Lectionary: The Faith of a Canaanite Woman | August 16, 2026

Looking for.

And welcome to Trinity.

If I haven't met you yet, my name is Matt, and I'm one of the pastors on staff here.

It would be great if you have a Bible open in front of you as we walk through the text this morning.

If you didn't bring one with you, no worries at all, you can hop up and grab one from the table back there.

If you're looking at your phone, I'll just assume you're on the Bible app following along.

So with that in mind, let's dive into our text this morning.

Many of you may already know this.

But for those of you who don't, I got a master's degree through Asbury Theological Seminary.

And I loved almost all of my professors, except one.

There was this one guy, he looked like a very classic, like if you were to Google image, what does a college professor look like?

Like this guy would pop up.

He had a big gray beard, older dude, gray hair.

His glasses were always slightly askew.

He had one of those tweed blazers that had the elbow patches.

And he also had a he had a pipe on his desk that I don't think he ever smoked.

He would just hold it when he was in deep thought.

But what he would do that drove me absolutely crazy was he would always answer a question with a question.

Like I'd ask, how do you translate this piece of a Hebrew text?

And he would say, How would you translate it?

And then I would ask, How would you like take this word in this context and like what would it mean for the greater part of the passage?

And he would say, Aren't you the student?

What are your thoughts?

And it drove me up the wall.

So I'm not sure if you guys have ever known anyone like this who always answers questions with questions, but it can be immensely frustrating.

And this is the type of conversation that kind of just happened in the passage that Mike read for us from Matthew's gospel.

Now it's an incredible conversation that leads to an incredible great faith, but there are pieces of it that kind of take you aback.

Like, did Jesus really just say that?

Or what is even happening here?

But before we dive into this, this truly incredible interaction between Jesus and the Canaanite woman, would you take a moment and pray with me?

God, may we have open ears to hear, open minds to understand, and open hearts to receive what you have for us in your word this morning.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all your people's hearts be pleasing and acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.

Amen.

So we are gonna focus kind of directly on this interaction between Jesus and the Canaanite woman.

But before we dive in for it, it's important for us to pause and look at two things.

First, where our story takes place, and second, we're gonna look at Matthew's word choice.

So, first, let's track where Jesus and the disciples have been and where they are now.

Because just as a quick side note, geography is really, really important in Scripture.

So if there's a movement, if someone goes from place to place, the context of that is really important to track.

So last week, Mike walked us through the story of Jesus walking on the water.

So after that passage, the disciples crossed the sea and landed in a place called Gennesaret.

Upon landing there, the Pharisees picked a fight with Jesus about his disciples' hand washing habits and ceremonial cleanness.

Now, hear me when I say this, I am in no way saying that my mother is a Pharisee.

However, tread carefully.

I'm treading carefully.

However, I think that as a mom who raised four kids who had very questionable hand washing habits, she might find this passage a little relatable.

So the argument that Jesus actually goes on to make here, it isn't that defilement is about how clean your hands are.

What it's really about is about defilement coming from what comes out of your heart.

So then what do Jesus and the disciples do after that interaction?

Look at verse 21.

And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon.

So by crossing into Tyre and Sidon, and this is why the geography is important, Jesus and the disciples have left Israel and they've entered Gentile pagan territory.

And this is the one region that every good Jewish person in the first century would call unclean and even dangerous.

They would avoid it like they would avoid anything else in their lives that would be harmful.

So Jesus and his disciples are in the uncharted waters of Gentile country, Tyre, and Sidon.

So, second, take a moment to look at Matthew's word choice with me.

Matthew's description of the woman in this passage, it's different than the description that Mark uses.

Are there any Bible nerds in here who know how Mark described this woman in the passage in his gospel?

The Syrophenician woman.

So Mark calls her a Syrophoenician woman.

And this is actually the accurate contemporary first century term for what that woman was.

This is what she would have put on her on her census form, or on her, I guess she wouldn't have had a driver's license, but if she did, this is what would be on it.

A Syrophoenician woman.

Now instead of describing her as a Syrophoenician, Matthew, he reaches back.

He reaches way back and pulls out an old word.

He calls her a Canaanite.

Now, people were rarely, if ever, called Canaanites in the first century.

That's like calling someone a Pharisee today, which would be weird and probably wouldn't go over well.

Canaanite was an ancient word for an ancient enemy.

The people who Israel had to drive out of the promised land.

