God in the rearview mirror
Commentary
Object:
I was an Arminian in a Calvinist seminary. It was not a hostile relationship, and I was not in constant arguments. From time to time the underlying difference in outlook would percolate to the surface of some conversations, and I usually found the resulting dialogue most fruitful.
On one occasion, I engaged one of my theology professors on the subject of predestination. He was patient with me as I tried to explore for the first-time issues he had no doubt covered countless times. Along the way he offered a helpful, personal insight. "I like to think of predestination as a rearview mirror doctrine," he said. "God's sovereign choices may not be apparent at the time, but when you look back, you can't help but conclude that it was God who did it."
Salvation, election, predestination, and the sovereign choices of God are all at stake in the passages we consider together this week. Our purpose will not be to choose sides in a debate, however. Rather, we just want to meditate on and affirm God's work.
First we'll hear Joseph reflecting back on God's work in the circumstances of his life. He is not engaging in a formal theological discourse. He is just bearing witness to what he sees in his own rearview mirror.
Second, we'll read a small sampling from Paul's long and complex discussion of God's saving work among Jews and Gentiles. He wrestles with the fact that his own people seemed to be rejecting the plan and salvation of God. So the apostle sought to understand the Lord's providential plan and timing in it all.
Finally, we contemplate a strange episode from Jesus' ministry. It appears to be the lone occasion when Jesus declines someone's request for healing, at least initially. The Lord's various plans and purposes for Jews and Gentiles come to the fore again, and we are left to wonder at Jesus agreeing to do something that he originally indicated he would not.
I am not eager to build a case for either Jacob Arminius or John Calvin. Rather, I am eager for us to explore together the wondrous work of God. I believe that Joseph, Paul, and Matthew will help us and our people do that together this week.
Genesis 45:1-15
It almost seems a shame to separate this passage from all that comes before. When we read these verses from Genesis 45 out of their larger context, it is like watching only the end of a movie. The emotion and beauty of the scene cannot be understood and appreciated apart from the plot and dialogue that preceded it.
The story begins before any of the characters in this scene were even born. It began way back when a young Jacob fell in love with a young Rachel, but Rachel's father acted duplicitously on their wedding night. Laban had inserted his other daughter, Leah, into Rachel's place in Jacob's wedding bed, putting everyone in an awkward and unenviable position. The unhappy effects of that trickery kept rippling through the years and generations.
Rachel was more loved than Leah, but Leah was more fertile than Rachel. Eleven children were born to Jacob before Rachel finally became pregnant. When she finally did give birth to a son, therefore, he was almost destined to be his father's favorite.
The favoritism was overt and it bred violent resentment among all of Jacob's half-brothers. Their contempt for Joseph was so great that they considered killing him. Remarkably, selling their brother into slavery seemed like the compassionate choice. That sinister deed took Joseph to Egypt, which set the stage for God's providence there.
Meanwhile, back in Canaan, the remaining sons of Jacob lived with a father who was locked in his grief. When famine hit the region, they went to Egypt to buy grain. When both circumstances and the Egyptian leader turned against them, they regretted aloud how they had treated Joseph years earlier, reckoning that they deserved their present misfortune.
Finally, there was the accumulating emotion within Joseph himself. He had lived through so much undeserved suffering and mistreatment, only to have the tables turn completely for him one day in the presence of Pharaoh. In the midst of the prominence and authority of his new life, these members from his old life came calling. He toys with them. He finds out about home from them. He overhears them. He slyly arranges a reunion with his one full brother, Benjamin, through them.
Now with all of that behind them all, there comes this moment. It is filled with both human drama and divine providence. All the emotions and experiences that have been welling up in Joseph for years come to a head now, and he can no longer contain himself. He sends everyone but his unwitting relatives out of the room and then he begins to gush, expressing both his love and his testimony.
See all of the conversions that occur in this dramatic moment. Capricious Egyptian ruler suddenly becomes kid brother. Underrated dreamer becomes uncommonly wise and prophetic young man. Animosity is replaced by appreciation. Vengeance is disabled by forgiveness. Distance is closed by embrace.
