August 16, 2026 - Matthew 15:21-28 - Proper 15

It’s an interesting scene we find Jesus in today. It’s not really clear what Jesus and his disciples are doing. Perhaps he is travelling around the area and visiting with people. Perhaps he is enjoying a walk. He is teaching and healing people a bit later, but this feels like a little interlude, a quieter moment in his life when there isn’t much noteworthy going on. As we find periodically, Jesus does find interesting things to do and interesting people to talk to, but sometimes the interesting people find him.

In this case, a Canaanite mother comes to Jesus with a request, which sets off a rather odd exchange. At first he doesn’t even talk to her, but she refuses to just wander off. She becomes enough of a nuisance that even the disciples want Jesus to just give her what she’s asking for so she’ll go away. Jesus finally says something to her, but he doesn’t sound interested in actually helping her. But, after a brief exchange, he relents.

Why all of the weirdness? Isn’t Jesus usually happy to help people? At first he ignores her and then he’s rude to her. It doesn’t sound like Jesus at all. It’s helpful to see not just what he’s talking about, but also who he’s talking to. At the moment he’s wandering around in the area of Tyre and Sidon. These have never been Israelite territories. When Israel moved into the Promised Land, they kicked out most of the people who were living there at the time. The regions surrounding Israel were generally unaffected. Sure, they all got swept up when empire after empire ran through the area, but that mostly meant a change in government, not a change in people. Here in the region, many centuries later, the descendants of the people that Israel had considered enemies are still living. Now, on this particular day, one of those people that God had declared pagans and unclean, approaches Jesus to ask him to do something for her.

That’s a bit presumptuous. She doesn’t even bring him something in payment. When the disciples are fed up enough with her, Jesus points out that she is correct. He is the Son of David. He is the rightful king of Israel. He is a ruler, but he is not her ruler. She’s not an Israelite. Why would she expect him to do anything for her? He has come for his people and she isn’t numbered among them. His work is among the Israelites. His gifts are for them and she has no right to ask for him to give her anything at all.

Is that how God is supposed to act? Is that how the Messiah is supposed to act? You might be tempted to say, “No! That’s a terrible way to treat a poor mother who’s just trying to get help for her daughter.” But, that depends on your perspective. Remember who she is. She’s a Canaanite, approaching someone she openly acknowledges to be a king, and she’s asking him to do something for her for free. So, if we’re going to accuse Jesus of some kind of improper conduct, then we need to take a look at her as well.

As Christians, we also know more of the story than she probably does. It was just last chapter that we saw Jesus walking cross the water to meet his disciples. This is a king with greater power and authority than any earthly king could ever hope to wield. These two are so far apart on the scale that she is less than a speck from his vantage point. Why would she feel like she could approach him at all?

Sometimes we approach God in prayer without any thought to who he is. We come before Almighty God, creator of heaven and earth, and we make demands. We issue orders. We come expecting results. If the results we demand are not forthcoming, then he has failed. He did not do what he was supposed to do and we are fully within our rights to file a grievance against him.

For the pride and hubris we display before God, it’s a wonder any of us survive. Any earthly king would have such a self-important person executed on the spot for such a gross display of disrespect, but we do it to God all the time. We come to him with expectations and demands. Yet, we are not God’s equals. We aren’t even the Israelites in this story. We’re the Canaanites. We’re the ones constantly giving our worship to false gods. We’re the unclean ones. We’re the ones who do nothing but get in the way. We’re the ones who should be wiped out and destroyed and yet we somehow think God should not only listen to us but do what we tell him to do.

It’s a wonder that Almighty God only ignores her. The disciples see what a nuisance she is and want Jesus to get rid of her. As Jesus’ loyal subjects, why don’t the disciples get rid of her? Because they are often guilty of the same view. Time and time again they fail to give him the respect and honor he deserves. They just want Jesus to wave his hand, dispense whatever goodies the woman wants and get rid of the pest. They don’t really care about her at all.

