August 16 - “Learning New Ways”
Learning New Ways
Genesis 45:1-15
Matthew 15:21-28
16 August 2026
Rev. Mary Nelson – First Congregational Church UCC of Williamstown, MA
Welcome to the story of Jesus at his worst.
A handful of weeks ago, we heard a scripture that made reference to comparisons between Jesus and John the Baptist. Some scholars think they were rivals of sorts, maybe their groups of followers argued over who was better, something along those lines. And the lectionary skipped over the story of John’s death this year so we didn’t hear it, but it’s relevant today to know that in Matthew’s telling of Jesus’s story, this rivalry between Jesus and John becomes bad news for Jesus. John was beheaded at the command of Herod Antipas, who was the ruler of Galilee, and after that happened, the next several stories involve Jesus trying to get away from the public eye for a while. He’s kind of on the run, he keeps “going to a deserted place by himself” and the crowds keep following him. The Pharisees and scribes come from Jerusalem to Galilee to seek him out and challenge him publicly. He leaves Galilee and goes all the way to the district of Tyre and Sidon… Distance-wise, this is like if Jesus were trying to get out of Boston so he went to Greenfield, but then that wasn’t enough to stay incognito so he came to northern Berkshire County. Or maybe just over the border into Southern Vermont might be a more accurate analogy—he’s trying to get to a new province, away from the territory that Herod Antipas oversees, because it’s very possible that Jesus could be next on Herod’s hit list.
Of course, Jesus is traveling with his disciples, which probably makes it hard to stay incognito for very long. A Canaanite woman begins following Jesus and his posse, calling out to him. “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon!” Jesus tries to ignore her for a while, but she keeps pressing, and finally the disciples ask him to do something about this woman. Just send her away, they say. Just get her to leave us alone. We’re here to lay low, and she’s bringing us a lot of unwanted attention.
She’s a woman, and she’s a Gentile: Jesus really shouldn’t be talking to her at all. But she just won’t stop, so he turns to her and says “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
“The lost sheep of the house of Israel.” That’s a phrase that only appears in Matthew’s gospel, and we’ve run across it before: when Jesus is first sending out his disciples for mission, he tells them not to go to the Gentiles, not to go out traveling beyond the borders of their homeland, but to stay and minister to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel.” That’s a very limited group of people, given the diversity of the Roman Empire in the first century. And although Jesus has now left the territory of Israel in this passage today, he hasn’t lost focus on his ministry to Israel’s people.
But this Canaanite woman will not take no for an answer. She knows that Jesus can help her daughter, and she is going to do whatever it takes to get his attention and convince him to help her. Even though Jesus has effectively said “my ministry is not for you,” she comes up to him and kneels down on the ground, insistent: “Lord, help me.”
And Jesus again rejects her, saying, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” And he really means to be cruel here – the word we hear so nicely translated as “dog” is intended as a very specific kind of dog: a very specific kind of female dog. This is Jesus at his lowest, meanest point. He’s resorting to abusive language in order to exert control over this woman, trying to make her stop making him uncomfortable, calling attention to who he is and what he can do. He’s trying to stay incognito, after all! And she’s not having it. She takes Jesus’s attempt to control her and shoves it right back at him: “Even the dogs eat the crumbs from the master’s table.” You are Jesus, and I need help. Help me.
That woman’s strength impresses Jesus, and catches his attention. With her words of challenge – “even the dogs eat the crumbs from the master’s table” – she snaps him out of his fear, and she reorients Jesus’ understanding of his own ministry. Her pushback challenges the scope of what he is called to do. This is the moment when the switch flips: Jesus has been ministering to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” but now he realizes that he is called to a new chapter in his ministry. Suddenly his perspective has widened. He is called to minister to everyone, not just to Israel. This experience marks a significant turning point in Jesus’s ministry, and everything changes for his approach from here on out.
This story is Jesus at his worst – the most human, we might say – turning away someone who has asked for his help, using derogatory language for her, discriminating against her on the basis of her tribal ancestry. When we talk (or sing) about wanting to be like Jesus, it’s not this version of Jesus that we mean!
But Jesus is capable of learning. Jesus is capable of admitting when he’s in the wrong, when he’s behaved shamefully. Jesus is capable of accepting accountability, of changing his behavior. THAT is a version of Jesus we should emulate.