At this moment, what was heretofore invisible instantly becomes clear: namely, that this is all the work of God. The brothers and Potiphar's wife, the baker and the wine stewards the jailer and the pharaoh -- they all had their parts to play. Yet from Joseph's first young dream to this moment of revelation, we see in it all the hand of God. It is God's work, now clearly visible in the rearview mirror.
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
The selected passage is brief but the context from which it is excerpted is quite long. For several chapters in the second half of his letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul wrestles with a question that is for him both personal and theological. The question involves the salvation of the Jews -- God's long-standing covenant with them and their response to the gospel.
The personal quality of this dilemma is poignant, indeed. We know a bit about Paul's proud Jewish heritage (see, for example, Philippians 3:4-6). And we know too that his missionary pattern was to go first to the synagogues (see, for example, Acts 9:20, 13:5). His own people, after all, were the most natural audience for this gospel, rooted in the covenants, promises, and prophecies of the Old Testament.
The record of Paul's experience in Pisidian Antioch, however, serves as a kind of microcosm of his larger ministry. "When the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy... they contradicted what was spoken by Paul" (Acts 13:45). So Paul offered this bittersweet response: "It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken first to you. Since you reject it and judge yourselves to be unworthy of eternal life, we are now turning to the Gentiles" (v. 46).
Paul enjoyed a phenomenal ministry among the Gentiles, yet the joy of their responsiveness to the gospel could not outweigh the grief he felt over his own people. As you and I know, it is small comfort to lead others to Christ if we see that our own children are rejecting him. And the apostle Paul lived with that very sort of sorrow over his own people.
In addition to that personal struggle, there were also theological issues involved. As we see earlier in his letter to the Romans, Paul felt entirely resolved on the themes of law, circumcision, and righteousness. Although the Jews historically had a unique, covenant relationship with God and were the beneficiaries of special revelation, the problem of sin is universal and the salvation offered in Christ is identical for all, Jew and Gentile alike.
On the other hand, what of that covenant relationship? What of that chosen people status? Why should the most natural audience for the gospel so largely and so vigorously reject it?
As Paul contemplates the situation, he flatly refuses the possibility that God has "rejected his people." He is pained by the reality that they have rejected God's plan, yet he seems convinced that they remain part of God's plan. Indeed, Paul explores the possibility that even their present disobedience is itself part of God's plan.
Disobedience, of course, is never the will of God. To suggest that it is would render God's will a kind of empty set. But in the wisdom and power of God, even disobedience can be used to serve his purpose. The pool player may use one of the striped balls to knock in the desired solid ball. So it is that the Lord uses a tool of the enemy to his own advantage, for human disobedience becomes the avenue for his mercy.
In this particular matter, Paul reckons the human disobedience at two levels. First, there is the universal reality of human disobedience. As noted above, Jew and Gentile alike require and are offered the same salvation.
Second, Paul sees salvation history in broad strokes. The Gentiles were disobedient and unresponsive for a time, and the Lord's work was among the chosen people, Israel. In his own day, however, it was the Jews who were disobedient and unresponsive, making room for God's saving work among the Gentiles. The shift was not a permanent condition for the Jews, revoking forever their covenant relationship with God. Rather, it was a phase, with the prospect of both the natural and grafted vines existing together in God's saving grace.
Matthew 15:(10-20) 21-28
We carry in our mind's eye so many pictures from Jesus' ministry that we cherish. Here is a scene, though, that I don't remember hanging in any of my Sunday school classrooms when I was a child. I have not seen this moment captured in an illustrated Bible. For all of the portraits of Jesus that are available in Christian bookstores today, I have yet to see this depiction.
The scene is unfamiliar and seemingly out of character. First, it's a picture of Jesus ignoring someone. Then it shifts to what appears to be an unwillingness to help that someone. Then he makes what sounds to us like a racist statement. Admittedly, the story has a happy ending. But are we happy with the middle?
The scene features two main characters: Jesus and a Gentile woman from the region where Jesus and his disciples were briefly traveling. The woman is desperate. Any of us who are parents naturally sympathize with how she must have been feeling.