The people whose name in the Old Testament became shorthand for everything that God's people are supposed to be separated from.

Now there are no superfluous words in Scripture.

There's nothing in there that Jesus and the Holy Spirit didn't intend to be in there.

So Matthew picks this word on purpose.

And he does so because he's putting a label on this woman that says, This is the last person who would ever approach Jesus.

Now hold these two things in your mind.

Hold the geography, tire inside on, where they are, and the word choice, Canaanite.

Hold these two things in your mind.

And now let's watch how the interaction between Jesus and the Canaanite woman unfolds.

Look at verse 22 with me.

And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, son of David.

My daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.

Now here, here's everything that this woman has working against her.

She's a Gentile.

She's a woman who's approaching a male Jewish rabbi in public by herself.

She's a Canaanite, the enemy of the Jewish people.

And she has a daughter who, in Matthew's words, is severely oppressed by a demon.

So count up all these things this woman has working against her.

She's a Canaanite.

She has no covenant standing at all.

She has no synagogue membership.

She has no rabbi who would vouch for her.

She has no claim.

Nothing in her background gives her the right to ask Jesus or any rabbi for that matter for anything.

Yet here she is, crying in front of Jesus.

Now, if you would take a moment for me just to get a little nerdy here.

Now, this word it doesn't mean whimpering.

It means to cry aloud, to shout or to scream.

Now it's the same word that Jesus actually uses in Matthew 27 when he lets out a loud cry and yields up his spirit as he dies.

So this wasn't, these weren't the soft cries of a sad person.

These were the anguished cries of a desperate mother.

Now listen really carefully to what she cries out, because what she cries out is truly remarkable.

Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David.

Now do you see what just happened here?

She called Jesus Son of David.

This is a messianic title.

That's the confession of Israel's hope.

Son of David, if you recall, is what the crowds will shout on Palm Sunday as Jesus makes his triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

And this all just came out of the mouth of a pagan woman from a Gentile country.

And remember what just happened 20 verses ago?

The Pharisees, they looked directly at Jesus and they called him a rule breaker because his disciples weren't washing their hands.

Now what's truly amazing here is the insiders, the insiders, the Pharisees, they missed him.

But the outsider, the Canaanite woman, she named him.

The outsiders missed him, the insiders named him.

And Matthew wants you to feel this tension.

Next, notice the notice the pronoun that the woman uses here.

So this woman, she's there standing for her daughter, yet she doesn't say, have mercy on her.

She says, have mercy on me.

Now this is what love, what real love, often does to us.

We become so connected to another person's suffering that when we come to God about them, we come about ourselves too.

Some of you may pray that way about a child, about a marriage, about someone you love who doesn't know Jesus.

You come to God asking for them and yourself because you just can't separate the two anymore.

This is what this woman is doing.

Now, this is all this is all truly remarkable, but here's the one thing I want you to see the most in this first movement of this scene.

The woman asks for mercy.

Not justice, not fairness.

She's not asking for what she's owed.

She's simply asking for mercy.

Now, this isn't this is not a small distinction in any way.

Because mercy is the only category available for someone with no claim.

If you deserve something, if you feel like something is owed to you, you don't ask for mercy, you ask for what's rightfully yours.

Mercy, mercy is the thing that you ask for when you have nothing in your hand.

This means, and this is where this gets truly incredible, this means the things, things that are working against the Canaanite woman, the things that disqualify her, actually put her in the exactly right posture to come to Jesus.

This is why we don't bring anything with us when we come forward to the communion table.

We come with nothing to offer, with our hands open like this, ready to receive.

So everything that disqualifies this woman from coming to Jesus puts her in the perfect place to approach him and receive mercy.

That's where faith starts.

She's hit with four different obstacles.

Look at the first half of verse 23 word.

To end her daughter's suffering, I don't know if you feel this way about with a no door.

For years you've prayed for healing, you've prayed all day for that one family member than ever.

Now if you've ever now look at the second half of verse, she is crying out after us.

But the disciples' response here, it actually experienced the death of John the Baptist.

They just sit in the water and watch Jesus walk towards them, and they just crossed into Scripture doesn't tell us this, but what I think, I think she's a lot, and the disciples, it certainly resonates with me, some quiet, who make us uncomfortable with the vota whom I'm very familiar with it.

It doesn't seem as harsh, it seems eerily religious disciples.

