Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 15:21-28
August 16, 2026
No one likes rejection. Rejection is uncomfortable, humiliating, sometimes lonely. Rejection makes one doubt his senses and rational mind. We don’t handle rejection of simple ideas or convictions very well, and we certainly don’t handle full rejection of the self at all.
Think of the Facebook, Twitter/X, social media craze where people base their lives and being on friend requests. A lot of people can’t deal with being “unfriended” or “unfollowed” or “disliked” or “thumbed down.” It’s personal and it sometimes seems like an attack despite the fact that it’s just social media; it often has so little substance or meaning and yet it is taken so seriously because people do not like being rejected.
If you can gather around you a massive group of Facebook friends who agree with you all the time, it makes you feel important, wanted, trusted. But if just one of those friends disagrees…then the defense mode kicks in and the need to get that person back in your bubble takes over, because it’s rejection.
The lectionary readings for today all deal with rejection. They deal with rejection and they deal with the Lord’s answer to rejection.
As we read through the Prophet Isaiah, we discover how Israel continued to reject God. They broke His commands; they allowed false worship and idolatry into their homes; they married into pagan, unbelieving families; they squandered God’s blessings for riches and power.
The Lord comes to them and calls them to repent of it. But He also tells them that because of their unfaithfulness and their rejection of Him, that He will go to foreigners and strangers and open the way for them to salvation. That they will keep the sabbath, that they will worship and pray and follow His teaching.
If you want to shake a beehive, just go to the people of Israel and tell them that the Lord has rejected them and moved on to the Gentiles. That will set off some fireworks for sure, even today. But those are the Lord’s words.
And we know the rest of the story concerning the Babylonian exile and how Israel has never been the same since.
If we were to continue to read through chapter 56 of Isaiah, we’d discover that much of their faithlessness was a result of faithless false preachers, hypocritical priests and unknowledgeable teachers. Their “watchmen,” or the leaders and theologians who were supposed to keep them on the straight and narrow were…not doing their jobs. They were untrained, lacking in sense, ruthless, selfish, lazy creatures who worried more about their own pocket books than they did the people to whom the Lord had entrusted them.
But in the Epistle, in Romans, St. Paul says that the Lord has NOT rejected His people. So, did He, or didn’t He? Well, yes, the Lord has rejected Isreal, but the Lord has not rejected…Israel. Israel, the nation, well, salvation is not granted through an earthly kingdom with earthly kings and earthly priests. Salvation is always and only by faith in the Son of God who died for the sin of the world.
See, the Israel of faith will surely be saved in the end, every last man, woman, and child chosen and called by God to citizenship in His eternal kingdom. But, for now it seems, God has opened salvation to the Gentiles and not so much for the Jews, and when the time is right this will flip around and some of ethnic Israel will be saved as well. But it’s not going to be through rebuilding the temple or restoring the sacrificial system or the Aaronic priesthood or anything like that. Salvation can only be by faith, for Jews and Gentiles and everyone in between. This is why we Lutherans reject any notions of “Zionism” or efforts to restore the temple in Jerusalem.
For in the end, all Israel will be saved – but not all the Jews. All Israel WILL be saved, but the great mystery revealed in Christ is that true Israel includes Gentiles. And the Gospel reading PROVES it.
A Canaanite woman….no pious Jew would ever remotely consider such a creature worthy of the Lord’s attention. She worshipped demons and creatures of evil and filth. Witchcraft, demonology, polytheism, paganism, you name it – you name the false religions and those Canaanites practiced it. Tyre and Sidon were sort of epicenters of a lot of this stuff.
But this woman was so deeply involved with these pagan practices that, not only did she expose her daughter to it, but her daughter become possessed by a demon, and that’s bad news. Even the pagans knew that demon possession was not something to be desired.
In her interactions, this woman comes to hear of Jesus called the Christ and hears that He can cast out demons. Out of desperation she pursues Him as He “just happened” to walk through an area that most Jews do not frequent. This is all, obviously, in God’s control and Jesus knows exactly what He’s doing. She starts following them and crying out. Notice that she doesn’t call Him rabbi or teacher or something like that; she calls Him Lord, Son of David. A pagan Canaanite woman calls Jesus “Lord;” this is an amazing thing. There is already faith planted and living and growing in this woman. Where did that come from?
And her faith is not like the faith of the 5,000 whom Jesus fed earlier – there when the food smells good, but gone when Jesus teaches something they didn’t like – no. Her faith pursued the Lord and would not take no for an answer. Not even Peter had a faith like that. His faith was strong until trouble came and then he fell in the sea or denied He even knew Jesus.
Where did her faith come from? Where did she hear the Word that brings faith? We don’t know.
She chases down Jesus; His disciples tell Him to shew her away, and at first, it seems like that’s the plan. “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel,” says the Lord. But wait…didn’t Isaiah write that the lost sheep of Israel, the outcasts of Israel would be foreigners?
