Lent 2

Last Sunday we saw our first parents fall to temptation, and death entered the world, and then we saw God send his son to overcome the temptations of Satan and serve as our sacrifice and the mediator of a new Covenant. This week, we see the faithful hold God to his promises. Our Old Testament and our Gospel are examples to us of what great faith looks like in the life of the Christians, and encouragements to us to hold onto the Lord in tough times. And so we are again encouraged and comforted in this life filled with difficulties and dangers.

Let’s dive into the Lord’s word.

Jacob: He’s had a tough time. He was run out of his home, tricked into marrying a woman he didn’t love, worked 20 years for his father in law, who tried to cheat him multiple times, and now he is coming back to see his brother. His brother who was the guy running him out. He might still be angry enough to kill. Hard to say. All Jacob knows is, he’s on his way with 400 men: Not exactly a peaceful move. This is the last night before Esau arrives with his 400 men. Easily enough to kill Jacob and his entire family.

That night, he wrestles with a man all night. It’s a strange account – God manifests himself in flesh in order to wrestle with Jacob. Jacob won’t yield – even after his hip is dislocated – unless the Lord blesses him. God changes his name – from Jacob (the one who overthrows or usurps) to Israel: Struggles with God and prevails.

The old name was fitting. In his youth, Jacob did deceive his father to steal Esau’s blessing the blessing of the older brother went to the youngest. This was after Esau to agreed to give him the inheritance for a bowl of stew. Arguably a con job. Jacobs 20 years with Laban reads like a movie script – two con men trying to get the best of the other. Laban seems more skilled, but Jacob has the Lord on his side. Now, he is returning the land of his Fathers. He is rejecting the idol altars of Laban and his people, and is calling on the Lord God to save him. When Jacob had left 20 years earlier, the Lord gave him a vision of a stairway into heaven, and blessed him and promised he would return some day. He has fulfilled the promise, and brought him home – perhaps to a sudden and violent death. Jacob will not let go until God blesses him. This is a great example to us, and a comfort in times of need. We often struggle with man and with God. Our struggles with man are perhaps easier to spot. A boss, employee, coworker, neighbor, relative that makes our life difficult. Struggles with God can be harder to spot in the moment. In retrospect we may realize we were struggling with God’s will for us – perhaps reluctant to move according to his will for us. Or we recognize that a difficult time was a test of faith, a chance for us to show that we will not let go of God, but will cling to him ever more tightly. Or God redirects us – which may seem in the moment to be a difficult time, but looking back it all makes sense. Or perhaps we never see it all come together in this world, and just have to trust that it will make sense when we get to the life of the world to come.

Reassuring us of God’s faithful and loving hand is the comfort God would give us this day from our Gospel as well.

It doesn’t seem a very comforting Gospel at first glance. Jesus seems mean. Many modern preachers – those who reject Jesus as the Son of God (although if you do that, why bother with preaching at all?) - use it as an example of Jesus sinning, or learning he needs to do better. But Jesus knows what he is doing. And all his actions are righteous. Does a teacher have a right to test his students, to show they have mastered the material? How much more then the creator test his creation to show us faithful? By our nature we have no claim on God’s mercy. We have no right to anything from him. Only that he is loving and merciful by his nature. That he does what is right, and wants to give us every good thing we need.

Regarding Jesus rather brusque attitude toward the woman, we are told repeatedly that Jesus could tell what was in the hearts and minds of the people. Usually, it’s a comment that he knew the evil that the scribes and Pharisees were thinking against him. But it’s clear that he also knows the thoughts of the faithful. He often will give them a chance to show their faithfulness. He does not push them beyond that – but acts according to what they can bear. This is one of those occasions. Jesus responds according to her faith, and her trust, so that it can serve as an example to the disciples, and to Christians in every generation.

Jesus goes into a gentile area. Outside Israel. If he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, he was in the wrong spot. He was sent into Israel. Paul says to the Romans that salvation is of the Jews – that is, Jesus was sent into Israel to minister there. But salvation is not only for the Jews. Jesus would have all men be saved. And he does make a few trips into the surrounding Gentile areas. This is one of them. It says at the beginning of our reading that he withdrew to that region. As soon as he’s finished talking to this woman, he heads back to the sea of Galilee. So, it seems he comes all this way just to meet with her. It’s the only recorded interaction on this trip. Mark includes this account as well, and it’s the same – he goes, he sees her, he returns. Jesus answers with “I was sent only...” But it doesn’t say who he was answering. He could be answering her cries, or answering the disciples – they want him to send her away. He doesn’t. He says I was sent only... It seems like he is answering the disciples – and setting them up to understand that Jesus was sent to save all who would hear and believe. Rather than telling her to leave, he speaks generally about his work – to be the true sacrifice for sin, to enter the most holy place once for all with his own blood.

