The Lutheran Hour
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"Just One Crumb"
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Text: Matthew 15:21-28
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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The conversation of Jesus in this section of Scripture presents Bible readers with a tough text. It’s not easy seeing this Jesus we love look like this. It’s not easy seeing a desperate mother seemingly denied, by the One who promises to receive all who are weary and burdened. But this tough to understand text is really no rougher than the texture of life so many people face everyday.
A call came from a mother in desperation at Children’s Hospital. She was at the edge of breaking down. You could hear it over the phone in her breathing, through the breaking of her voice. She strained to tell me about her first born, a nine-week old infant boy.
“Pastor, my baby is sick. Please pray for my baby. . ..” I told her I’m on my way and I’ll pray all the way there, and when I get there, we’ll pray together. But know that God is with you already and He’s with you right now.
Jo Ann and Dameon had strain painted on their stressed-out faces when I walked into the room. They told me how their baby had viral meningitis. He had to have an emergency epidural–unfathomable agony for the baby and even worse emotional pain for the parents. Like this unnamed mother in our reading, like countless mothers before and since, mothers will not hesitate to cry a cry packed with mercy, to the One who specializes in being merciful.
The hymnwriter says it well:
“Jesus, lover of my soul. Let me to Thy mercy fly. While the nearer waters roll, While the tempest still is high. Hide me, O my Savior, hide Till the storm of life is past.”
Have you ever been in a storm of sickness and cried to Jesus? Forcefully, this woman came with the momentum of a mother on a mission. She was trying to get some healing. But Jesus and His disciples were trying to get some rest. One of them told her to get lost. There’s something awkward about seeing Jesus like this. But it gets worse before it gets better.
Then the Savior of the nations says something that contradicts everything we know about who He is. Essentially, He says, “I didn’t come for your kind of people.” There’s something wrong with this picture. Then Jesus shockingly issues what seems to be a common canine description of the Canaanite people. Canine means doglike. Canaanite refers to that ancient ethnic population the Jews believed should be avoided by all true believers based on their race and religion.
To the uninitiated ear, this sounds like blatant racism and sexism, and coming from Jesus? As my Wednesday evening Bible class was making its way through the book of Matthew, one student was so distraught and disturbed by this comment from Jesus, that she left the class in confusion basically vowing never to return.
Here’s how I helped her decode these words. First, you can’t always draw a direct line between how words were used in bible days and how words are used today. The meaning of this word “dog” in the Greek New Testament is much more like little dogs or puppies. A second point in understanding these difficult words is Jesus has the advantage of seeing this woman who was somehow already a student in the academy of the Holy Spirit. She majored in the promises of God. The content of her spiritual character was unshakable and unbreakable. So, being the distinguished rabbi Jesus was, He seized a teachable moment to try to teach His hard-to-teach disciples two things they needed to know about true faith:
- True faith won’t stop, let go, go away, fold up, or give up. Simply put, faith won’t quit.
- They needed to know where true faith could be found. Anywhere, even ina Canaanite, an extreme Gentile.
You see, your race or ethnicity or your gender or background, whether you’re proud of it or embarrassed by it, means nothing when it comes to being saved by grace given by God through faith created by the Spirit in Jesus Christ revealed to us in the Word.
Jesus knew this woman would pass this little test. His aim was to give His disciples a big education in persistent faith–faith that presses on in pursuit of God’s promises in spite of problems, protocol, pressure, or persecution. Rather than running away, this believing sister was not leaving. Peter said, “Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
She is clinging for the life of her child–to the promises of God. I imagine at that dramatic moment with the disciples as her audience, she got down on her knees like a beggar and pumped up the volume of her prayer request. Pastor Matthew Harrison of LCMS World Relief and Human Care Ministries has written, “We are all beggars. We rely on, are thrown upon, the mercy of Christ.
“Our lives as children of God are all His doing. We are born [again by] divine mercy. We are born along in life by divine mercy. We are beggars–this is true. But we have received mercy. And because this is so, we cannot be but merciful.”