"But he did not answer her at all."
Perhaps at some time or another, we have counseled a child or a friend, saying, "You just have to ignore..." It may be a person or a group or a behavior or a circumstance, but we know there are times when the best thing to do is simply to ignore. This, however, is a mother in desperation, seeking help for her tortured daughter. Is this the sort of person and situation that you just have to ignore?
In addition to the two main characters, there is also a supporting cast. They are the disciples and they do not acquit themselves well in this moment. "Send her away," they urge Jesus, "for she keeps shouting after us." This is hardly the type of intercession that should characterize the followers of Jesus. They seem more annoyed than concerned.
It's at this moment that Jesus seems to establish the reason that he will not help the poor woman. He explains to his disciples that he was "sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." We understand his later remark about "the dogs" against this backdrop. The guiding paradigm involves a distinction between Jews and Gentiles with an assumption that Jesus' mission, with all of its benefits, is for the former and not the latter.
The audience is so distracted by what the magician is doing with the one hand that they miss what he does with the other. Likewise, we may be so fixated on what Jesus does say that we overlook what he does not. When the disciples urge Jesus to send the woman away, you see, he doesn't do it. He seems to ignore her at first and he seems to be ruling her out next, but he never says "no" and he never sends her away.
My wife is famous for cutting off telephone solicitations quickly. The person on the other end is barely into his or her spiel before my wife kindly interrupts, saying, "We're not interested. Thank you. Good-bye." Her point is that if you know you're not going to say yes, it's just a waste of everyone's time to go through the whole sales pitch.
If Jesus intended to say no, wouldn't he have said it at the start? The fact that he didn't tells me that, perhaps, he never intended to. And so we end with another picture of Jesus that we may cherish: He is compelling enough to inspire in a Gentile great faith, compassionate enough to extend his ministry beyond its immediate boundaries, and powerful enough to heal at a distance with just his word.
Application
John Wesley did us the favor of introducing some of Paul Gerhardt's German hymns to the English-speaking world. Among them is a grand song about the providence of God. And along the way, Gerhardt encourages the Christian thus: "Leave to God's sovereign sway to choose and to command; so shalt thou, wondering, own that way, how wise, how strong this hand."
I can imagine Joseph singing that hymn 3,000 years before it was written. Indeed, I can imagine him writing that hymn, for Joseph had endured, as Gerhardt puts it, "waves and clouds and storms." Yet the mistreated brother, falsely accused servant, and wrongly imprisoned innocent, now sat on top of his world. He was free, promoted, and prosperous. He looked back on it all and said to his disreputable brothers, "It was not you who sent me here, but God."
A careful reader wants to put the bookmark in Genesis at that point in order to go back and review the preceding chapters. Where, exactly, do we see a reference to God sending Joseph to Egypt? We do not. It is entirely his brothers' doing. Yet in retrospect, what has human fingerprints is still recognized as the hand of God.
What Joseph looks back on, Paul is still in the midst of. That is to say, Joseph is able to reflect back on the work of God already accomplished. Paul, however, is living in the midst of the uncertainty and confusion that might have characterized Joseph while he sat in an Egyptian prison. How, we wonder, is this going to work out right?
As Paul grieves the behavior of his own people, he wonders. And still in the midst of it, he affirms a future he cannot see and a plan he cannot prove. The natural signals of circumstance do not point in a hopeful direction, but the character and promises of God do. So he trusts "how wise, how strong (God's) hand."
Finally there is the case of the Canaanite woman. Hers is the shortest of the stories. Paul is dealing with millennia-long salvation history. Joseph's experience of God's providence was decades in unfolding. But this woman's experience, while trying, was relatively short. She went from need to healing within a single day.
Yet, as with Joseph and Paul, the path from here to there was not always clear. She felt ignored and her request was deferred. What she wanted did not, it seemed, fit into the plan of God. But in the end, Gerhardt's counsel articulates her experience: "Wait thou God's time; so shall this night soon end in joyous day."