She falls down before him – Lord help me. Now Jesus seems at his worst – and yet it is Jesus lovingly showing how faithful this woman is. She won’t argue the semantics of who is a dog and who is a child. She knows the Lord God is merciful, and so will help her. Even the dogs get crumbs. Call me what you will and I will be that thing, but then show the mercy that you would show to that thing. He only pushes her so far because he knows she will not be pushed away. She will return and return she will press him and hold him to who he is: God’s Son and the Savior of the world.

It seems sometimes God does not hear our prayer. It seems as if sometimes we are abandoned by God. And yet, we know that God will not leave or forsake us. And it may be he is giving us a chance to show faithfulness. To hold him to who he is: Our Savior from sin, death and the devil.

Life can get brutal sometimes. But Jesus wants to be our Savior. And so we cry out to him – it’s why we have the Kyrie in the Divine Service (as well as vespers). Lord have mercy upon us, Christ have mercy upon us, Lord have mercy upon us. It echoes the cry of the sick, blind, lame who are in desperate need. It echoes the cry of this woman as well. We sing those words each week because we have great need of the Lord’s help. And also it trains us in our prayer so that we know to turn to the Lord, to seek every good thing from him, so that we would rely on him and look to him for every good thing, and then, when this life goes as wrong as it can go, we continue to look to him. We hold on to Jesus and do not let go. And if our words fail us, we can use those words of long ago, “Lord have mercy on me. Christ have mercy on me. Lord have mercy on me.” It is sometimes the final prayer before we are overcome and must rely entirely on the Spirit to intercede for us with groans that words can not express.

Jacob did not let go, even after his hip was dislocated by God. He physically would not release the Lord. The woman did not let go even after Jesus sounded like he would not help. But he never says he will not help. He is setting her up each time so she can show her faithfulness. And she does. It shows us that not only is Jesus the savior of the whole world not just one nation or people, but that he desires to save all. It also shows us that in times when we think he is not listening, he is. He hears our prayer. He answers our prayer. Even if, in this world, we do not get the thing we pray for, we know he has not abandoned us, but continues to love and care for us. No one can take us from him.

This is why our Introit begins with Remember your mercy O Lord, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old.

When we ask the Lord to remember us, it’s more than just saying “You remember that guy with the eye patch we met that time?” Remembering isn’t just an activity among the neurons of the brain. Scripturally, to remember – and asking the Lord to remember, means “You were gracious before to my fathers, and I am therefore calling on that gracious nature, I am holding you to your grace and mercy. As you have done in the past, so I know you will do now as well. That’s why God has the people of Israel build an altar next to the Jordan river when they cross over in the book of Joshua. It is a remembrance – not a roadside attraction – it was in the middle of the wilderness. Rather, it was a way to teach their children – who may never have even seen it. And it was to teach them, not about crossing the Jordan into the promised land, but to teach them about the Red Sea and their deliverance from the land of Egypt and the house of bondage. It was to say, “The Lord delivered us miraculously at that time, and brought us safely into the land of promise through many difficulties, and so will continue to deliver us now.” Remember your mercy O Lord, means “You were merciful before, and so I know you will also be merciful now. It is to hold God to his promise. Throughout scripture we hear the explicit promised to us – that he will never leave us or forsake us, that we are in his hand, and can not be snatched from him.

And so when Jesus tells us in the sacrament of his body and blood to do this in remembrance, it means that the grace and mercy won on the cross by his body given into death, by his blood shed for us, is here, in this place, to deliver to us the forgiveness won at that time by his once for all sacrifice. It is not re-offering him to the father as some teach. But neither is it just a process of thinking about him. It is Jesus being given to us in his body and blood, the fruits of his sacrifice now available to us – his life being given to us, through the body and blood which give the forgiveness of sins.

Thanks be to God our Father, who remembers us in all our troubles, and who strengthens us in Jesus Christ. May we always look, not to ourselves, but to Jesus Christ, as Savior. Amen.