“Blessed are the merciful,” Jesus promised, “they will receive mercy.” Those to whom much mercy has been measured out will measure out much mercy to those seeking mercy. Yes, Jesus pushes her to the edge. But this mother is ready for that lowdown, dirty rotten comment about not giving human food to dogs like her. Some of us would have quit, gone off in a rage, slapped Jesus, and told everybody what He had the nerve to say. But this woman knew who she’s dealing with, and what she’s trusting God for and that “dog comment,” turned out to be, in my opinion, the greatest set up line, for the greatest come back line of all time.
“Call me a dog,” she submits. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the masters table. All I need is a crumb of God’s mercy….”
God can grow a gigantic faith in any hungry heart through a crumb of His Word. God feeds us with the real presence of Christ who removes all our guilt and shame with a crumb of bread and a sip of wine at Holy Communion. So mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, when life pushes you to the edge just cling to one crumb, one bible verse, one Word of promise. Follow Him for that one crumb.
One writer puts it like this:
“Come to the edge No, we will fall. Come to the edge No, we will fall. They came to the edge. He pushed them. They flew.”
Yes, Jesus did push her, but did she ever fly! With just one crumb of my favorite bible verse, Isaiah 40:31, “Those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles.”
Don’t you know that one crumb of faith in this God can give you strength to soar into tomorrow; strength to run without losing your breath; strength to walk without tripping or flipping or slipping? Are you at the edge of what you can take this morning? God is there with one crumb of peace that passes human understanding. At the edge of anxiety about your future, God shows up with one crumb of hope that surpasses all disappointment. At the edge of death, worried about where you will spend eternity–with God in heaven or without God in hell–God shows up with one crumb, the assurance of salvation, for all who believe and are baptized. I’m getting hungry right now for a morsel of God’s mercy. It’s packed with miraculous power. Taste and see that the Lord is good.
A story is told of a little girl who suffered greatly. She was teased, taunted, and talked about because of her disfigured facial appearance and it was time to go back to school. We know how children can be so cruel to one another. But even her own parents secretly wished this child wasn’t their own. It just took a few whispered words from one teacher to change her life.
In order to test the hearing of each child, the teacher, in turn, invited each student forward and whispered a random little sentence right into each child’s ear. When the one everybody just called “the ugly girl” got up, teacher bent over and whispered in her ear, “I’d love it if you were my beautiful daughter.” Tears flooded from the little girl’s eyes and words burst from her mouth repeating word for word the most wonderful words she had ever heard, “I’d love it if you were my beautiful daughter.”
Little things, crumbs done with God’s big love make a big difference. “Somebody thinks I’m special.” That’s what God’s love will do–make you feel like the most “special-ist” person in the whole wide world. Jesus has invited you and me forward. He is whispering in our ear not with a thunder or some stentorian sonic boom or a hyped up Hollywood voice, but like the lover of your soul He is. He speaks with the still, small gentle voice of grace. “Your faith has made you whole. Your terrible track record of ugly sin is forgiven. I died to wipe away even your secret sins–the ones nobody knows about. You are healed. You are loved. I am Jesus Christ. I am your Savior. I died for you. You are my child. No matter what happens, I love you and I will always love you.”
That’s what Jesus says to us this morning. I imagine Jesus whispered into the ear of that Canaanite woman’s sick child. “You are My child whom I love. Demons get out and child be healed.”
Just a crumb of what God has is all we need. A crumb of God’s justice takes away all our injustice. A crumb of God’s cleansing takes away all our shame. A crumb of God’s innocence takes away all our blame. A crumb of God’s redemption takes away all our corruption. A crumb of God’s wholeness takes away all our brokeness. A crumb of God’s love takes away all our hatefulness. A crumb of God’s righteousness takes away all our unrighteousness. Just one crumb of God’s forgiveness takes away all our guilt. A crumb of God’s healing takes away all our sickness. A crumb of God’s victory takes away all our vices. A crumb of God’s justification takes away all our estrangement. A crumb of God’s hope takes away all our disillusionment. A crumb of God’s peace takes away all our chaos. A crumb of God’s pardon in Christ takes away our death sentence. A crumb of God’s amazing grace takes away all our disgrace. Just one crumb! Amen.
