[sermon begins after two Bible readings]

Matthew 15:21-28 Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. ²² Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” ²³ But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” ²⁴ He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” ²⁵ But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” ²⁶ He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” ²⁷ She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” ²⁸ Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed from that moment.

Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32 [Paul writes:] ¹ I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. ^2a God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.
²⁹ For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. ³⁰ Just as you were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, ³¹ so also they have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they also may now receive mercy. ³² For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.

[sermon begins]

One of the things that I’m most grateful for in my education to become a pastor is the individual counseling required by my seminary. Eight sessions had to be completed during our first year. Those eight sessions gave me a chance to name my family’s complicated story and where I fit in it, and to lighten the baggage I was carrying that was helpful to name before setting that bag down in a pastor’s office. Not long after I started my first call with Augustana, I thought it would be helpful to do more work on my blind spots. I knew a little about family systems theory, jumped online with the Bowen Center in Washington D.C., and found a local leadership coach near the church who’s been coaching me every couple of months ever since.[1]

One of the counseling hurdles after being raised in two wildly different Christian churches and having three dads in my life was figuring out what love meant to me. God’s love. Family love. People love. Self-love. Neighbor love. I wrestled with who was worthy of love including myself. It’s part of the reason being a Lutheran preacher is so compelling. We often talk about grace and grace is all about unconditional love, God’s unconditional love for you, for me, and for the world.

The human problem with understanding and receiving unconditional love is that we often experience love as conditional. Heck, all you have to do is spend two minutes in almost any family system, institutional system, or any time at all in social media to hear those conditions on love loud and clear. What’s not expected, is hearing conditions on love from Jesus responding to the shouting Canaanite woman.

We’re used to Jesus taking the higher ground. Here, he goes low, under the table low. His guys want Jesus to send the woman away for all the noise she’s making. Jesus doesn’t send her away though. He talks to her. More than talks, he blows up the conversation by calling her a dog. Some theologians think Jesus is learning something in his conversation with the woman. He was, after all, fully divine AND fully human. And humans learn. Arguably we don’t usually learn lessons quickly even with good coaching, especially lessons that reveal our blind spots. Perhaps we could applaud Jesus for his quick learning. Regardless, this is an uncomfortable story of encountering Jesus finding it harder to learn in a hard to love moment.

The Canaanite woman called Jesus “Lord” and “Son of David.” She knew the lingo, maybe she knew the rest of his genealogy too. It’s possible she had heard about the Canaanites in Jesus’ family tree listed in Matthew’s opening chapter to the gospel – Rahab the courageous prostitute, Tamar the righteous trickster, and Ruth the loyal daughter-in-law and great-grandmother to King David.[2] [3] Or perhaps Jesus had a physical feature that identified the Canaanite blood that also flowed in his veins through his family tree. Maybe she took one look at him and immediately knew they shared Canaanite blood.[4]

We’ll never know whether she knew but it’s possible that that she did and it’s possible that Jesus knew about the non-Jew, Canaanite women in his genealogy. Jewish heredity follows the mother because mothers are obvious, pregnant links. Regardless, this is when Jesus’ ministry expands to include non-Jews. Up to now, he’s instructed his disciples to stay within certain Jewish boundaries. Now they’re in Tyre and Sidon, north of Galilee and way north of Jerusalem, getting shouted at and possibly feeling a little defeated after all they’ve been through. First John the Baptist was executed by Herod. Then they fed over 5,000 hungry men, women, and children who were also on the move after John’s death. Then they spent a terrifying night on a boat at sea in a storm before debarking in Gennesaret to trek further north to Tyre and Sidon where they’re shouted at in welcome.

Breadcrumbs from feeding thousands could still be embedded in Jesus’ clothes while the Canaanite woman shouted. When she knelt before Jesus, she said, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Jesus’ comment vexes the faithful in every age including ours.

Jews didn’t historically keep or love dogs the way that their Greek and Roman counterparts did.[5] In antiquity, dogs were found in the households of all classes of people and were a symbol of loyalty in art and literature.[6]  Jesus’ dog accusation was flipped by the Canaanite woman who likely had a love of dogs much like dog lovers in our 21^st century households.[7] Dogs in her town were fed under the table as beloved family members – crumbs falling over the table’s edge and lapped up by adored canine companions. Whatever this odd exchange between Jesus and the woman actually means, Jesus ends up rewarding the persistent loyalty of the woman by celebrating her faith and fulfilling her request. His ministry expanded to include a non-Jew, a Canaanite sibling by blood, under the watchful gaze of his disciples.