Now the third, look at verse 24 with me.

Jesus says, I was sent on sounds like Jesus was saying, You but hear what he actually said shape of his earthly ministry.

For I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

You see, there is an order to how God keeps his promises.

He made a covenant with Abraham that the nations will be blessed through his offspring, the nation of Israel.

Bible commentator Dale Bruner explains that Jesus' hesitation here to heal the woman's daughter, his hesitation, it could actually be seen as love for the Gentiles and obedience to Scripture.

Now, whether the woman felt it as exclusion or she felt it as just not being her time yet, it's still an incredible obstacle for her to face.

So then we have the fourth obstacle, and this is the one that is the most striking.

Jesus calls the woman and all the Gentiles by extension dogs.

Look at verses 25 and 26 with me.

But she came and knelt before him, saying, Lord, help me.

And he answered, It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dog.

Now, what the incredible thing that is about to happen is the first three obstacles, they don't deter the Canaanite woman.

In fact, they draw her in closer.

Look at what she does.

After those first three obstacles, she doesn't go away.

She comes closer and she kneels down before Jesus, saying, Lord, help me.

Now there are a few things I want us to notice about Jesus' response here.

First, the imagery.

The children represent Israel, the dogs represent the Gentiles, and the bread represents Jesus' mission, who he came to save.

Now, second, what I want us to notice here is Jesus' language.

Now there is a Greek word for wild, scavenging, snarling dogs that run around in packs outside of cities and towns.

This isn't the word that Jesus is using here.

He's using a diminutive, canarion.

And what this means is it means little dogs or household dogs.

So we have four obstacles: silence, the disciples, apparent exclusion, and the comparison to a dog.

Now the first three obstacles they don't turn the woman away, and neither does the fourth.

In fact, it's the fourth obstacle that gives her hope.

The woman is no longer scavenging out in the streets.

She's now in the house.

She feels Jesus moving towards her, and she takes a step and takes the opportunity to respond.

Look at verse 27, and this response is truly incredible.

She says, Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table.

What an incredible response in the face of four incredible obstacles.

Now, in his commentary on the book of Matthew, Dale Bruner sums it up by writing this.

And normally I don't use quotes this long in a sermon, but sometimes commentators just say it so much better than I can.

So if you look at this with me, he sums up her response by writing this.

She refuses to look at the shadow side of Jesus' remarks.

Instead, she grasps what he did not say and what he did say.

He did not say go away, and he did not say no.

Faith is holding on to Jesus for dear life, like a drowning person into a life raft, believing that Jesus is good even when his words do not seem to be.

For in Henry's striking image, there may be love in Christ's heart, while there are frowns on his face.

She sees where Jesus' words are taking him, and they are taking him toward her.

In Jesus' new sentence, when he had at least put her in the house, though under the table, she found shards of hope.

Now the Canaanite woman, she's holding on to Jesus for dear life, like a drowning person into a life raft.

And in that, she finds shards of hope under the table.

Now it's important to notice that she doesn't, she's not placing herself under the table to make Jesus pity her humility so that Jesus will say, Oh, poor you, I'm gonna heal your daughter.

That is not what she's doing.

She places herself under the table to say something enormous about Jesus.

She's saying that, Jesus, you are so full of mercy that just the overflow would be plenty.

You are so powerful and so rich in love that the leftovers, the crumbs, just that will be enough to save my daughter's life.

Now, her humility, her humility here, it's not self-pity, it's not self-hatred.

Her humility is an exceptionally high view of Christ.

This is something that we often get backwards.

I get backwards all the time myself.

We think that humility, it means thinking poorly about ourselves.

It means saying that, oh, we're not, we're not the best at something.

But this isn't what humility means.

Humility in this context, and what the Canaanite woman teaches it is, is thinking accurately about ourselves and enormously about God.

It means thinking accurately about ourselves and enormously about God.

Now, the Canaanite woman is amazing because she does both of these things in one sentence.

Now, here's what we can take away from this movement of the text.

We tend to think that people with the strongest faith are those who march up to God with confidence, certain of their standing before Him.

But that's not what Jesus commends in this story.

The strongest person in this passage is the woman who had absolutely no claim, who admits she has no claim, and who, in the face of four consecutive obstacles, holds on to Jesus like a drowning person to a life raft.

And all the woman, the only things that she brought to Jesus were a desperate need and the conviction that Jesus is good and that he is merciful.

