A Rubric for Faith and ministry
A rubric is a grading tool. You see them most often in a classroom, handed out along with the assignment: a table of specifics listing what the paper has to do and how each part will be scored. It takes the guessing out of the work. The student knows what is required of him before he writes a word, and the professor knows what he is looking for when he reads.
This passage hands us a rubric for faith and ministry. A Canaanite woman asks Jesus for mercy and gets silence first, then a conversation, then a miracle. From Jesus' actions in that exchange we can discern the right approach to ministering to others, and from her actions we learn about the kind of faith that can move mountains. Two columns on the same page. Let's take each in turn and do what Jesus told the crowd to do a few verses earlier: "Hear and understand" (Matthew 15:10).
Rubric for ministry
Jesus had withdrawn to the district of Tyre and Sidon (v. 21), which is to say he left Jewish territory for Gentile territory. Matthew gives us that detail on purpose. It explains who is about to come out of the crowd.
The other thing we have to have in front of us is that Jesus' ministry was to the Jew first. The Father sent the Son to the house of Israel to save and redeem her, and salvation is from the Jews (John 4:22). Israel was then to be the means by which the Gentiles were brought into that redemption, the nation that carried God's light to the ends of the earth (Isaiah 49:6). Instead of turning outward she turned inward. She neglected her ministry to the nations and failed to keep God's word herself.
Two things follow for us. The first is that ministry is a sending. Jesus was sent out, sent down, into the world to save it, and the ministry of God's people is the same ministry: as the Father sent him, so he sends us (John 20:21). The second is that we do not invent the work we are given. Like Jesus, we commit ourselves to the one who sends. We accomplish his will and not our own and not somebody else's.
It is that second commitment, the will of the one who sends, that stings in this passage, because Jesus will not be pulled off course by an appeal to dire circumstances. A mother with a demon-oppressed daughter is about as dire as it gets, and he does not move. This surprises us. We have gotten used to a Jesus whose help is freely available at all hours to anyone who asks. Read the passage again and you will see less of a Jesus responding to the cries of the crowd and more of a Son being faithful to his Father. Ministry does not have to serve everyone. Ministry serves the will of the Father. When a request does not line up with that will, there is no obligation to grant it, which means not every ministry opportunity is an opportunity to minister.
And he takes it further than we would. He does not answer her a word (v. 23); not every cry for help has to be answered. Then he says out loud what he is committed to: he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (v. 24, the same charge he had already given the Twelve in Matthew 10:6). Then he doubles down. It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs (v. 26). The bread belonged to the children, and it was not his to hand out somewhere else.
If you feel the urge to correct Jesus at this point, tread lightly. He came to do the will of his Father and not the will of man, and he is therefore under no obligation to man to grant what man wants. He is under total obligation, in word and in deed, to his Father. Hear and understand: it is not his faithfulness to us that makes him our Savior. It is his faithfulness to his Father's will that makes him Savior and Lord of lords.
Then her faith comes out, and answering her turns out to be the Father's will after all. Israel was supposed to be a people of faith. Paul says that those who share Abraham's faith are Abraham's children (Galatians 3:7; Romans 4:16), and that not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel (Romans 9:6-8). Abraham's children by faith are the true Israel that Jesus was sent to gather. So when this woman's faith shows itself in what she does, Jesus responds, and his commitment has not budged an inch. Healing her daughter is not an exception to the rule. It is the rule honored. She has the faith of Abraham, which puts her squarely inside the ministry he was sent to perform. Not everyone who cries out for mercy is saved. Those who cry out for mercy in faith that he will grant it are saved.
Which leaves us with a practical question. If we are not obligated to every opportunity that walks up to us, and we are obligated to the ones that align with the mission God has handed this church, regardless of the person or the situation, how do we recognize the faith we are bound to answer? Watch her.
Rubric for faith
She calls him Lord, Son of David (v. 22). A Canaanite woman puts Israel's messianic title on a Jewish rabbi and claims him as her own lord, and she does it before he has given her any reason to think he will help. She is placing her life under his lordship with nothing in hand but his name.
She is persistent. Silence does not stop her. The disciples asking Jesus to send her away does not stop her (v. 23). The first refusal does not stop her and neither does the second. Her faith does not go out at the first sign of rejection; instead she comes closer and kneels before him (v. 25), which is worship.
And she is humble. James tells us God gives grace to the humble and opposes the proud (James 4:6, quoting Proverbs 3:34), and this woman humbles herself twice, first by kneeling and then by agreeing with Jesus about the dogs (v. 27). She has an accurate view of herself and she is not offended by the truth of it. We come to God the same way or we do not come at all. We do not approach demanding. We approach as people who deserve nothing, conceived in iniquity (Psalm 51:5), asking a holy God to be gracious and merciful to sinners who have given him no reason to say yes. He would be more just in refusing us than in granting us. Yes, I am a dog. And the dog still lives on what falls from the master's table.
That is what Jesus is looking at when he says, "O woman, great is your faith" (v. 28). She has shown herself a true child of Abraham. And notice one more thing: she is doing the very work Israel refused to do. She is not turned inward. She is standing there interceding for her daughter, making herself the means by which somebody else receives mercy from the God of Israel. The ministry the covenant people dropped, a Canaanite mother picks up in a Gentile district, on her knees, asking for crumbs.
What this leaves the church
Our ministry belongs to the will of God before it belongs to the will of man. That is permission for a church to say no, and most of us need to hear it, because a calendar full of good causes is not the same thing as obedience and the loudest need in the room is not automatically our assignment. But it is also a demand. When something comes to this congregation that clearly lines up with what God has called us here to do, neither the situation nor the person gets to disqualify it. Jesus healed a Canaanite girl on the strength of her mother's faith without ever suspending his mission, because that faith was his mission.
So learn what to look for. There is the rubric: real faith names Jesus as Lord, bows to him in honest humility, and refuses to quit at the first no or the second one. When that shows up at the door of this church, no matter who is carrying it, we answer. That is the work, not an interruption of it.
The daughter in this story never speaks a word. She is not even in the room. Her mother does the asking and the girl is healed that same hour (v. 28), which means intercession is still open to every one of us. So go to the master's table this week with somebody else's name in your mouth and ask for crumbs on their account. And when he is quiet, do not leave.
Peace be with you,
Pastor Bruce
