What amazing stories we hear in the Old Testament and Holy Gospel today! The Lord does such crazy things we don't know what to think. In the Old Testament reading today, we hear of Jacob wrestling with God. He goes round and round with the Lord and the Lord even cheats, putting out Jacob's hip! But Jacob won't let go of the Man until he gets a blessing! In the Holy Gospel, Jesus ignores a Gentile woman, then He says He didn't come for her, and finally He calls her a dog! But she won't let go of Jesus; she agrees that she is dog and confesses that she will be satisfied with even the littlest crumbs from Jesus! What's going on here? Why does the Lord lay the smack-down on Jacob? Why does He treat this poor Canaanite woman in such a mean way? The answer is that He is testing their faith. And by testing their faith we don't mean that He's seeing how much THEY'VE got but showing them how much HE'S got for them. Put another way, the Lord is playing with them! Messing with them! So that they might learn to trust Him and cling to Him for all things. It's like at my house when I play with the kids. When I mess with them. When I take something away and make them fight to get it back. Do they know I'll give back their toy? Sure! Do they still whine? "Daaaaad! Give it back!" If I read a book to them and start singing the words or reading in a goofy voice: "Daaaaaad!" Why do they do that? Because they know I'm not acting as myself but messing with them, playing with them, testing them. And what laughs the Dad gets to bug his children in this way and what giggles the kids have to try and get their Dad to "act normal." This is what the Lord does with us, brothers and sisters. Dad messes with us. Plays with us. Tests us so that we learn that He is our heavenly Father and that in Him we have all things and He will give us all things in Jesus.
But playing "keep away" from our kids seems vastly different than the struggles and suffering and seemingly unanswered prayers the Lord has as His "playing" with us! The truth is, when we suffer, when we struggle, when we are weighed down with the cares of this life, it seems as if the Lord isn't paying any attention to us at all. It would be a sad thing if I stole my daughter's toy or book and she, instead of chasing me down and wrestling me to get it back, just started crying and ran to their room! Yet this is how we usually behave when the Lord is messing with us! Instead of clinging to Him and not letting go, instead of filling His ears with His own words and promises, we give up! We stop praying! We stay home from church and hearing His Word. We give up! Imagine if the Lord had put Jacob's hip out of joint and then Jacob just gave up! No, instead He clung to Christ and said, "I won't let go until you bless me! You're not leaving until I get some good thing from you, Lord!" Or what if Jesus listened to His disciples? "Lord, send this woman away! She won't shut up and she keeps stalking us!" And what if the woman hung her head in defeat and went home in despair that her daughter would be made well? No, but she won't let go of Jesus until finally she traps Him with His own words. "You're a dog!" "Fine, Lord, I'm a dog. But even dogs get crumbs!" Brothers and sisters if you are like me, you don't pray this way. You have a problem, a challenge, a cross to bear, suffering in your life and you cry out to God and nothing changes and you give up! No more praying. No more hearing God's Word. It's just not worth it. I tried. I gave it a shot. The Lord didn't listen. He didn't care. He's nowhere around for me. Repent of such praying! Repent of such believing! For that means we have confessed that our problems, our struggles, our sins, our lives are bigger than the Lord! That what we have going wrong is more than the Lord can fix! That is to have a small Jesus, brothers and sisters, a weak and wimpy Jesus who is no help to us. Repent of having such a Jesus!
Learn, as Jacob and the Canaanite woman confessed, what sort of a God you have! Your God is the God who gives His Words and Promises so that we may cling to them against everything in this world that seems contrary to them! Your Lord is the Son of God who has become a man to take away your sins and reconcile the Father to you so that now you are a child of God in Christ Jesus. Your Father in heaven is the one who has given you all things for the support of your body and life, only out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy without any merit or worthiness in you! Your Lord Jesus is the One who has borne your sins and gone to the mat for you! It is Jesus who has done the true wrestling. Even our problems and struggles are just our Father playing with us, testing us. But Jesus wrestled for real. He fought for your life against the devil and the world. He wrestled with the Evil One in His suffering and death and by His death for your sins has laid the "smack down" on Satan for you. Christ Himself wrestled with the Father's judgment and wrath in a match that would have killed us for good. But at the three count—the three day count—Christ is alive! Sin and death are defeated. The wrath of God has passed over you and because of Christ, you live! Because of Christ, His Father is now your Father!