The end is the key, isn't it? We cannot always see the hand of God at work during the journey, but we recognize it in the end. We do not always understand the plan of God while we are living it out, yet we see it clearly in the end. More than that, we always find the distinctively wise and perfect will of God at the end as well. Joseph is enthroned. The woman's child is healed. And all Israel will be saved.
An Alternative Application
Matthew 15:21-28. "He did not answer her at all." We noted in our discussion of the gospel lection that this depiction of Jesus looks unfamiliar to us. But then again, perhaps it doesn't. Perhaps this is a very familiar scene that we and our people have seen again and again.
The reason that this story seems unfamiliar to us is because in the gospel accounts, Jesus is so consistently responsive to human needs. He touched and healed all of the sick (Luke 4:40). He cast out demons, fed the hungry, blessed the children, turned water into wine, and raised the dead. In light of all that, the episode with the Canaanite woman appears, at first blush, to be the lone exception to the rule.
Yet what seems inconsistent with the rest of the gospel accounts may resonate very personally with our own life experience. We may feel that we know this woman and her situation well. We have sought him out and we have called out to him for help. We have demonstrated the faith to come to him in the first place. We have presented to him our earnest and genuine need, and "he did not answer at all."
Sometimes people will tell us that the Lord always answers prayers, it's just that sometimes the answer is "no." We understand that and we believe it. Yet the explanation does not satisfy unless we have heard him say no.
We are at peace with the reality that the Lord will sometimes decline what we ask for. We do not presume to believe that our every request is perfect or that our wish is God's command. We know better. Yet we do not often hear him say "no." Are we to assume then that his silence is the same as "no"? Is seeming inaction a "no"? Is delay? If he told me "no," perhaps I would be able to move on. But if he doesn't seem to answer at all, then I don't know what I am supposed to do.
The woman's initial experience was that "he did not answer her at all." We sometimes carelessly apply to her the phrase "she wouldn't take no for an answer." But that is not the case. He didn't say no to her. What she chose was not to take silence for an answer, so she persisted and received what she needed.
Jesus said her faith was great. So too is her example. When he does not answer us at all, let us keep this Canaanite saint in mind and keep asking.
__________
1. Paul Gerhardt, translated by John Wesley, "Give To The Winds Thy Fear," United Methodist Hymnal #129.
On one occasion, I engaged one of my theology professors on the subject of predestination. He was patient with me as I tried to explore for the first-time issues he had no doubt covered countless times. Along the way he offered a helpful, personal insight. "I like to think of predestination as a rearview mirror doctrine," he said. "God's sovereign choices may not be apparent at the time, but when you look back, you can't help but conclude that it was God who did it."
Salvation, election, predestination, and the sovereign choices of God are all at stake in the passages we consider together this week. Our purpose will not be to choose sides in a debate, however. Rather, we just want to meditate on and affirm God's work.
First we'll hear Joseph reflecting back on God's work in the circumstances of his life. He is not engaging in a formal theological discourse. He is just bearing witness to what he sees in his own rearview mirror.
Second, we'll read a small sampling from Paul's long and complex discussion of God's saving work among Jews and Gentiles. He wrestles with the fact that his own people seemed to be rejecting the plan and salvation of God. So the apostle sought to understand the Lord's providential plan and timing in it all.
Finally, we contemplate a strange episode from Jesus' ministry. It appears to be the lone occasion when Jesus declines someone's request for healing, at least initially. The Lord's various plans and purposes for Jews and Gentiles come to the fore again, and we are left to wonder at Jesus agreeing to do something that he originally indicated he would not.
I am not eager to build a case for either Jacob Arminius or John Calvin. Rather, I am eager for us to explore together the wondrous work of God. I believe that Joseph, Paul, and Matthew will help us and our people do that together this week.
Genesis 45:1-15
It almost seems a shame to separate this passage from all that comes before. When we read these verses from Genesis 45 out of their larger context, it is like watching only the end of a movie. The emotion and beauty of the scene cannot be understood and appreciated apart from the plot and dialogue that preceded it.
