To Be A Dog and Conform to God’s Will

A meditation for Lent 2 on Paul Gerhardt’s hymn “A Lamb Goes Uncomplaining Forth”

But she came and knelt in front of him, saying, “Lord, help me.”

He answered her, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

“Yes, Lord,” she said, “yet the dogs also eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”

Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, your faith is great! It will be done for you, just as you desire.” And her daughter was healed at that very hour. (Matthew 15:25-28)

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“A theologian sifted in Satan’s sieve” So reads the epitaph, the inscription on a memorial, of Paul Gerhardt, the most famous Lutheran hymn-writer. Gerhardt wrote 133 hymns in all, including “A Lamb Goes Uncomplaining Forth.” His hymns are some of the most joyful words ever written.

But that’s surprising. Because Gerhardt’s life was literally nothing but suffering.

Both his parents died before he was 20. He was a pastor during the Thirty Years’ War in Germany where either war or plague took two-thirds of the entire population. Gerhardt as a pastor would conduct multiple funerals per day. Gerhart’s own home and city church had been destroyed by fire from the war. He was deposed as pastor in one town because he refused to stop calling out false teaching. Of his three sons and two daughters, only one son outlived him. His own wife died after only 13 years of marriage.

Yet Paul Gerhardt continued to proclaim God’s love and mercy to him in spite of all of Satan’s attempts to sift him and get him to abandon God. He understood that his experience told him one thing: that God didn’t seem to care. But God’s promises told him something else: that God had shown him endless mercy in Christ. 

The proof of God’s love and mercy was not to be found in his experience, but in God’s promises.

This is the lesson of the Canaanite woman in the Gospel Lesson for Lent 2.

A woman comes to Jesus whose daughter is severely demon-possessed, and she cries out. She begs Jesus for help. But he doesn’t say a thing. And then his disciples try to get him to send her away because in their eyes she was just a Gentile woman; she wasn’t worthy to be near Jesus. Jesus seems to agree with them, saying, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” (Matthew 15:24)

Experience would have told this Canaanite woman that Jesus didn’t care. He ignored her. He told her he wasn’t sent for her. And then he called her a dog! Experience would tell her that God didn’t care. Experience would tell her to just “give up and go home.” 

And she would have, had she not listened carefully to Jesus’ words. Jesus never said he wouldn’t help her. Jesus simply said, “I need to feed others first – my children, the Israelites and my disciples.”

The woman recognized that Jesus was in the middle of a “meal” with his disciples. She didn’t want to interrupt that. Instead, she would be content if just some of the scraps from that meal – some of the grace and blessing of Jesus – would “fall off the table” to her, the dog.

The woman didn’t trust her experience. She trusted Jesus’ words, his promises, and she clung to them.

Jesus pushed her to test her. Through trial, she conformed her will to God’s. And God’s will was ultimately best.

But before we think that God takes pleasure in merely pushing us around, know that even God’s own Son was tested in this way. It was a struggle for even Jesus according to his human nature to accomplish the work the Father sent him to do. Recall Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:39) Even Jesus prayed that his will would conform to the Father’s. Even Jesus knew that the Father had in mind to save mankind first. And God’s will was ultimately best.

Hear these words from Paul Gerhardt’s hymn:

3. “Yea, Father, yea, most willingly
I’ll bear what Thou commandest;
My will conforms to Thy decree,
I do what Thou demandest.”
O wondrous Love, what hast Thou done!
The Father offers up His Son;
The Son, content, descendeth!
O Love, how strong Thou art to save!
Thou layest Him within the grave
Whose might the boulders rendeth.

4. Upon the cross Thou off’rest Him,
Nails, spear, deep wounds bestowing;
Thou slaught’rest Him e’en as a lamb,
His soul and veins are flowing;
From veins it is the crimson flood
Of His most holy, precious blood,
From soul His mighty sighing.
O dearest Lamb, what shall I do
To show Thee my devotion true
For such great good supplying?

Hymn 331 in the Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary.
By Paul Gerhardt, 1607-76; Tr. Handbook to the Lutheran Hymnal, St. Louis, 1942, and H. Bartels, b. 1929, alt.