Jacob refused to let go of the Lord until He blessed him. And how does the Lord bless Jacob? With a new name! He strove with God and prevailed, so now Jacob is called Israel. It's everything your Baptism tells you: You have a new name. You are a child of God. A delight to your Father in heaven. Your baptism says that Jesus has overcome death and His victory is yours! You are an object of His mercy and the recipient of all His goodness and promises in Jesus. It's what Absolution declares to you: that you no longer have the guilt of sins standing against you to condemn you. The Canaanite woman would not let go of Jesus either. She continued to press Him because she knew that He is not the Savior who denies prayers but the One who answers and saves! She admits that she is indeed a dog but that even dogs get crumbs from the Lord's table! And now, with such a confession of faith, she is no dog but a child of Israel! A child of her heavenly Father! It's what the Lord's Supper gives: not crumbs but the body and blood of your Lord who has gone to the mat for you so that now by this food you have forgiveness of all your sins, life and salvation. In the Supper you are rescued, as the woman was, from all power of the devil which had her daughter in its grip. Her daughter was freed, as are you, by the word and promises of Jesus which deliver His very flesh and blood to you! Look to Baptism, to absolution, to the Supper, to know how Jesus is toward you and how the Father thinks of you in Jesus.
And knowing the Father's heart through the gifts which bring us Jesus, brothers and sisters, let's learn to wrestle with God like Jacob! Let's learn to pray to Christ as the Canaanite woman did! When the Lord brings suffering into your life, when He allows trouble, when He gets rough with you, remember, He's just playing! He who knows all things will work all things for your good! Therefore don't give up as if the Lord has abandoned you! Precisely the opposite! Cling to Him as Jacob did! In your prayers, demand that the Lord not treat you as a cage-match opponent, but as the child of God you are in Christ. Cry out in your prayers that the Lord not treat you as your sins deserve, but as a His child for whom He has all good intentions and blessings! Pray as the Canaanite woman! If it seems the Lord is ignoring you, or even worse, speaking as if He is against you, then cling to Him and admit that you are a dog, worthy of nothing, but an eater of His crumbs. Do you see how Jacob wrestled knowing that the Lord is a Lord of blessing? Do you observe how the Canaanite woman prayed, crying out for the Lord's mercy and admitting whatever He said about her, but trapping Him with His own words? Learn to pray like that, brothers and sisters! Learn to put back into the Lord's ears His very own words and promises! Cry out that you are indeed a dog, a sinner, worthy and deserving of nothing with no claim upon the Lord. And yet you have this claim upon the Lord: that He answers your prayers not because of your praying but because He is your Father in heaven. He hears our prayers not because we pray, but because He is the Lord and that's what He does! Just as I don't give back my daughter's toy because she asks, but because I am her Father and it delights me to please her!
Brothers and sisters in Christ, listen to me this day, not because I speak from experience, for my prayers are weak and wimpy and I too must learn from Jacob and the Canaanite woman. Listen because this is what the Holy Scriptures teach: You WILL wrestle with the Lord in this life! You WILL feel ignored and slapped down by Him. But don't for a minute believe that He is against you! Believe what your Baptism, Absolution and the Supper say: that you are the forgiven child of God who has a heavenly Father! Don't take your troubles so seriously! The Lord's just messing with you! The Father is just playing with you! Therefore never be afraid to call upon Him as a dear child cries out: "Daaaaad!" For in Christ we have all of the riches of God now in this life and in the life to come where with we shall praise and glorify Him eternally with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Amen.