The story begins before any of the characters in this scene were even born. It began way back when a young Jacob fell in love with a young Rachel, but Rachel's father acted duplicitously on their wedding night. Laban had inserted his other daughter, Leah, into Rachel's place in Jacob's wedding bed, putting everyone in an awkward and unenviable position. The unhappy effects of that trickery kept rippling through the years and generations.
Rachel was more loved than Leah, but Leah was more fertile than Rachel. Eleven children were born to Jacob before Rachel finally became pregnant. When she finally did give birth to a son, therefore, he was almost destined to be his father's favorite.
The favoritism was overt and it bred violent resentment among all of Jacob's half-brothers. Their contempt for Joseph was so great that they considered killing him. Remarkably, selling their brother into slavery seemed like the compassionate choice. That sinister deed took Joseph to Egypt, which set the stage for God's providence there.
Meanwhile, back in Canaan, the remaining sons of Jacob lived with a father who was locked in his grief. When famine hit the region, they went to Egypt to buy grain. When both circumstances and the Egyptian leader turned against them, they regretted aloud how they had treated Joseph years earlier, reckoning that they deserved their present misfortune.
Finally, there was the accumulating emotion within Joseph himself. He had lived through so much undeserved suffering and mistreatment, only to have the tables turn completely for him one day in the presence of Pharaoh. In the midst of the prominence and authority of his new life, these members from his old life came calling. He toys with them. He finds out about home from them. He overhears them. He slyly arranges a reunion with his one full brother, Benjamin, through them.
Now with all of that behind them all, there comes this moment. It is filled with both human drama and divine providence. All the emotions and experiences that have been welling up in Joseph for years come to a head now, and he can no longer contain himself. He sends everyone but his unwitting relatives out of the room and then he begins to gush, expressing both his love and his testimony.
See all of the conversions that occur in this dramatic moment. Capricious Egyptian ruler suddenly becomes kid brother. Underrated dreamer becomes uncommonly wise and prophetic young man. Animosity is replaced by appreciation. Vengeance is disabled by forgiveness. Distance is closed by embrace.
At this moment, what was heretofore invisible instantly becomes clear: namely, that this is all the work of God. The brothers and Potiphar's wife, the baker and the wine stewards the jailer and the pharaoh -- they all had their parts to play. Yet from Joseph's first young dream to this moment of revelation, we see in it all the hand of God. It is God's work, now clearly visible in the rearview mirror.
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
The selected passage is brief but the context from which it is excerpted is quite long. For several chapters in the second half of his letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul wrestles with a question that is for him both personal and theological. The question involves the salvation of the Jews -- God's long-standing covenant with them and their response to the gospel.
The personal quality of this dilemma is poignant, indeed. We know a bit about Paul's proud Jewish heritage (see, for example, Philippians 3:4-6). And we know too that his missionary pattern was to go first to the synagogues (see, for example, Acts 9:20, 13:5). His own people, after all, were the most natural audience for this gospel, rooted in the covenants, promises, and prophecies of the Old Testament.
The record of Paul's experience in Pisidian Antioch, however, serves as a kind of microcosm of his larger ministry. "When the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy... they contradicted what was spoken by Paul" (Acts 13:45). So Paul offered this bittersweet response: "It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken first to you. Since you reject it and judge yourselves to be unworthy of eternal life, we are now turning to the Gentiles" (v. 46).
Paul enjoyed a phenomenal ministry among the Gentiles, yet the joy of their responsiveness to the gospel could not outweigh the grief he felt over his own people. As you and I know, it is small comfort to lead others to Christ if we see that our own children are rejecting him. And the apostle Paul lived with that very sort of sorrow over his own people.
In addition to that personal struggle, there were also theological issues involved. As we see earlier in his letter to the Romans, Paul felt entirely resolved on the themes of law, circumcision, and righteousness. Although the Jews historically had a unique, covenant relationship with God and were the beneficiaries of special revelation, the problem of sin is universal and the salvation offered in Christ is identical for all, Jew and Gentile alike.
On the other hand, what of that covenant relationship? What of that chosen people status? Why should the most natural audience for the gospel so largely and so vigorously reject it?
