Resurrection Lutheran Church, St Catharines

Two weeks ago our Old Testament Reading from Isaiah 55(:1-5) invited people to come, even those without money, and receive freely the food of everlasting life. This week in the very next chapter the LORD goes on through Isaiah to assure those who feel they might be excluded for other reasons, that there is grace for them, too. “The Lord GOD who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares, ‘I will gather yet others to Him besides those already gathered’” (56:8).

 

We are given a good example of that in our Gospel Reading for today (Matthew 15:21-28), where Jesus underscores His universal grace through His repartee with the Canaanite woman. And in today’s Epistle Lesson (Romans 11:28-32), St. Paul explains that the Jews’ rejection of Jesus caused the Gospel to be preached more widely throughout the Gentile world, not so that the Jews would be excluded but so that the Gentiles would be included and that by their inclusion the Jews would all the more be drawn to the grace of God in Jesus Christ offered to all.

 

But universal grace does not equal universal salvation. While God extends His gracious forgiveness and salvation in Jesus Christ to all people, not all people are saved because many reject that grace. God does not force salvation on anyone, but offers it to everyone; and it is freely received by believing the Good News, so that no one is excluded. We are saved by God’s grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8).

 

Jesus’ disciples were taken by surprise that He would have grace to offer to the Canaanite woman, and to her demon oppressed daughter. They expected Him to send her away. But Jesus remained true to what He had spoken through the prophet Isaiah: “And the children of the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD... these I will bring to My holy mountain” (Isaiah 56:6, 8). The drawn out interchange between the foreign woman and Jesus about children and dogs serves to teach us that those whom we might look upon as worthless as dogs are indeed included in the grace that is available at the Master’s table.

 

Who do you look upon as worthless as dogs—not pets, but wild, feral, nuisance dogs, like coyotes? Anyone? The Jews looked upon the pagan Gentiles that way, especially the Canaanites, those descendants of the people who should have been eradicated from the land when the LORD gave it to the descendants of Israel. That kind of ethnic degradation still happens around the world.

 

At the root of most political wars is a conflict between an ethnic group that has an historical presence in the land and another ethnic group that believes the land rightly belongs to them. We don’t even have to look beyond our own national borders to see this. We still struggle here in Canada with relations between indigenous peoples and European immigrants and then between European immigrants and Asian immigrants and now between generational Canadians and newer Middle Eastern immigrants; some groups regarding people of other groups as no better than dogs.

 

And Isaiah chapter 56 also includes another group of people whom we might think would be excluded from God’s grace, but the LORD emphasizes that His grace is great enough to include them as well. The verses are probably skipped over in the appointed Lectionary Reading in order to emphasize God’s universal grace to all the nations of the earth. But those omitted verses include a group of people whose numbers are increasing in the Western world, not through immigration but through mutilation.

 

“Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the LORD say, ‘the LORD will surely separate me from His people’; and let not the eunuch say, ‘Behold, I am a dry tree.’ For thus says, the LORD: ‘To the eunuchs who keep My Sabbaths, who choose the things that please Me and hold fast My covenant, I will give in My house and within My walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off” (Isaiah 56:3-5).

 

The transgender push that has been inflicted upon society, particularly upon vulnerable young people, has produced an increasing number of modern day eunuchs: not just people born with physical sexual deformity, but now those who have undergone physical alterations chemically and/or surgically. There is a natural revulsion to such an unnatural thing.

 

Now, the two groups are not equal. Eunuchs mentioned in the Bible did not by definition desire to change their gender identity. For eunuchs it is a physical issue. Likewise, many people today who do not have distinctive sexual organs, do not necessarily question their gender identity. Nevertheless people found eunuchs naturally revolting, and because their physical bodies bore witness to the fallen natural world, the LORD had excluded eunuchs from serving as priests, as also those with other physical deformities (Leviticus 21:16ff).

 

But that does not mean that they were excluded from the LORD’s grace of salvation. If they clung to the LORD for salvation from sin and death, they had His gracious mercy freely given like everyone else, and the promise of bodily restoration in the resurrection. Isaiah chapter 56 assures them and us of that.

 

And the same still holds true today. To those whom we find the most revolting, to those whom we might look upon as no better than dogs (either because of their ethnicity or their physical deformity), God’s grace is also extended. And as He spoke through the prophet Isaiah to those whom we might not allow into our house or at our dinner table, “I will give in My house and within My walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.”

