Lent 2—Reminiscere
Dear friends in Christ. Today, this Second Sunday in Lent has the Latin name, Reminiscere, which means “to remember.” It comes from the first word of today’s Introit from Psalm 25: Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. Each time we go to the Lord in confession, especially now in this holy and penitential Lenten season—we are asking the Lord to remember His mercy and His steadfast love, that is, His devotion, His loving-kindness.
What would be the point of going to God—the holy and righteous God and acknowledge/ confess our sins to Him—if He wasn’t merciful and full of devoted love to us? It would be like the criminal turning himself in to the authorities—he would be facing the consequences/ the punishment for his crime.
But daily, in confession, we go to the Lord full of sorrow and confess our sin; and now in Lent we even make a special effort to search out our heart and life to find sin and, by the Holy Spirit’s power, to root out of our heart and life. Why do we do that? What’s the foundation/ basis of that? The Lord’s mercy and steadfast love that have been of old. And as we go to the Lord in confession, as we, full of sorrow, bring to Him our sin like a never-ending parade, what is our prayer? What are we asking the Lord to do? To remember His mercy and His steadfast love toward us! In confession, in Lent, we are asking the Lord to remember who and what He is: One full of tender mercies and loving-kindnesses toward us from all eternity.
At the same time as we are asking God to remember His mercy and steadfast love toward us, we are reminding ourselves of His mercy and steadfast love toward us. That’s why we sinners can go to the holy God—that’s the boldness of faith! Not only do we remind ourselves of God’s mercy and steadfast love and we are then emboldened to go to Him with our sins in confession, but we are also reminding God who He is and that we trust Him to be true to who He is and that in the boldness of faith we are holding Him to His promise to forgive us our sin.
We see a beautiful example of the boldness of faith in today’s Gospel with the Gentile woman who kept on holding to Jesus, holding Him to His mercy and His almighty power. Jesus praises her faith and says: “O woman, great is your faith!” But at the same time, Jesus refines and purifies that faith so that it shines forth all the more beautifully and all the more does what faith does: recognize and hold to Jesus and receive His graces, gifts, forgiveness, righteousness, and salvation.
1. Our text begins with a huge contrast. First we read: And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Jesus had another run in with the scribes and Pharisees, the religious leaders of the Jews who supposedly knew their OT Scriptures and from them should have recognized Jesus as the long-promised Savior but didn’t. And now the contrast: He goes to a Gentile area where it would not be expected that people look for Him and recognize Him as the true God and Savior of the world. And what happens? 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.” What a beautiful expression of faith Jesus finds in this Gentile woman! She recognizes Him as true God, O Lord; and as true man, Son of David. She recognizes Him as the long promised Savior.
But notice: Jesus does not at this time say: “O woman, great is your faith!” Instead, what does He do? He works to strengthen and purify that faith.
Jesus isn’t content just to bring us to faith but He is also mightily at work to strengthen and purify faith. Notice the way that Jesus does this: But he did not answer her a word. This was not a momentary thing that Jesus soon corrected. It wasn’t His purpose to let her “sweat it out a bit” and then right away grant her request. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, “Send her away, for she is crying out after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Jesus’ intent was a thorough purifying and strengthening of her faith.
As you look through the Gospels you will notice something very clearly: Jesus deals with each person individually; He has no cookie cutter approach—some He healed right then and there and answered them as they surely wanted; others, like the 10 lepers, were healed as they went [Lk 17.14]; [Jn 9.6-7] others were like the blind man, on whose eyes He put clay and told him to wash; to some—like the religious leaders of the Jews—Jesus speaks harshly, words of law; to others—like the woman caught in adultery [Jn 8.1ff]—Jesus speaks nothing but forgiveness. Here in our text, with this Gentile woman, Jesus drives home to her the point that her faith and the great blessing she would receive for her daughter was all the result of His mercy and steadfast love. In whatever way Jesus is working to purify your faith, know that it is the best way for you. The Lord knows the best way for each of us and acts. Don’t ever think you have it so bad while some else gets off scot free. Jesus knows what He is doing.
Humility is the essence of faith and this is the point that Jesus drives home to the woman and this is a point that must be constantly driven home to us all. Each heavenly and spiritual gift and blessing we have and each of our earthly, physical blessings is solely by God’s mercy and steadfast love toward us. But each of us still has that old sinful nature in us that wants to get us to think that somehow we have earned and deserved all that we have because somehow we are better than others; because we have done something pleasing to the Lord and made ourselves more worthy; or even because we have some natural gift or ability that puts us above others. But humility is the essence of faith because faith says: I have earned only God’s wrath and damnation by my sin; I am not better than anyone else for we are all lost and condemned sinners; and because there is nothing I can do to save myself, because there is nothing in me that makes me more worthy than the next person, it is solely the grace, mercy, steadfast love of God toward me that I am a Christian, forgiven my sin and heir of heaven.