As Paul contemplates the situation, he flatly refuses the possibility that God has "rejected his people." He is pained by the reality that they have rejected God's plan, yet he seems convinced that they remain part of God's plan. Indeed, Paul explores the possibility that even their present disobedience is itself part of God's plan.
Disobedience, of course, is never the will of God. To suggest that it is would render God's will a kind of empty set. But in the wisdom and power of God, even disobedience can be used to serve his purpose. The pool player may use one of the striped balls to knock in the desired solid ball. So it is that the Lord uses a tool of the enemy to his own advantage, for human disobedience becomes the avenue for his mercy.
In this particular matter, Paul reckons the human disobedience at two levels. First, there is the universal reality of human disobedience. As noted above, Jew and Gentile alike require and are offered the same salvation.
Second, Paul sees salvation history in broad strokes. The Gentiles were disobedient and unresponsive for a time, and the Lord's work was among the chosen people, Israel. In his own day, however, it was the Jews who were disobedient and unresponsive, making room for God's saving work among the Gentiles. The shift was not a permanent condition for the Jews, revoking forever their covenant relationship with God. Rather, it was a phase, with the prospect of both the natural and grafted vines existing together in God's saving grace.
Matthew 15:(10-20) 21-28
We carry in our mind's eye so many pictures from Jesus' ministry that we cherish. Here is a scene, though, that I don't remember hanging in any of my Sunday school classrooms when I was a child. I have not seen this moment captured in an illustrated Bible. For all of the portraits of Jesus that are available in Christian bookstores today, I have yet to see this depiction.
The scene is unfamiliar and seemingly out of character. First, it's a picture of Jesus ignoring someone. Then it shifts to what appears to be an unwillingness to help that someone. Then he makes what sounds to us like a racist statement. Admittedly, the story has a happy ending. But are we happy with the middle?
The scene features two main characters: Jesus and a Gentile woman from the region where Jesus and his disciples were briefly traveling. The woman is desperate. Any of us who are parents naturally sympathize with how she must have been feeling.
"But he did not answer her at all."
Perhaps at some time or another, we have counseled a child or a friend, saying, "You just have to ignore..." It may be a person or a group or a behavior or a circumstance, but we know there are times when the best thing to do is simply to ignore. This, however, is a mother in desperation, seeking help for her tortured daughter. Is this the sort of person and situation that you just have to ignore?
In addition to the two main characters, there is also a supporting cast. They are the disciples and they do not acquit themselves well in this moment. "Send her away," they urge Jesus, "for she keeps shouting after us." This is hardly the type of intercession that should characterize the followers of Jesus. They seem more annoyed than concerned.
It's at this moment that Jesus seems to establish the reason that he will not help the poor woman. He explains to his disciples that he was "sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." We understand his later remark about "the dogs" against this backdrop. The guiding paradigm involves a distinction between Jews and Gentiles with an assumption that Jesus' mission, with all of its benefits, is for the former and not the latter.
The audience is so distracted by what the magician is doing with the one hand that they miss what he does with the other. Likewise, we may be so fixated on what Jesus does say that we overlook what he does not. When the disciples urge Jesus to send the woman away, you see, he doesn't do it. He seems to ignore her at first and he seems to be ruling her out next, but he never says "no" and he never sends her away.
My wife is famous for cutting off telephone solicitations quickly. The person on the other end is barely into his or her spiel before my wife kindly interrupts, saying, "We're not interested. Thank you. Good-bye." Her point is that if you know you're not going to say yes, it's just a waste of everyone's time to go through the whole sales pitch.
If Jesus intended to say no, wouldn't he have said it at the start? The fact that he didn't tells me that, perhaps, he never intended to. And so we end with another picture of Jesus that we may cherish: He is compelling enough to inspire in a Gentile great faith, compassionate enough to extend his ministry beyond its immediate boundaries, and powerful enough to heal at a distance with just his word.
Application
John Wesley did us the favor of introducing some of Paul Gerhardt's German hymns to the English-speaking world. Among them is a grand song about the providence of God. And along the way, Gerhardt encourages the Christian thus: "Leave to God's sovereign sway to choose and to command; so shalt thou, wondering, own that way, how wise, how strong this hand."
I can imagine Joseph singing that hymn 3,000 years before it was written. Indeed, I can imagine him writing that hymn, for Joseph had endured, as Gerhardt puts it, "waves and clouds and storms." Yet the mistreated brother, falsely accused servant, and wrongly imprisoned innocent, now sat on top of his world. He was free, promoted, and prosperous. He looked back on it all and said to his disreputable brothers, "It was not you who sent me here, but God."
A careful reader wants to put the bookmark in Genesis at that point in order to go back and review the preceding chapters. Where, exactly, do we see a reference to God sending Joseph to Egypt? We do not. It is entirely his brothers' doing. Yet in retrospect, what has human fingerprints is still recognized as the hand of God.
What Joseph looks back on, Paul is still in the midst of. That is to say, Joseph is able to reflect back on the work of God already accomplished. Paul, however, is living in the midst of the uncertainty and confusion that might have characterized Joseph while he sat in an Egyptian prison. How, we wonder, is this going to work out right?
As Paul grieves the behavior of his own people, he wonders. And still in the midst of it, he affirms a future he cannot see and a plan he cannot prove. The natural signals of circumstance do not point in a hopeful direction, but the character and promises of God do. So he trusts "how wise, how strong (God's) hand."
Finally there is the case of the Canaanite woman. Hers is the shortest of the stories. Paul is dealing with millennia-long salvation history. Joseph's experience of God's providence was decades in unfolding. But this woman's experience, while trying, was relatively short. She went from need to healing within a single day.
Yet, as with Joseph and Paul, the path from here to there was not always clear. She felt ignored and her request was deferred. What she wanted did not, it seemed, fit into the plan of God. But in the end, Gerhardt's counsel articulates her experience: "Wait thou God's time; so shall this night soon end in joyous day."
The end is the key, isn't it? We cannot always see the hand of God at work during the journey, but we recognize it in the end. We do not always understand the plan of God while we are living it out, yet we see it clearly in the end. More than that, we always find the distinctively wise and perfect will of God at the end as well. Joseph is enthroned. The woman's child is healed. And all Israel will be saved.
An Alternative Application
Matthew 15:21-28. "He did not answer her at all." We noted in our discussion of the gospel lection that this depiction of Jesus looks unfamiliar to us. But then again, perhaps it doesn't. Perhaps this is a very familiar scene that we and our people have seen again and again.
The reason that this story seems unfamiliar to us is because in the gospel accounts, Jesus is so consistently responsive to human needs. He touched and healed all of the sick (Luke 4:40). He cast out demons, fed the hungry, blessed the children, turned water into wine, and raised the dead. In light of all that, the episode with the Canaanite woman appears, at first blush, to be the lone exception to the rule.
Yet what seems inconsistent with the rest of the gospel accounts may resonate very personally with our own life experience. We may feel that we know this woman and her situation well. We have sought him out and we have called out to him for help. We have demonstrated the faith to come to him in the first place. We have presented to him our earnest and genuine need, and "he did not answer at all."
Sometimes people will tell us that the Lord always answers prayers, it's just that sometimes the answer is "no." We understand that and we believe it. Yet the explanation does not satisfy unless we have heard him say no.
We are at peace with the reality that the Lord will sometimes decline what we ask for. We do not presume to believe that our every request is perfect or that our wish is God's command. We know better. Yet we do not often hear him say "no." Are we to assume then that his silence is the same as "no"? Is seeming inaction a "no"? Is delay? If he told me "no," perhaps I would be able to move on. But if he doesn't seem to answer at all, then I don't know what I am supposed to do.
The woman's initial experience was that "he did not answer her at all." We sometimes carelessly apply to her the phrase "she wouldn't take no for an answer." But that is not the case. He didn't say no to her. What she chose was not to take silence for an answer, so she persisted and received what she needed.
Jesus said her faith was great. So too is her example. When he does not answer us at all, let us keep this Canaanite saint in mind and keep asking.
__________
1. Paul Gerhardt, translated by John Wesley, "Give To The Winds Thy Fear," United Methodist Hymnal #129.
