Fr David King – sermon notes. 16/8/26

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

There are some Gospel stories that are comforting from the first moment we hear them. And there are others that make us stop and think. The story of the Canaanite woman in today’s Gospel is certainly one of the latter.

A woman comes to Jesus because her daughter is desperately ill. She cries out, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” And at first, Jesus seems to ignore her.

That is difficult for us. We expect Jesus to respond immediately to anyone who cries to him in need. Yet here there is silence. Then, when she persists, Jesus says something that sounds even harder: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

But the woman will not go away.

She kneels before him and simply says, “Lord, help me.”

There is something wonderfully honest about those three words. She does not make a theological argument. She does not pretend to understand everything. She does not claim to deserve anything. She simply brings her need to Jesus.

And when Jesus gives the challenging reply about taking the children’s bread and throwing it to the dogs, she answers with remarkable faith: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”

And Jesus responds: “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”

Her daughter is healed.

What are we to make of this extraordinary encounter?

One thing surely is that the woman teaches us something about persistent faith. She has every reason to give up. Jesus appears to be silent. The disciples want her sent away. The answer she receives seems to be no.

Yet she keeps coming back.

That is sometimes what faith looks like.

We can imagine that faith means always feeling confident, always feeling close to God, always being certain that our prayers will be answered. But real faith is often much more ordinary and much more courageous. Sometimes it is simply refusing to walk away from God when we cannot understand what he is doing.

Sometimes prayer is not a triumphant declaration of faith. Sometimes prayer is simply:

“Lord, help me.”

And sometimes that is enough.

The first reading from Isaiah gives us a much wider vision of God's purposes. Through the prophet, God declares that his salvation is coming and that his righteousness will be revealed. And then comes the remarkable invitation to those who might once have thought themselves outsiders:

“The foreigners who join themselves to the Lord… these I will bring to my holy mountain.”

God's house, he says, “shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”

The Canaanite woman is a living illustration of that promise.

She is an outsider. She is not one of the people of Israel. Yet she comes to Jesus in faith, and Jesus does not ultimately turn her away. Indeed, he holds her faith up as an example: “Great is your faith!”

The boundaries that human beings draw around God's love are always too small.

We can be tempted to think that God belongs to people like us: people who worship in the right way, who know the right prayers, who have been coming to church for years, who understand the Bible, who have their lives reasonably sorted out.

But the Gospel reminds us that God's grace is not our possession.

The Church is not a club for people who have got everything right. It is a house of prayer for all peoples. It is a place where the outsider can discover that there is a place at God's table.

And that brings us to the passage from Romans.

Paul is wrestling with the mystery of God's relationship with Israel. He insists that “the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” God's faithfulness does not depend upon our faithfulness.

That is a profoundly encouraging truth.

We may change. We may falter. We may become discouraged. We may have seasons when our faith seems strong and seasons when it seems very weak. But God does not change.

His promises do not expire.

His mercy does not run out.

His calling is not withdrawn.

Paul concludes by saying that God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all. In other words, the final word over humanity is not our failure but God's mercy.

And perhaps that is the thread running through all three readings: the wideness of God's mercy and the persistence of faith.

The Canaanite woman refuses to believe that she is beyond the reach of Jesus' mercy.

Isaiah proclaims that God's house is open to all peoples.

Paul reminds us that God's gifts and calling are irrevocable.

And so perhaps there are two things we should take away from today's Gospel.

First, never be afraid to persist in prayer.

If you have been praying about something for a long time and nothing seems to change, do not assume that God has forgotten you. The silence of God is not necessarily the absence of God.

Keep praying.

Keep bringing your need to Christ.

Sometimes the most faithful prayer we can make is the simplest:

“Lord, help me.”

Secondly, never imagine that anyone is beyond God's mercy.

There may be people we find difficult to understand, difficult to like, or difficult to forgive. There may be people whom society has labelled outsiders. There may even be people whom we ourselves have quietly decided are beyond the reach of God.

But Isaiah says: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”

And the woman who was initially regarded as an outsider goes away with her daughter healed and with Jesus' words ringing in her ears:

“Great is your faith.”

Perhaps that is the word we need to hear ourselves.

Not because our faith is always great. Often it isn't.

But because even a small faith, brought persistently to Christ, can become an instrument of God's grace.

So let us come to him today as we are. With our hopes and fears, our prayers and unanswered questions, our confidence and our doubts.

And if we have no eloquent words, let us simply say:

“Lord, help me.”

For the God whom we meet in Jesus Christ is not a God who delights in turning people away. He is the God whose house is a house of prayer for all peoples; the God whose mercy is wider than our boundaries; the God whose gifts and calling are irrevocable.

And therefore we can come to him with confidence, trusting not in the strength of our own faith, but in the faithfulness of the One in whom we believe.

Amen.