Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost Sermon
By The Rt. Rev. Allen K. Shin
Bishop Suffragan, The Episcopal Diocese of New York
(The following is a transcript of the service audio, Oct. 18, 2026)
Let me begin by expressing my gratitude to Dr. Matthew Potts for inviting me to preach this morning, and to the members of his staff for making all the arrangements for my visit today. It is truly an honor and a privilege for me to share the Word of God with you in this historic church. Except that the Word of God that was read out today is slightly different from the one I prepared. So I'm going to read one for you, the one I've prepared for you. Same gospel, Matthew 15:21-28. It is a familiar story to many.
Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, "Have mercy on me, Lord, son of David. My daughter is tormented by a demon." But he did not answer her at all, and his disciples came and urged him saying, "Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us."
He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
But she came and knelt before Him, saying, "Lord, help me."
He answered, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."
She said, "Yes, Lord. Yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table."
Then Jesus answered her, "Woman, great is your faith. Let it be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed instantly.
Woman, great is your faith. Let it be done for you as you wish. In Matthew's gospel, only two people are praised by Jesus for their great faith. This Roman centurion in chapter eight and this Canaanite woman in today's story. Both are Gentiles who stand outside the covenant, yet they become witnesses to the boundless reach of God's grace and icons of great faith that is both unsettling and hopeful. So what makes this woman's faith so great? What is the source of her faith? The story unfolds at a boundary, a place where cultures clash, identities collide, and fear breeds prejudice and hostility. Jesus enters the woman's Gentile district and she enters his place of religious purity. The disciples are immediately troubled and urge Jesus to send her away. They want her deported out of their space. Well, we know something of such tension and hostility in our own society and world today.
So Jesus tells her, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." The message is unmistakable. The mercy she seeks for her daughter is not for her. She should leave their space of holiness and purity. Yet, she refuses to go. She kneels before Him and pleads with heartbreaking simplicity, "Lord, help me." There's something spiritually arresting about these three words. Faith often begins not in certainty, but in desperation, not in the strength of our convictions, but in the recognition of our deepest needs. It begins when we have exhausted our own resources and can only place our suffering before God.
Jesus answers with words even harder to hear. "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." This is cruel. The Greek word for dogs is a diminutive that connotes household dogs. Perhaps it softens the pejorative nature of this label, but it does not remove the sting of humiliation; she and her daughter are less than human. Nearly every society has used race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, and class to justify excluding and dehumanizing others. We have seen this in our own nation's history and the anti-immigrant policies of our current government.
Still, the Canaanite woman does not retreat. With astonishing courage, she replies, "Yes, Lord. Yet, even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table." Even within the humiliation, she finds an opening for mercy. She refuses to believe that God's grace can be exhausted by the boundaries human beings build, even in the name of religion. She claims no privilege and no entitlement. She will take crumbs under the table. Many migrants and refugees undertake dangerous journeys for precisely this reason, not for luxury, but for survival, not for comfort, but for crumbs under the table. They endure suspicion, rejection, and humiliation because even crumbs mean life for their children. And too often they meet the same logic of exclusion. There's not enough. You do not belong. The table is not for you. But a child's life cannot be measured by the boundaries of belonging. Even crumbs can save lives.
The Japanese American theologian, Haruko Nawata Ward, calls this mother's faith Crumb Gathering Wisdom. The Canaanite mother understands the boundaries that confront her, but refuses to let them determine the limits of her hope or her daughter's life. Her crumb-gathering wisdom is not to be underestimated. What is the source of such wisdom? It is love, a fierce love for her daughter. Love gives her the courage to cross boundaries, the strength to endure humiliation, and the will to persevere. Love is the deepest and the strongest spirit of life. Some people say preaching about love is an easy way out. Love, I believe, was no easy way out for this Canaanite mother. The sacrificial love on the cross was no easy way out for Jesus. Genuine love is never an easy way out of suffering in life. It is her sacrificial love that makes this woman's faith great.
There's a profound irony here. Jesus came seeking the lost sheep of Israel, yet the first person he meets is this Gentile mother whose faith opens a new horizon of God's grace and makes room for a miracle. Jesus does in the story what disciples do not. He engages the Gentile woman in dialogue. What begins as a painful encounter at the border becomes a space where her voice is heard, her faith is recognized, and her daughter is healed.
Former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in his recent book, Solidarity: The Work of Recognition, writes, "Solidarity begins when we recognize the full humanity of the stranger, especially those whom society excludes or refuses to recognize." A Jewish rabbi and a Canaanite woman meet across a boundary that has divided their peoples for generations. The story points to a possibility that even where history has hardened a division into hostility, dialogue can lead to reconciliation and open a different future. That is miracle.
In a deeply divided society like ours, dialogue across hardened boundaries may be the most urgent spiritual practice we need to recover. We must learn to listen to voices we have dismissed, to hear the suffering behind words that disturb us, to recognize the humanity of those we have been taught to fear, and to respect what Rabbi Jonathan Sachs has called the dignity of difference in every person. Yet the character who most captures my imagination is the daughter. She's silent and hidden, although everything happens because of her. She is the reason her mother crosses the boundary, endures humiliation, and perseveres. I imagine that long after this day, she will remember her mother's crumb-gathering wisdom, her fierce love, and her great faith. A mother's great faith becomes her daughter's inheritance. That, too, is a miracle.
Crumb-gathering wisdom of this Canaanite mother is our legacy, too. She teaches us to look for grace where hope seems scarce, to persevere when the powerful tell us to go away, and to trust that the smallest opening, the narrowest door, can lead us to life. Above all, she shows that love is the courage to act, the strength to endure, and the faith to keep reaching for life even in utter despair. The good news of this story is not simply that there are crumbs enough for those at the margins. The miracle is not only that one daughter is healed, but that we, too, may be healed of the fear that tears us apart and become the human community God created us to be. And what a miracle that would be.