk the road of the cross as spiritual beggars - hat-in-hand - you will discover the riches of the outrageous grace and blessing of a Savior who has come specially to rescue you.  If you are looking for mere crumbs from the table of the Lord with a great sense of not belonging, you shall be invited to be seated for a feast that will fill your soul with all the bread of life and living water that you can handle and then some.  To those who come with nothing, demanding nothing that they think they deserve - they will get it all.  To those who come with a sense of right qualification in themselves - they will be sent away with nothing.  The Lord has come to save the poor wretched sinners who are dead in their trespasses - those who understand that they have no claim to the inheritance; those who know that they have met no provisions of God’s covenant of Law by which they might claim to be the people of God.

           So . . . if you will walk humbly with the Lord to the cross with no sense of deserving anything but God’s neglect, you may approach your Savior with not only a request, but with a confident demand - yes even in the spirit of the uppity Jacob - that you might receive a blessing.  And you may make that demand knowing with the Apostle Paul that God is at peace with you since you have been justified, not by anything that you have done or deserve, but rather by the Holy Spirit in the power of His saving Word.  With confidence, you may demand a full measure of God’s grace for the sake of Christ and Him alone.  This is the Gospel promise to you this Lenten season.  Place yourself as a beggar under the table of the Lord and you can confidently and expectantly receive a banquet of all the grace and forgiveness and victory over the Devil that will make and keep you a healthy, growing child of God, with the full inheritance of the Kingdom.  Yes! . . . with a healthy sense of deserving nothing, you may demand such from your Lord, knowing that as He goes to Jerusalem - to his cross, his tomb, and his glorious resurrected life  - the crumbs are yours! Bon appetite!

          In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. A-men.