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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
The last couple of weeks have been rough ones for our country, with renewed violence and controversy over Confederate statues and flags and the underlying issue of race. Not only have statements of past leaders been called into question, but also the statements of one current leader at least have been deemed “politically incorrect”. With such national division on our minds, Divine Providence had us this morning hear a Gospel Reading in which the statements of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself are criticized by some, as He deals with the matter of race not in a country but in His Church. This morning we reflect on today’s Gospel Reading under the theme, borrowed from a verse in Galatians, “One in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28 ESV).
The Divinely-inspired St. Matthew tells us that Jesus went away from Gennesaret, where He and His disciples had landed their boat (Matthew 14:34) after, as we heard last week, Jesus and Peter had walked on the sea (Matthew 14:22-33). There, Jewish leaders from Jerusalem had questioned what Jesus was saying, and He questioned their breaking God’s Commandments (Matthew 15:1-20), but in the typically Gentile district of Tyre and Sidon a Canaanite woman sought mercy and help from Jesus as the Lord, the Messianic Son of David. As the woman or Jesus’s disciples—whatever their request meant—indirectly and directly “interact” four times with Jesus (Davies and Allison, ad loc Mt 15:21-28, 541), Jesus apparently tests her faith before granting her desire and, in the process, teaches her, the disciples, and everyone else, including us today, about how race pertains to the Church.
To be sure, as Jesus said, God the Father sent Jesus primarily to seek and to save the lost sheep of the house of Israel (confer Luke 19:10)—those born ethnically Jewish. Likewise, Jesus sent His apostles and others, at least in their shorter-term missionary assignments, primarily to the Jews (for example, Matthew 10:6). Yet, many of the Jews were not willing to be found and saved, preferring not to believe and to go on sinning, while some Gentiles, such as the Canaanite woman in today’s Gospel Reading and the Capernaum Centurion earlier in St. Matthew’s account (Matthew 8:5-13), demonstrated faith greater than those in Israel. Jesus healed the woman’s daughter and the Centurion’s servant, so obviously Jesus’s work was not completely limited to the Jews but also spilled over to Gentiles, just as dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the children at their lords’ table. Jesus’s healing and salvation are available to all, including us, and His healing and salvation are given to whoever knows their right relationship to God and His plan of salvation.
Probably all of us are ethnically Gentiles, and, like even all the Jews, we are conceived and born sinful (Psalm 51:5). The original sin we inherit makes us all sinful and leads us all to commit all sorts of actual sins—good thoughts, words and deeds that we all omit, and wrong thoughts, words, and deeds, that we all commit. On account of our original and actual sins, we all not only are undeserving of God’s blessings, as we prayed in today’s Collect, but we all also are lost from God and deserve destruction, both to die in this life and to be tormented eternally in hell. But, as we heard St. Paul say to the Romans in today’s Epistle Reading (Romans 11:1-2a, 13-15, 28-32), “God has consigned all to disobedience, that He may have mercy on all” (ESV). God’s enabling call to repent goes out to all, and when we, like the Canaanite woman, cry out to Him in faith, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David”, then He forgives our sinful natures and all our sins, whatever they might be, for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ.
Out of His great love, mercy, and grace, God the Father sent His Son, the God-man Jesus Christ, into the world ultimately to save all sinners, including each one of us. Jesus suffered and died on the cross for you and for me! Because Jesus lived and died for us, our sins can be forgiven, we can live forever with Him, we can be saved eternally. God offers all people the faith that is needed for such forgiveness, life, and salvation, and so that faith is ours if we do not refuse it! Yet, as great as the faith of the Canaanite woman and Capernaum Centurion was, as great as even our faith might be, they were not helped, nor are we saved, because of such faith itself. They were helped and we are saved because of God’s great love, mercy, and grace, which we receive through faith, as we trust in Him to give us forgiveness, life, and salvation, through His Word in all of its forms.
You may have noticed in today’s Introit the connection between our pleas for mercy and the Lord’s Sanctuary. Likewise, in today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 56:1, 6-8), the Lord’s salvation and deliverance are given to the outcasts of Israel and the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord as they are brought to His holy mountain, into His house of prayer. The apostles and their successors, pastors today, ultimately are sent not only to the lost sheep of Israel but also to make disciples of all nations by baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and by teaching them to observe all that Jesus commanded (Matthew 28:19-20), including individual Holy Absolution (for example, Matthew 18:18-19), and the Sacrament of the Altar (for example, Matthew 26:26-29), where bread is Jesus’s Body and wine is His Blood, given and shed for the forgiveness of your sins and my sins. At the Baptismal Font, God saves us not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit. After private confession, as we will sing in the first Distribution Hymn, we through our pastor’s voice by faith hear God speaking absolution from the sky (Lutheran Service Book 981:6). And, at this rail the greatest sacred “bread” of the children of Israel by faith is kept from the unbelieving “dogs” (Matthew 7:6) by way of the historic practice of closed communion.
By Divine-inspiration St. Paul writes to the Galatians that, as we are baptized into Christ, we put on Christ, and there is no longer a distinction between Jew and Gentile, for all are one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:27-28). Certainly we retain our individuality as persons, and the faith that God gives all who do not reject it may be shown to be little in one, as it was in the case of Peter in last week’s Gospel Reading, or great in another, as it was in the case of the Canaanite woman in today’s Gospel Reading. Your mileage or other experience may vary! We try not take offense at what we might misperceive of God, as He appears to ignore or not answer our prayers. We try not to take offense at what we might misperceive of our brothers and sisters in Christ in His Church, and perhaps also even of our fellow citizens in this country. When we fail, as we will, we, with repentance and faith, live each day in God’s forgiveness of sins, and we extend God’s and our own forgiveness to one another, for we all are one in Christ Jesus.
In his nineteenth-century work “The Ballad of East and West”, author Rudyard Kipling wrote, “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet”, but a few years later, in his twentieth-century work, based on that verse from Galatians, the author of our Hymn of the Day (LSB 653), wrote that in Christ east and west and south and north meet and are one throughout the whole wide earth, distinctions of tribe and race are removed, at least in Christ’s Church (Hawn). But, the Gospel and the hymn can have a “spillover” effect on our society at large, too, as the hymn reportedly did in World War II, when Japanese and American expatriates waiting on separate ships anchored together, stopped glaring at each other across the rails and joined in singing the hymn together (Osbeck). May God likewise remove the enmity between us and all people in our country in our time! To that end, in the words of the hymn,
… brothers, sisters, praise His Name
Who died to set us free / From sin, division, hate and shame, / From spite and enmity!
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +