Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, each and every one of you is marked as a target for the Devil. Because you are baptized, because you are a child of God, the Evil One has marked you for his special effort to drag you down and away from Christ into sin, despair and ultimately unbelief. If the Devil is so brazen as to challenge Jesus, saying “If you are the Son of God...” then how much more do you think he'll challenge you by making the same claim: “If you are a Son of God, then He would always hear your prayers. But do you get everything you pray for? Of course not! Do you stop sinning when you try to overcome your faults and transgressions? Of course you don't! Don't you realize that your Baptism is all just talk? You're really no Christian. You have no heavenly Father. God couldn't care less about you. He's not eager to hear your prayers. He's paying no attention to you at all. Stop praying! Stop pretending you're somehow special to God. You're not. Look at your life. Look at your sins. You can't be anything other than mine!” So says the Devil! His one goal is to convince you that you really have no right to ask anything of the Lord. He wants you to believe that you are not worthy and cannot come to Christ and the the Father will not hear your prayers. You may as well give up and despair! But we have the answer to all that when Jesus went into the wilderness and fought Satan for us. He defeated the devil and drove him away using God's Word. Jesus has beat back the power of Satan for us! Never mind the Devil's trash talk. That's all it is—talk--because Jesus has pulled out his stinger!
No, our real trouble is with the Lord! What about when HE ignores us. What about when HE teaches us that He is not paying attention and isn't going to answer our prayers! What about when HE treats us as He did this poor woman who just wanted her daughter to get better? Can you imagine? Everyone thinks Jesus is so kind and gentle and patient and love-dovey. That's NOT what the Scriptures tell us! Everyone thinks the Lord is all kindness and gentleness, but ask Jacob if it's so after he wrestled with the Lord all night and then the Lord popped his hip out of join! Bad enough this poor woman is not a daughter of Israel, but a Gentile! But she boldly asks Jesus to help her. But He ignores her. Then His disciples get in on the act trying to get rid of her. Then He says he didn't come for her. Then, to top it all off, He calls her a dog! A dog! Do you ever feel like the Lord is playing games with you the way He seems to be doing to this woman? You beg Him for something, maybe not even for yourself, but for someone else, and he ignores you? Slaps you down? Appears to have nothing to do with you? In short, do you ever get the impression that the Lord isn't paying attention to you? Doesn't want to hear you? Isn't listening? Doesn't care about you? Isn't there for you? The impression that maybe the Devil is right after all!? Repent, brothers and sisters, of ever doubting the Lord's goodness to you in Jesus Christ. Learn from this Canaanite woman what sort of a Jesus you have who not only hears your prayers, but is delighted when you can “trap” Him with His own words!
Brothers and sisters in Christ, learn from Jacob and from the Canaanite woman what kind of a Lord you have! When Jacob wrestled the Lord, he simply would not let go until the Lord blessed him. And bless Jacob He did, giving him the new name of “Israel; prince with God.” Jacob knew from all of God's Word and promises, that the Lord wasn't trying to destroy him but bless him. Just so, this Canaanite woman refuses to take “no” for an answer from a Lord she knows has come to heal and save sinners. Jesus finally out and out says to her, “You can't take the children's bread and give it to the dogs, Dog!” Bingo! Now she's got Him. Now Jesus has put Himself in a corner with His words. She latches on to those words and says, “Yes, Lord, I'm a dog! Woof! But even dogs get crumbs. I know I'm only a Gentile. I know I'm not worth the time of day to you. And I know that I'm certainly not one of the children of Israel. In fact, I've got no claim on you whatsoever: except this one. You call me a dog and dogs get crumbs. You, Jesus, are a Savior. And even if you didn't come for me, yet your Word and promises and salvation are so sure and certain and undeniable, that even crumbs from You will save me and my daughter!” Dear Christians, THAT is how to pray. That is faith which has a BIG Jesus. A faith that won't take “no” for answer because it clings to a Jesus who is the “yes” of all God's promises! Learn from Jacob, learn from the woman, to grab onto Christ and not let go! To hold tightly to your Lord until He hears and answers you, even when it seems that He Himself is the one who is against you!
For after all, dear Christians, this is Jesus! This is the same Lord who wrestles with Jacob and gives Him a new name and the promise of descendants more than the stars in the sky and a land flowing with milk and honey! This is the same Lord who is trapped by the Canaanite woman in His own words and then treats her indeed like one of the children with all the promises and blessings He has for her; not just crumbs but the whole feast! This is the same Lord who goes to the cross for sinners and cries out to the Father and is NOT heard, and is forsaken, and is alone, weighed down with our sins. Crushed by our unbelief and doubts and faithlessness. This is the same Lord who is squeezed by God's wrath until blood flows from His wounds, so that you can confidently call upon your heavenly Father always! This is the same Lord who washes you at the font, giving you a new name, as He gave to Jacob, calling you a prince with God! This is the same Lord who speaks His Word, absolving you and comforting you with the Good News that He has indeed come for you. This is the same Jesus who fed that Gentile dog lady not with crumbs but with a feast Who feeds you not with crumbs, but the very best and finest food: His own body and blood. Dear Christian, if this is all that the Lord has done for you and still does for you and has in store for you, should you ever doubt that He hears you? Cares about you? Listens to you prayers? Will answer your prayers? If God has so graciously given up His only begotten Son, don't you think that He will, along with Jesus, give us all things? Jacob's faith trusts in such a Lord. The Canaanite woman's faith clings to such a Savior. Now, let your faith and hope and trust be in such a Jesus, who delights in hearing the prayers of His people and answering them!
The Canaanite woman teaches us to be persistent in our prayers. Not persistent so that we can annoy God and He'll do something for us just so we'll shut up and quit bothering Him! No, persistent in prayer so that we learn always and only to trust in Him. When Jacob refused to let go of the Lord until he received a blessing and when the woman refuses to let go of Jesus until she gets at least some crumbs, we say that they have strong faith. But strong faith isn't describing something in THEM. “Strong faith” means a strong Jesus. If you and I run to Christ with great cares and concerns and prayers, and our Lord doesn't answer us immediately or He says “no” or seems to ignore us, our usual reaction is to give up and say, “Why bother to pray, then!” If your faithless heart is anything like mine, you all too easily conclude that prayer doesn't seem to accomplish much. Now that would suggest that my faith is small. True, but why? Because it believes in a small Jesus. A Jesus who can't do what I ask. A Lord who is too busy with other things to pay attention to me. A Father in heaven who is not capable of hearing all my prayers or is not concerned with what I need. But the Lord is not small! He is not puny or wimpy or incapable. And by calling us to pray, He is calling us to trust in Him, even when He would teach us that the hard way, by SEEMING to ignore our pleas or speak directly against us. Jacob and the Canaanite woman teach us otherwise. Jesus' death on the cross teaches us otherwise. Your Baptism and His Word and Supper teach you otherwise. They teach you to cling to Jesus. To hold fast to Him. To beg and plead and pray over and over, not taking “no” for answer and even when you hear that “no” to continue to cling to Him in faith and trust, knowing that even crumbs will be enough. Yet He has way more for you than crumbs! He has Himself, His Name, His Word, His forgiveness, life, and salvation all for you. They're already yours!
So go ahead, trap Jesus in His Words. Rub His promises back into His ears. He is tickled when you do that, for His ears and heart are open to the prayers and pleadings of His holy people. Do like my kids do when they want to tie me down to my word: “Dad, you said so!” Pray that way to Jesus. Ask in that way of your heavenly Father. He has given you His Words and Promises in Christ. Don't believe for a moment that He has forgotten His Word or forgotten you. Oh, the devil will try to convince you that you are not the Lord's. Sometimes even the Lord Himself will appear to be teaching you the lesson that He is not listening. But you put all that aside. Grab hold of Him and don't let go until you get a blessing! Keep following Him and asking Him, and demanding even the crumbs. And don't doubt but firmly believe that He has way more than crumbs for you. He who overcame Satan in the desert and sin and death by His cross, has got every good thing in mind for you now. So now go, and pray, because you faith, your Jesus has saved you. Amen.