Jesus has His mind laser focused on teaching His disciples a very important lesson about the “lost sheep of Israel,” that salvation is not about blood or genealogy but it’s always and only about faith.
The Canaanite woman follows them into a house, as we read in Mark’s gospel, and she keeps begging for mercy, for help from the Lord, the Son of David. And Jesus says these ever-famous words, and I’m sure, as He says them, the disciples are just ready to drag her out and lock the door. “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” Surely the disciples are thinking to themselves, “Yeah, we’re the children, not you Ms. Canaanite…” But then this woman shows her faith and here Jesus teaches the ultimate lesson: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Boom.
That’s faith. Faith is not about you proving yourself to God so that you can get from God what you want. Faith is about holding on to God; holding on to Christ Jesus even if He says, “let go.”
You know, some of the worst arguments and fights we have as humans isn’t with the spouse or with the parents or with siblings, but it’s with God Himself. We see death, we see sickness, health issues, wealth issues. In the church we see attendance issues, budget issues, division and strife. And we run to the Lord, and we cry out and say, “Have mercy, O Lord, Son of David!” But He doesn’t….and we ask again, and it’s as if He’s ignoring us. And we ask again and He says, “I’m here to help the church across the street and grow their numbers and make them the biggest youth group in town,” and we say, “what are we doing wrong?” And then we’re faced with a choice – keep pursuing Him or walk away? Keep crying out to Him or do things our own way?
How many times have you or this congregation done things your own way rather than persistently pursuing the Lord? Countless times, and all of us have, I’m sure. And yet, right in front of us, every single week, if not every day, our Lord says, “Keep praying, and when you pray, pray this way…Our Father who art in heaven,” etc.
Faith keeps praying and crying out and falling before the Lord, petitioning for His help. He may not give help in the way we expect or in the time frame we want, but one way or another, the Lord’s help will come. Luther writes of faith:
“Faith is a divine work in us that transforms us and begets us anew from God, kills the Old Adam, makes us entirely different people in heart, spirit, mind, and all our powers, and brings the Holy Spirit with it. Oh, faith is a living, busy, active, mighty thing, so that it is impossible for it not to be constantly doing what is good.”
Then he writes,
“Likewise, faith does not ask if good works are to be done, but before one can ask, faith has already done them and is constantly active. Whoever does not perform such good works is a faithless man, blindly tapping around in search of faith and good works without knowing what either faith or good works are, and in the meantime he chatters and jabbers a great deal about faith and good works.”
Finally, he writes,
“Faith is a vital, deliberate trust in God’s grace, so certain that it would die a thousand times for it. And such confidence and knowledge of divine grace makes us joyous, mettlesome, and merry toward God and all creatures. This the Holy Spirit works by faith, and therefore without any coercion a man is willing and desirous to do good to everyone, to serve everyone, to suffer everything for the love of God and to his glory, who has been so gracious to him. It is therefore as impossible to separate works from faith as it is to separate heat and light from fire.”
That’s the Canaanite woman, isn’t it? That’s what Paul means in Romans 11 and really throughout all the book of Romans, right? See, we get caught up in the, “What do I have to do to keep God off my back,” or “What do I have to do to get the Lord to help me.” That’s how we approach our Lord. But that’s not faith, is it?
And Jesus, when He sees this Canaanite’s faith says the same thing, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” She didn’t try to prove herself to Jesus or go to Him and say, “Jesus, I promise I’ll do better and go to church more and change my bad habits and be a better person if you just heal my daughter, just fix my marriage, just give me that pay raise, just heal my disease,” no. She went to the Lord and said, “Heal my daughter….Fix her…I know neither her nor I deserve it and I get why you call us dogs (because all man is like dogs compared to You), but if it be Your will, heal my daughter anyway.”
She acknowledged her lowly, doglike position before Jesus, but then she jumped up on the table and ate the turkey anyway, and Jesus praised her faith for doing it.
And the disciples learned a lesson that day, that in God’s kingdom, the TRUE Israel, it’s not about blood or genealogy or good works or worthiness, but about faith, about trusting what Jesus says, and believing that what He did on the cross is all that is necessary for life, salvation, and purpose.
When our Lord commands us to pray, to praise, to give thanks, and love, to serve, and to obey, it’s not so that we’ll keep Him happy and prevent our doom by showing Him that we’re good people who do good things and deserve His mercy. No, but it’s because this is the life of a Christian, one that stands on and feeds on the good things of God, survives by His mercy, and lives by faith, so that, even when the world is telling us that life is about this, that, and the other, about money, about fame, about relationships, and fun and entertainment, or whatever the world says it’s about, we can say no, because we believe and know that Jesus is the center of all; He is all in all, the alpha and omega, the beginning and end who, by His blood has opened the way to paradise for us, that we should trust Him and follow Him even when things are dark and hard and when we can’t see the end, we follow, because He who created us and sustains us and provides everything we need will NEVER reject us. Amen.
