Lord Jesus, Son of David, have mercy upon us. Amen.
“We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy.” Those words come from the Prayer of Humble Access, an optional prayer that is sometimes used before receiving Communion. It reminds us that we come forward not because of where we fall on the spectrum of worthiness and unworthiness, but solely on the welcoming and gracious invitation of Jesus.
You can find it on page 337 of the Prayer Book – it’s a lovely prayer to use as you’re waiting to come forward for Communion. And it’s a much-needed prayer because so much of our society and mental energy is focused on the question of worthiness. We walk into a room and immediately, we start to scan the room to try to figure out our social standing. Or we obsess over what we wish we would have said or done differently in a particular situation. Or we tell ourselves stories in which we are always either the hero or the victim, or usually a bit of both in the role of the righteous martyr. Well, that prayer and the theology that undergirds it saves us from the dizzying and exhausting status game of worthiness. It’s not about deserving, it’s about invitation. And beloved, each of you belong in the love of Jesus.
This prayer, as you’ve likely noticed, is based on the encounter between Jesus and the Canaanite woman in Matthew. Before we get there though, we have to attend to what Jesus has just said about defilement. It was assumed then, just as we assume now, that what we consume is what makes us clean or unclean, worthy or unworthy. This worldview is built on the axiom “you are what you eat.” He has tattoos, so he must have a rebellious streak in him. She listens to rap music, so she should not be trusted. He goes to that sort of church, so he must vote for those sorts of candidates and be a closed-minded person. She always has her nose in a book, so she must not like people. We all make these sorts of judgments about ourselves and others. And these sorts of assumptions are the soil in which racism, sexism, ablism, classism, and homophobia all grow.
But Jesus says we’ve got it all wrong. He upends this assumed theology of our cleanliness being connected to what we consume and surround ourselves with. When Jesus says, “Every plant that my heavenly Father as not planted will be uprooted,” we see that he intends to challenge this sort of thinking. Yes, of course, the things around us can influence us, but they do not define us, as we assume. This the very accusation that was so often hurled against Jesus – you hang out with tax collectors and prostitutes, so you must be just as despicable as them.
Jesus though says, “No, it’s not what goes in, but what comes out that matters.” Given the history of Colorado Springs, I’m sure you’ve heard of “purity culture.” Even if you didn’t grow up here, you’ve run into it. Usually, purity culture is expressed in terms of policing the bodies and clothing of teenage girls and women, but it also shows up in a sort of moralistic approach to what sort of television shows you watch, what music you listen to, and what kind of friends you keep.
If you grew up in a church that forced the idea of “purity” on you and told you that you weren’t good enough, pure enough, or clean enough – on behalf of the Body of Christ, I’m sorry. You have been wounded by the very Body that was supposed to be there to support you, nurture you, remind you of your inherent dignity, and have limitless mercy for you. A lot of people love Jesus, but have been so judged and hurt by his supposed followers that they fled for safety. As the Church, we have a lot of repair and rethinking that needs to be done because we have ignored Jesus’ teaching for so long – it’s not what goes in that defiles, it’s what comes out.
So, then Jesus decides, as he almost always does, to take a teaching and make it tangible. Matthew records that he left that place, which earlier is named as Gennesaret – the region on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee – and went to the region of Tyre and Sidon. Tyre and Sidon were not a part of Israel; they were pagan cities located in what we today call Lebanon. From Gennesaret, it was at least a 50-mile journey, so walking 25 miles a day would mean it took two days to get there. I’m not sure how fast Jesus and the disciples walked, maybe it took three days. The point is – Tyre and Sidon weren’t just around the corner. This was an intentional excursion.
And why? Why did Jesus go there? For one reason – this Canaanite woman. If we kept reading in chapter 15, the very next verse after this encounter tells us that they then returned to the Sea of Galilee – so we’ve got a hundred-mile roundtrip walk for a 2-minute conversation with this woman. She, like all of us, is that important to Jesus, and we do well to pay attention to her witness.
This conversation is notoriously challenging to read and preach on because there are some very easy traps to fall into. Some interpreters take Jesus’ initial dismissal of her and comparing her to a dog as signs that Jesus was just a man of times, riddled with the same sins of racism and sexism that we struggle with. But I hardly think Jesus walked a hundred miles to hurl a racial slur at a random woman. He could have just stayed in Galilee and done. Others read this text and assume Jesus has changed his mind – that the woman bested him in the debate and so he relented. Again though, Jesus seems to have gone there for the very purpose of encountering her – as he tells his followers elsewhere, “You did not choose me, I chose you.” We can do better than readings of this passage that leave us feeling embarrassed to be associated with Jesus.