And what we'll see in a moment is that this is enough.

And now we move on to the final part, the final movement of our passage, the final piece of this story.

Look at verse 28 with me.

Then Jesus answered her, O woman, great is your faith.

Let it be done for you as you desire.

And her daughter was healed instantly.

Now there are only two times in Matthew's gospel when faith is qualified as great.

Does anyone recall the other one?

It's the Roman, someone said centurion.

If I heard it centurion, that is the correct answer.

It's the Roman centurion.

Back in chapter 8, Jesus calls the faith of a Roman centurion and a Canaanite woman great.

Two Gentiles, two outsiders, and interestingly, two people interceding on behalf of someone else.

Meanwhile, what does Jesus call the twelve men who walk with him every day?

Oh, you of little faith.

He says it to them over and over again.

Remember what he said last week in Mike's sermon in that text.

He said it to Peter just one chapter ago, when he was sinking in the water, and Jesus' hand was already gripping his arm, pulling him up.

He says, You of little faith.

And here's the picture, here's the broad picture that Matthew's trying to paint in this passage.

He's saying, The people with greatest standing have little faith, and the woman with no standing at all has the greatest faith.

And look how he answers her.

This sounds like nearly royal language.

It sounds like that of a king granting someone's petition.

So this woman, she comes asking for crumbs, and he answers her like a daughter of the house, and her daughter is healed instantly.

So what?

So what does all of this mean for us?

What kind of practical things can we take away from this?

So let me let me tie this passage together in four quick ways.

And first.

Those of you praying into the silence, delay is not denial, and silence is not the end of the story.

I want you to look at this woman one more time if you find yourself feeling like you're praying into a void.

She had four reasons to quit, four obstacles to overcome, and she stayed.

She kept asking as she held on for dear life, and Jesus turned around and he called her faith great.

If you're praying into the silence, keep coming, keep asking.

And I cannot promise you that you're gonna hear an answer soon.

And I cannot promise you that you'll even hear an answer this side of eternity.

But I can promise you that the silence is not the end of the story.

Second, for those of you who feel like you have nothing to offer, you are closer to Jesus than you think you are.

We are all the Canaanite woman in this story.

We all come to Jesus with nothing to offer, no standing.

Now, if you come to Jesus asking for mercy, thinking you deserve it, you're actually lying to yourself.

Our standing before Jesus is the same as hers.

But that's actually the very thing that puts us in the best posture to approach Jesus with our open hands and nothing to offer.

So, third, and this is a challenge for myself and almost anyone, who are you sending away?

Remember how the disciples responded to the Canaanite woman?

They were tired, she was a lot, and they just wanted to rest.

So who in your life, who in your life is a lot when you're tired?

Who comes to you saying, Help me when you're already feeling overwhelmed?

Think of that person, of those people.

They are exactly the ones we are called to show mercy and grace towards.

And finally, I think this is one of the most important things we can take away from this passage, great faith necessitates intercessory prayer.

The centurion and the Canaanite woman, they both came to Jesus not for themselves, but interceding on behalf of someone else.

Now, if we want to see people come to know Jesus at Trinity Burke, we must, as a church, intercede on behalf of our neighbors and friends who don't know him.

Not just once, not just on Sundays, but daily.

If we want to see people healed in our very midst, we must intercede on their behalf.

We must hold on to Jesus for dear life, approach him with empty hands and nothing to offer, and never stop interceding for the people we care about the most.

That's how we'll see people come to faith.

That's how revival is sparked in different communities throughout history.

And that is how we'll have great faith like the Canaanite woman.

I want you to take a moment and pray with me.

Lord God, I thank you that mercy doesn't require anything of us.

God, that we come to you with open hands and open hearts.

God, I pray that like the Canaanite woman, we can keep asking.

Lord, and have faith and persevere in the midst of even seemingly impossible obstacles.

God, I pray that we can draw closer to you.

God, I pray that we can be a church that intercedes on behalf of those who don't know you.

God, I pray that we can intercede on behalf of those who aren't well who need healing.

God, I pray for those of us who are praying with no response.

God, I pray that we can learn and know and be confident that silence is not the end of the story.

Lord God, but you truly do hear and you truly do answer.

Lord, we thank you for how much you love us.

Lord, I pray your spirit will fill this room and guide us as we go through our weeks.

I pray this all in your name.

Amen.