Audio of the sermon is here:

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

            I thought it was a fluke. It was about 11 years ago, not too long after I’d started in Washington. And a post came across my Twitter feed—it was still called Twitter then. It was from a women’s group from a different denomination, sort of like our LWML. And that year, it was the 15^th Sunday after Pentecost, with a Gospel reading from Mark parallel to the one we heard this morning, the Syro-Phoenician, or the Canaanite, woman. And the top of the post said, “Jesus corrected his errors; how will you do the same?” And then below that, they called it a 10-second sermon: “If our Lord Jesus can make an error in judgment, we mere humans certainly will. The problem is not in the mistake, the problem is in failing to acknowledge it. Jesus said he was sorry by healing a precious daughter. How will you say it?”

            Now, there are all sorts of problems with that post. But it was not a fluke. You can go on the internet this year and search the Gospel reading for today, and I’m confident you will find multiple people preaching this interpretation, from actual, so-called Christian pulpits. This is not a fluke; it is a common interpretation in the mainline denominations, that Jesus did something wrong here. He used a slur, or a derogatory term, to refer to this woman. He ignored her. He was stuck in His cultural blindness, His cultural assumptions. And then He corrected Himself. He realized that what He was doing was wrong, and He fixed His mistake by healing the daughter. And then Jesus becomes a slightly better example of what we should be: if our Lord Jesus can make an error in judgment, we mere humans certainly will. He corrected His error; will you? But that doesn’t make Jesus a better example of what it means to be human. We are actually the better ones, who know what Jesus should have done in the first place, and then when He does it, we can pat Him on the back and say, nice job, Jesus. You did what we would never have to do, because we know what’s right and would never say anything like that to another person. But good for you for acknowledging Your mistakes!

            There is something offensive here, that interpretation says and it’s in what Jesus does. And the way we deal with that offense is not by letting it stand, but by bringing Jesus down, making Him less than sinless, so we can hold Him up as some kind of flawed example of what we, in our enlightened age, knew He should have done in the first place. I agree that there’s offense here. What should we do with it? How should we hear this?

            Jesus has withdrawn from the region where He might be arrested and crucified. In fact, He has offended the Pharisees. The Pharisees were mad that Jesus’ disciples were not ritually washing their hands before eating. When they came in from outside, they did not wash their hands to get rid of whatever Gentile stuff might be clinging to them. So Jesus takes the crowd aside and says, It is not what goes into a person that makes him unclean, but what comes out of him. What comes out of your mouth comes from your heart, and what comes from your heart is all kinds of evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, greed, theft, slander. And that is what makes you unclean, not unwashed hands.

            The people tell Jesus that the Pharisees were offended at His words. He said to them, Every tree that My Father has not planted will be uprooted. Leave them alone, they are blind guides. And when the blind lead the blind, they all fall into a pit. And Jesus withdraws north and east. And a Canaanite woman cries out after Him, “Lord Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. My daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.” Matthew says, He did not answer her a word. But she didn’t stop, so the disciples say to Jesus, Send her away, because she won’t stop crying out after us. Send her away. The same words the disciples said to Jesus after He had been healing the crowds all day. Send them away so they can go to the surrounding villages and buy food for themselves. It seems that the disciples wanted Jesus to give her what she was asking for, so she would go away. That’s why He says, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And then, finally, she gets in His way, falls down on her knees, perhaps grabs His feet. Lord, she says, help me. And He says to her, It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs. It’s not right to take the bread of the children, Israel, and throw it to the dogs, Canaanites.

            If you know the Old Testament, you know that the Canaanites were not exactly the friends of the Israelites. They were the people occupying the land that God had promised to give to Abraham’s descendants when Abraham had passed through that land. And God commanded Israel to drive them out because they would bring Israel into idolatry and the worship of the Canaanite gods: gods of fertility and gods to which they sacrificed their children. So, not very different from today. And maybe Israel was offended that God had told them to drive out the Canaanites, because they didn’t do it, at least not all the way. The Canaanites remained, Israel did worship their gods, and they went into exile because of it.

            This Canaanite cries out to Jesus, the Israelite of Israelites. And first He ignores her, then He talks to the disciples about her, and then He answers her with offensive words about the relationship between Israel and the Canaanites. And we are offended. But you know who’s not offended? This woman. She says, “Yes, Lord. Yes, it is true. I have no right to receive anything. I cannot demand it of You. Yes, Lord, and also, the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the hands of their masters. Then Jesus says, “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed from that very moment.

            She could have said, how dare you talk to me that way! As if Israel were any better! I don’t need to listen to this. She could have been offended and gone away. But if she had gone away, her daughter would not have been healed. In faith, she lets the offense stand, and she goes rejoicing to her healed daughter. If what flows out of your mouth comes from your heart, then it was the Pharisees, in their offense, who were unclean. But this woman, an unclean Canaanite, among the idols of her people, at enmity with God and His people, she speaks out of her heart and she is clean. Her faith is in the Christ who cleanses hearts and words so that faith clings to Him.

            We might try to remove the offense from Jesus’ words by explaining them away in defense of Him, or by making Jesus less than who He is. But that’s the easy way out. Anyone can do that, and a lot of people do. We can say that we don’t like this or that word in the Scriptures, that it offends us, and we will not listen to it. We can decrease who Jesus is and increase who we are. But that’s the easy way out. Instead, if we let the offense stand, we may find life. There is offense in what Jesus says. He says, Baptize into the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. I put My promise and word with this water by My Spirit. People are offended, but if the offense stands, there is life. It is offensive that God puts sinners into an Office where they say, “I forgive you all your sins in the Name.” But let the offense stand, and you will find forgiveness. Jesus says, in words that can never be erased or minimized, This is My body and this is My blood, for the forgiveness of your sins. Take and eat. And people are offended. They were in John’s Gospel and they are today. But let the offense stand, and you will find forgiveness, life, salvation, and healing in eternity.

            You can search the Gospels and you will never find a single place where Jesus says, “I’m sorry,” or apologizes for making a mistake. He lets His word stand as it is, because it is the word of eternal life, God’s own life. Let the offense stand, and you will be healed.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7, ESV). Amen.

— Pr. Timothy Winterstein, 8/14/26