 

Again, universal grace does not equal universal salvation. While God extends His gracious forgiveness and salvation in Jesus Christ to all people, not all people are saved because many reject that grace. God does not force salvation on anyone, but offers it to everyone; and it is freely received by believing the Good News, so that no one is excluded. And if it is given even to those whom you might look upon as dogs, then it surely must be given to you, even if you regard yourself as no better than a dog.

 

The Canaanite woman did not object to being seen that way, as long as it meant that there was grace for her and deliverance for her daughter. These children of the foreigner came to the God of Israel and he gathered them into His house, right up to His table. “Jesus answered her, ‘O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.’ And her daughter was healed instantly” (Matthew 15:28).

 

Their inclusion under God’s grace and salvation ought not turn us away, but beckon us all the more to come to the Lord looking for grace. Like feeding one chipmunk from the picnic table, encourages others to come with hope and trust, so God’s grace extended to the most revolting draws us closer to Him, willing to confess our revolting sins and mutilations that we have been able to keep under wraps.

 

Because the focus and the push of transgender ideology is directed at vulnerable young people, there is a growing number of those who have tried to change their physical sex organs, some of whom are realizing the very grave mistake that they have made and are de-transitioning back to their original physical selves.

 

In their great struggle to find their identity, the God of Israel approaches and offers to give them a place in His house, and a name that is better than that of sons and daughters. Even if they are no longer welcome in their own home, the LORD reaches out to them with the Good News of the Gospel, the forgiveness and cleansing that He has provided through Jesus Christ, and the baptismal identity of knowing that they are in Christ Jesus.

 

By confessing our sins, repenting of our past transgressions, and looking to the God of Israel for forgiveness, grace, and healing to live a new life, our faith embraces the universal grace that He extends far and wide. He tells us of the salvation secured for us in the death and resurrection of Jesus and we come to Him desiring that it be for us.

 

We join the Canaanite woman in crying out, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David” (Matthew 15:22). Unable to do anything for ourselves, feeling our weakness, and aware of our disfigurement, shunned by the world, we hear of God’s grace extended to people even as we are ourselves. And in hope to be included in what we have heard we drop below His table and gratefully eat His crumbs.

 

Yet even though we are not ethnically related to Him or physically pure, our Lord Jesus Christ who took on frail human flesh and was born as a descendant of David, does not allow us to remain as dogs under the table. As He spoke to the eunuchs, He gives us “a name better than sons and daughters.” He baptizes us into His own name, an everlasting name that He could never deny.

 

He has erected the monument of the cross upon which our salvation was won. And it stands as an ever-present reminder that God took on human flesh to save all of humanity. Isaiah tells us that He was disfigured beyond all human semblance (Isaiah 52:14). And it is He who suffered this for us, who has given us a place, not under His table but at the altar where the bread we receive is His sacrificed body. And He gives us to drink the finest of wines, which is His blood shed to cleanse us from all impurity.

 

Because Jesus Christ is true God in human flesh, His body and blood are the priceless payment for the sins of the whole world. God’s grace is great enough for everyone. He provided for the forgiveness, cleansing, purifying, sanctification, restoration, and bodily resurrection of everyone of every nation, language, and people. He gathers into one in His holy Christian Church Jews, Gentiles, males, females, slaves, and free, foreigners and the demon-oppressed, eunuchs by birth and those who have been made eunuchs by men (Matthew 19:12).

 

Everyone who places their faith in the grace of God given through Jesus’ bodily sacrifice upon the cross, repenting of their sins, and trusting Him for cleansing and restoration, are gathered together, joined to the LORD. And as He gathers the most revolting and undeserving and those whom we regard as farthest from His people, He communicates again to us that His grace is superabundant even in our hour of deepest need.

 

When we feel far from Him and His Church, when we recognize that we are undeserving, when we see ourselves as the most revolting, we know that His grace is still sufficient. He is still gathering us to be His own people; to enter His house, to minister to Him with our thanksgiving and praise, to love the name of the LORD, to keep His Sabbath (finding our rest in Jesus), and holding fast to the covenant of the body and blood of Christ in which we are fed much more than the sufficient crumbs of His grace.