As Luther walks through the different parts of the Lord’s Prayer, at each step he says, “We pray in this petition...” Luther is reminding us of who we are and who it is we are talking to. Each of these is a petition, a request made to someone with the power and authority to carry them out, requests that the person in power is under no obligation to fulfill. So, if he does fulfill these petitions, it is solely because he chooses to.

We pray our petitions and God is under no obligation to do anything for us at all. We have no right to expect some kind of response, much less a positive one. Our sin is there before us every time we think of ourselves as anything close to his equal.

Jesus tells the mother that it isn’t right that she should get the bread the Israelites are supposed to get. Surprisingly, she doesn’t argue the point. In fact, she agrees. This was how the system was supposed to work. God gave abundantly to the Israelites. God gave such an abundance that they had more than enough to share with everyone else. Not physical wealth, though they had that too, but spiritual wealth. They had the Law. They had the temple. They had the priests and the prophets. They had God in their midst. It was their job to take that and extend it to the world. Jesus, the Son of David, is again bringing his glory to Israel.

There’s something different about this woman, though. Just before this in chapter 15, Jesus is in a debate with the Pharisees. With their self-made righteousness, they certainly consider themselves Jesus’ equals if not superiors. Jesus points out how they circumvent God’s law through their made up traditions and how their outward show of righteousness doesn’t gain them anything. The Pharisees are Israelites. They are some of the most educated people in Israel, people who regularly study the Scriptures. These are the people who should be leading others in worshipping God and giving Jesus the honor and respect he deserves. But they do not. He is not worth their time.

Yet this poor Canaanite woman, with no connection to the temple, no access to God in worship, knows who this is and knows her place. She knows she has no right to demand. She has no reason to expect him to help her. All she can do is offer her humble petition to the Son of David, the one person with the power and authority to command even demons to obey.

Why Jesus has this little exchange with her instead of just giving her what she asks for, we can only speculate. Her faith was affirmed, and she went home knowing that the Messiah had seen her and cared for her. Not only that, but the disciples, who had been trying to get rid of her, saw Jesus caring for her in the same way he cared for the Jews he more commonly was around.

Luther opens his explanation of the Lord’s Prayer by saying, “With these words God tenderly invites us to believe that He is our true Father and that we are His true children, so that with all boldness and confidence we may ask Him as dear children ask their dear father.” Just as children who think they are their father’s equal are in for a rude awakening, so too are those who approach God with the same sense of self importance.

But God does love and care for his children. Seeing how many times we break God’s rules and laws, we should not expect to be treated any better than the Canaanites that lived in the Promised Land. As a testament to God’s great mercy, he doesn’t cast us out. We don’t deserve to be forgiven, much less have a place in his kingdom, but he gives it to us anyway. God’s mercy spills over, overflowing from Christ on to all of those around him. God promises to hear your prayers because you know your sin and you know you have no other recourse but to come to him as a humble petitioner. He forgives your sins, not because he has to, but because he chooses to. He chooses to give that punishment to another. What you could never hope to earn or to achieve is given to you freely.

The Canaanite woman had no right to expect anything from Jesus and she came before him in humility. She knew something about this man Jesus that even the educated Pharisees didn’t know. She understood something about God’s character. As Luther ends his explanation of the Lord’s Prayer, he says, “This means that I should be certain that these petitions are pleasing to our Father in heaven, and are heard by Him; for He Himself has commanded us to pray in this way and has promised to hear us. Amen, amen means ‘yes, yes, it shall be so.’”

When we come before God, we too are humble petitioners. We ask for spiritual and eternal things, like forgiveness, life, and salvation. We ask for physical and temporary things, like our daily bread, peace, and healing. We can be assured that he hears us and that he will respond to our petitions, because that is who our loving Father is. He is a Father who cares for his children and gives them what they need. Learn from the example of the Canaanite woman, both in her humility, and in her confidence in her loving savior.