LUTHERAN HOUR MAILBOX (August 18, 2002)
ANNOUNCER: What will the bodies of Christians be like in the resurrection of the dead? I’m Mark Eischer. With me again is Dr. Ken Schurb, Pastor of Zion Lutheran Church, Moberly, Missouri.
SCHURB: Hi, Mark. Thanks for asking me back.
ANNOUNCER: Last week we answered a question about the bodies of Christians when God raises them from the dead on the Last Day. Briefly, would you recap the biblical teaching on the resurrection of the dead?
SCHURB: Throughout the Bible we find the teaching that God will someday bring human history to an end, and at that point raise all the dead and judge them. Christians, those who received the righteousness of Christ in this life by God-given faith, will rise in glorified bodies and go to heaven. Those who did not trust Christ as Savior will be sent to hell where they will be apart from God’s loving and saving presence forever.
ANNOUNCER: Where can our listeners look in Scripture for details on the resurrected body?
SCHURB: 1 Corinthians 15, sometimes called the great “resurrection chapter” of the Bible, is probably the first place to look. It contains the most extensive portrait of the resurrected bodies of Christians.
ANNOUNCER: How did God describe these bodies through St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 15?
SCHURB: He emphasized the magnificent change that would occur in the bodies of Christians at the resurrection. At one point he wrote it was like the difference between the seed and the ripened crop ready for harvest.
ANNOUNCER: Those are quite different.
SCHURB: Yet it’s the same body. The body that is sown in corruption, the text says, is raised in incorruption. The same body sown in dishonor is raised in glory. The same body sown in weakness is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, but is raised a spiritual body.
ANNOUNCER: Made spiritual by Christ?
SCHURB: Made spiritual in the very image of Christ. “As we once wore the image of the man of dust” – that is, Adam, as 1 Corinthians says, “we will also wear the image of the man of heaven” (1 Cor. 15:49). Christ, the second Adam, the Man Who is also God, is the One Who came to undo the damage that the first Adam did. Of course, Adam fell into sin and subjected God’s creation to corruption, shame, disgrace, and death. Christ gives us the victory over death, and the sin that lies behind it, by keeping the law in our place, suffering our punishment for not keeping it, and living to tell the tale in the resurrection.
ANNOUNCER: Would you say that Christ is the key to our resurrection as Christians?
SCHURB: Absolutely, and in more than one way. Christ changes our body to be like His glorious resurrected body (Phil. 3:20-21). You see, Scripture describes the resurrection in two stages. Stage one was the resurrection of Christ Himself at the first Easter. That was the firstfruits of the harvest, as 1 Corinthians 15 says. The rest of the dead will be resurrected when Christ comes again.
ANNOUNCER: So these resurrections are not disconnected, even though quite a bit of time passes between them.
SCHURB: Right. They really are two parts of one big resurrection, and of course Christ is the key to it. The eternal Word, Who was in the beginning with God and Who was God, became flesh. That’s Jesus Christ. When He dwelt among us, He was God’s salvation in our midst, bodily. In the resurrection, we share in this salvation bodily.
ANNOUNCER: Jesus instituted baptism. What does baptism have to do with the resurrection?
SCHURB: The resurrection is the consummation of baptism. As St. Paul wrote the Roman Christians, if we have been united with Christ in a death like His (in baptism), we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His (Rom. 6:5). Likewise, the same apostle Paul wrote the Christians in Corinth, “you were washed,” and a few lines later, “God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by His power” (1 Cor. 6:11, 14). Spirituality is not a matter of getting out of the body. God wants His people to dwell with Him, body and soul, to all eternity.
ANNOUNCER: Thank you, Pastor Schurb. Thanks for being with us.