So what might be behind Jesus’ very deliberate journey to find her? Well, for one, this whole story, if we read the Bible literally, which is almost always a bad choice, should be impossible. Chapter 20 of Deuteronomy reads, “But as for the towns of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. Indeed, you shall annihilate the Canaanites.” Then, as recorded in Joshua, this commandment was fulfilled – “They devoted to destruction by the edge of the sword all in the city… they burned down the city and everything in it.”
Now, what such a horrific passage is doing in the Bible is another sermon for another day, but today’s Gospel text is part of the response. Jesus goes to a people who were considered defiled, unclean, and unworthy. There shouldn’t even be any Canaanites left, but there are. And so Jesus goes not to finish the job that Joshua started, not to further condemn or judge them, but to demonstrate that it’s not what goes in that defiles – it’s not racial or ethnic identity that defines a person – but what comes out.
Furthermore, we know that Jesus is incredibly conversant with Scripture. He knows the words of the prophet Isaiah, “And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD… these I will bring to my holy mountain… for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” Jesus doesn’t need someone to remind him of God’s eternal plan for including all people into the promises made to Abraham.
And Jesus also knows his own family history. When Matthew records the genealogy of Jesus, he includes five women in the lineage, two of whom are, you ready for this? Canaanites – Tamar and Rahab.
Last I checked, there is only one humanity, and Jesus knows this truth as well. Jesus has come to reconcile all that has been broken and estranged by our sinful assumptions about one another. When he says that he came to only to the lost sheep of Israel, that’s not an exclusionary mission; it’s one that includes us all because, again as Isaiah writes, “All we like sheep have gone astray.” We are all the prodigal son, the prodigal daughter. Who among us, left to our own devices, would not be in the category of “a sheep without shepherd”?
Every time Jesus feeds the multitudes, which happened previously in Matthew 14 and is the very next thing that Jesus does after encountering this woman, there is always an abundance of leftovers. The Canaanite woman has figured this out before the disciples could. She comes to Jesus, first with the words of the Kyrie on her lips, “Lord, have mercy upon me” and then authors what we call the Prayer of Humble Access, “I may not be worthy to receive the crumbs, but I trust in your mercy.”
This conversation happened thousands of miles and years ago, in a very different cultural context than our own. I’m not sure that we can understand the intricacies of their conversation, nor do we know the tone that was used. But what we do know is that Jesus went out of his way to find this Canaanite women, she pleaded with him and refused to budge because she trusted in his mercy, and the disciples, including us, got to witness precisely what Jesus has just taught about.
Because what seemed to go into the situation was that this woman didn’t deserve anything, that she didn’t belong, that the promise wasn’t for her, that she was a dog. But that’s not what came out of the situation. No, not at all.
Jesus says to her “Woman, great is your faith!” And this, I think, is the whole point of the passage. What comes out of her is great faith, or as the Greek of Matthew puts it: mega-faith. From the Canaanite comes great faith. And she is a witness and example to us all: come to Jesus, ask for mercy, and don’t go until you get the daily bread he promises to give.
Elsewhere in Matthew, Jesus refers to the faith of Peter when he was sinking on the water as “little faith.” When Jesus offers the teaching about the lilies of the field and the birds of the air who do not toil and stress, he asks the disciples, “Why do you of little faith worry?” When the disciples are afraid of the storm on the Sea of Galilee, he asks, “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?”
On paper, the disciples are assumed to be the ones who are worthy, who have all the right inputs. Of course, Jesus teaches that faith the size of a mustard seed is a gracious plenty when planted in the soil of his love. This isn’t, at all, to castigate them for having “little faith.” Most days, that’s all we can muster. But this Canaanite woman who has everything against her, out of her comes great faith. Peter asked Jesus, “Explain this parable to us” – which Jesus does by walking 100-miles to show them great faith coming out of the most unexpected of people and places.
And what does her great faith look like? She doesn’t confess the Nicene Creed, she doesn’t give 10% of her income to Jesus’ ministry, she doesn’t volunteer at the local Tyre and Sidon soup kitchen. She doesn’t promise to never use profanity. No, her great faith is that regardless of what the world says about her, regardless of the impossibility of a Canaanite being included in the promises of God, regardless of how powerless she was, she trusted in the mercy of Jesus and knows that she will be fed at God’s table.
“We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy.” That is great faith.