It took an outsider – a woman, a Gentile – to make Jesus see himself and his ministry in a new light. And in the face of this woman’s challenge, he heals her daughter, and commends her for standing up to him. “Woman, great is your faith!” I don’t think he means belief here. The Canaanites have a whole different set of gods; she almost certainly wouldn’t have known or cared about Jesus as the Messiah, with the understanding and reverence a Jew would hold for that title. But this woman acts in good faith with Jesus, and shows that she has faith in herself, and in the goodness of her fellow human beings. When she recognizes someone who can help her, she demonstrates that faith. So Jesus, in acknowledging the woman’s great faith, acknowledges that she was faithful to the values that undergird all human decency—even when he wasn’t. But she helped him get there.
Jesus needed a wake-up call, someone to get him out of his own head, someone to push him beyond what was familiar—the disciples weren’t going to do it! From time to time, we all need this kind of a wake-up call, don’t we? It is a very human phenomenon to seek comfort but fall into complacency—to become narrow-minded in our goals, habitual in our living, overly-reliant our own assumptions about what we can and cannot do. It’s easy to stick with what we know, and who we know, and never to push ourselves, never to go outside those boundaries and try anything new or anything ambitious—never even to think about it, to ask the question, what if?
From time to time, we need to rethink, reexamine, maybe even re-order our ways of thinking and living—not to make change for change’s sake, but to ensure that we are actively participating in our own faith and faithfulness, actively pursuing God’s call. So we can be at our best, not at our worst. We are not called only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. We are not called only to the “way we’ve always done things.” We are called to be like Jesus – to challenge ourselves, to examine our ministry, to widen the scope of what we think the church is called to do.
We don’t exist merely for ourselves, so we have something to do with our Sunday mornings and our Thursday mornings and a decent helping of our annual income. We don’t exist to be a social club or a community service organization, although we certainly do our fair share of socializing and service. We don’t exist to sit around and think and pray and worship and read the Bible – although we do all of those things as well, I hope. We are called to so much more than that!
I don’t mean for this sermon to be a plug for our discernment sessions, though that’s a convenient side-benefit—come to those! We’re figuring out how our ministry is evolving in this season! It’s fun! I do mean for this sermon to be a reminder that our ministry as a congregation has evolved over time, and it will continue to do so, and faithfulness means actively checking in to make sure we’re still pursuing God’s call. How is our view of ministry expanding? How is our own sense of call growing and changing and stretching us to be better people, better Christians? How are we pushing ourselves to be less narrow-minded, less habit-based, and more gracious to those in need? How are we challenging ourselves to expect more from ourselves?
And are we pushing one another toward that kind of growth?
We are called to minister to the lost sheep of the house of Israel and to the Gentiles. We are called by the Holy Spirit to be greater than the sum of our parts, through the grace of God. So we need to rise to the challenge that this Canaanite woman presents, to learn new ways to imagine our ministry. And we, the church, are uniquely equipped to do this because we are not alone: we have the Holy Spirit gathering us and enlivening us, and we have each other.
All of our individual calls are an invitation to participate in something bigger than we as individuals can be. Ministry is a team effort, a project that involves the whole church, calling us to look at both what is best for the whole church and what is best for the world beyond the church. Are we really listening for the Canaanite woman’s challenge to us? Even the dogs eat the crumbs from the master’s table – are we making sure that our crumbs aren’t being thrown away?
We need to figure out a way to challenge ourselves to be better people, and to be a better church. We’ve got to challenge one another to be faithful in our living and expansive in our ministry; we’ve also got to hold one another accountable in that ministry. We should never make one another feel guilty for not doing enough; we should never put one another down for not measuring up. But in the same way that Olympic athletes challenge one another to work harder and push the limits and take big risks, we as the church have got to challenge ourselves to be as giving as we possibly can, as open as we possibly can, as loving as we possibly can, as hardworking as we possibly can, as honest as we possibly can – in every area of our lives, not just in the church. We’ve got to put as much faith in one another as possible. The Canaanite woman who challenged Jesus had enough faith in him not to let him be complacent in his ministry. God issues that same challenge to us every day, and gives us the strength and the community to rise to that challenge.
Thanks be to God! Amen.