In our text, Jesus purifies this woman’s faith teaching her that vital lesson that all the gifts and graces she enjoys—even this great blessing He would grant of delivering her daughter from demon possession—is all by grace, with no merit or worthiness in her. This purified faith is a humble faith. And that humble faith gladly and gratefully receives from the Lord all of His gifts and blessings because it recognizes it is worthy of none of it. And humble faith gratefully receives as the Lord's gift and blessing even what we would consider sufferings, trials, and rejections.
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 dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” All that humble faith wants is the crumbs of divine grace. Yes, Lord… This woman, in her humble faith says, “If I’m a dog, I’m happy since I am at least getting the crumbs of grace.” Humble faith surrenders itself to the Lord and His mercy: I’m enjoying His grace so I’m happy.
This humble faith shows its beauty and strength precisely when it is weakest, precisely when it is the weak sigh of a frightened soul, “Lord, help me”. In each of our trials when it seems like the Lord is ignoring us, not hearing our prayers, He is driving us to recognize our true condition of not being worthy of any good, to humble us and so that we in the humility of faith cry out, Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. The weak, humble faith is strong—like this Gentile woman’s faith was—because it doesn’t look to our own worthiness or lack of it but looks to Jesus and His mercy. In humility, we receive our Lord’s gifts and blessings and recognize His way of dealing with us is best, for our spiritual good. We don’t dictate to Him the how’s and when’s but, happy in the knowledge that He is dealing with us in grace and mercy we simply pray in the weak sigh of a fearful soul but in the certainty of faith “Yes, Lord...”
2. When we pray, “Yes, Lord...” that is a prayer of humility. But remember in our text, the woman said “Yes, Lord, yet...” That glorious little word yet is the triumph of faith. Remember, this woman’s faith was a true, right, proper faith. “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.” She wasn’t looking to her heathen gods. She had renounced the heathen idols. She knew Jesus as the God-man who had come into this world to give us every heavenly good and to deliver us from sin and the devil by His suffering and death. That’s a faith only the Holy Spirit works [1 Cor. 12.3].
Somehow, some way the good news about Jesus had left Israel and come to this non-Jewish woman in this non-Jewish land. Through that word that she had heard about Jesus, the Holy Spirit created faith in this woman’s heart so that she rightly knew and recognized Jesus and who He is—the true God who had come to destroy the devil’s work and kingdom. And by that Spirit worked faith she knew that since Jesus is the true God He is also merciful and full of steadfast love. In the strength of faith, she knew that even when it looked like Jesus was rejecting her, she knew that it only seemed that way. In the strength of faith, she knew that Jesus could only show her mercy and grace.
Faith is humble because it recognizes that we are sinners, worthy only of God’s wrath and condemnation, that there’s nothing in us making us worthy before God. That’s why faith humbly says in whatever trial we are enduring, in whatever way the Lord is seemingly treating us wrongly—like it seemed He was treating this Gentile woman wrongly— Yes, Lord…—but faith is also bold to add, yet.
Faith remembers the promises of God to us. It remembers that He is merciful and full of steadfast love. It remembers that in Jesus we are forgiven our sins and reconciled to Him and that God is now our dear heavenly Father and we are His dear children and heirs of heaven. The strength of faith reminds God of this— Yes, Lord, yet; and the strength of faith also reminds us of this and throws us back to the word and promise of God, throws us back to what God revealed to us about Himself. Even when it seems that God has become our enemy—like Jesus had seemingly become this poor woman’s enemy by ignoring her—what do we do? We boldly go in faith in prayer to our Lord and hold His promises to us before Him, like this woman did: But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” She approached the Lord. She did not let herself be separated from Jesus.
How vital for us! Faith is strengthened precisely when we go back to the word of God—that very word that the Holy Spirit used to create faith; faith is made strong as we daily remember our baptism and what God did for us in its saving waters and what He has promised us in it; faith is made strong as we come and kneel before Jesus in Church and receive His absolution and as He gives us to eat and drink of His very body and blood for the forgiveness of our sins.
This woman’s faith was not misplaced! Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly. Here she saw the treasure of her faith. Jesus is indeed the Savior promised in the word, the One who would destroy the devil’s work and bring us sinners forgiveness of sin, peace with God and eternal life. Faith is a very humble thing but a very strong thing: Yes, Lord, yet...
INJ Amen