The expansion of his ministry is remarkable for there was no love lost between Canaanites and Jews over the centuries leading up to Jesus’ interaction with the woman. I wonder about the hard to love and harder to learn parts of this story as they translate into our own century 2,000 years later. We watch from afar as the natural enmity of millennia, stoked by post-World War II decisions to create the state of Israel, roils into the most recent war between Israel and Hamas leaving thousands of Israelis and tens of thousands of Palestinians dead including children.[8]

The staggering statistics are vital to personalize through stories of families and people and to work towards peace even when it seems impossible and somehow easier to ignore. Several months ago, I was invited to a mutifaith lunch led by Friends of Standing Together, a grassroots movement organizing Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel working for peace.[9] Closer to home in the United States and in our Rocky Mountain Synod, Sumud, an ELCA ministry meaning “steadfastness” in Arabic, advocates “nonviolent resistance through advocacy, education, social work and faith-rooted presence.”[10] Sumud partners with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land (ELCJHL), on ministries in education, health care, justice and leadership and “practices accompaniment with this Arabic-speaking community of faithful Lutherans.”[11]

Last week, I spent a few hours of retreat time with 15 other faith leaders in the Multifaith Leadership Forum. Even in our small number, the faiths represented included Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Bahai, and Christianity. We’ve built some trust in the group over the years. Even so, we carry our own loyalties and blind spots into our time together. Hard conversations about war and peace in the Holy Land, the birthplace of many of our world faiths, intermingled with our individual stories and relationships among the group. Everyone wishing there was an easy answer to ending a seemingly endless war and bringing an everlasting peace that prioritizes life over death. It’s hard to separate the political from the personal because politics affect real people in real time. Whether people eat or don’t, whether people are safe or not is deeply affected by what elected leaders say and do and by who they believe are worthy; and this includes war and peace.

The personal story may be one reason why the story of the Canaanite woman and Jesus is so powerful. Jesus learns mercy from the woman’s challenge to him to help her daughter. Confronted by her need for help, Jesus’ blind spot shifts to help her, crossing the boundaries of gender, ethnicity, and religion as he learns to love by the power of her coaching.

In my sermon two weeks ago, I emphasized God’s promises to the Jews wrestled with by the Apostle Paul, a Jewish-Christian convert, in his letter to the Roman church in the Bible’s book of Romans.[12] His wrestling continues in our reading today from Romans in which he emphasizes the extension of God’s promises of mercy to Jews and to all.

Today’s Gospel reading personalizes God’s promises between Jesus, the Canaanite woman, and her daughter. Through her story, we’re coached once more that God’s promises of grace and unconditional love are trustworthy for you, for us, and for the world through the ever-expanding ministry of the Lord Jesus. Ministry that includes the diversity of human siblings in skin along with our Savior who slipped on Jewish and Canaanite skin to reveal what hard love and harder learning look like. Ministry fueled by an extravagant, perplexing grace that cannot be contained by bread baskets or tables or ethnic division. For this, and for all that God is doing, we can say thanks be to God and amen.

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[1] The Bowen Center for the Study of the Family

[2] Matthew 1:3-6 Jesus’ genealogy [Tamar: Genesis 38; Rahab: Book of Joshua, Chapter 2; Ruth: Book of Ruth]

[3] Mitzi J. Smith, Professor of New Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary. Commentary on Matthew 15:10-28. Sermon Brainwave Podcast posted August 20, 2017. https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=4542

[4] Pastor Barbara Berry Bailey, St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Denver, CO. Rocky Mountain Synod, ELCA, Metro East Preacher’s Text Study on August 11, 2020.

[5] Francis D. Lazenby. Greek and Roman Household Pets. The Classic Journal: Vol.44, No. 4 (Jan. 1949), 245-252 and Vol 44., No. 5 (Feb. 1949), 290-307. http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Journals/CJ/44/4/Household_Pets*.html

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid., Smith.

[8] July 31, 2026. Middle East: Civilian death toll climbs in Gaza, Lebanon and West Bank as UN chief demands ‘the fighting must stop’ | UN News

[9] English | standing-together

[10] SUMUD: for Justice in Palestine and Israel

[11] Ibid.

[12] August 2, 2026, caitlintrussell.org. A Moment of Peace in the Cultural Chaos | Caitlin Trussell