Forgive or Fuggetaboudit

 

September 6, 2026, Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y.

“If your brother or sister sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If you are listened to, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If that person refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church, and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a gentile and a tax collector.  Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.  Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.  For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” - Matthew 18:15-20

I am fortunate enough to come from a family that often brings bible stories to life like medieval morality plays.

My grandfather and his brother, my Uncle Fred, lived in two stately farm houses separated by a narrow ribbon of grass. They hated each other and regarded the other’s property to be an evil pit that should never be traversed. As a boy I visited Uncle Fred at his barn every time we were in town, partly because he and Aunt Mae always welcomed me warmly, sometimes with cookies, and partly because I loved their old mangy German Shepherd, Shep. I presume members of my family never told Grandpa about my incursions into enemy territory and I was barely aware that my visits might have angered him.

I have no reason to believe Grandpa and Uncle Fred ever visited each other alone to point out the other’s grievous fault. And my family’s way of becoming witnesses to their brotherly spats was to form whispering conclaves to complain behind their backs.

“You know, Uncle Fred and Grandpa used to live in each other’s houses and one day they decided to trade,” I heard my father whisper to my mother. “No one knows why.”

“You know, Uncle Fred borrowed money from Grandpa to open a restaurant in Erie, Pennsylvania,” I heard Uncle Bob whisper to Cousin George. “The restaurant failed and Uncle Fred returned home without the money.”

“You know, Grandpa was the oldest of four siblings and some people think Grandpa did better than the others when their father’s will was probate,” Aunt Betty whispered in Uncle Bud’s ear.

None of these unfounded rumors sounded severe enough to generate lifelong enmity between the two old men, but I was a kid and there was s0 much about life I hadn’t figured out.

By the time I was a teenager the lingering competition between Grandpa and Uncle was their race to eternity.

Grandpa won the race and was laid out in a suit he never wore in a casket he would have thought too expensive. My teenage cousin Barbie and I were focused on a fly that alit on Grandpa’s nose and we didn’t hear the whispers that were swirling around us: 

“Where’s Fred?” “Is Fred here?” “Did Fred say he was coming?”

Barbie and I noticed that the fly had taken up permanent residence on Grandpa’s nose. “Remember how he’d whisk flies off his nose without waking up?” We both envisioned Grandpa reaching out of the casket to shoo the fly and we started laughing. We tried to hide it by lowering our heads but Aunt Lena noticed our shoulders shaking and thought we were crying. She came over and put her arms around us, which made it even harder t0 suppress our laughter and real tears dripped down our cheeks.

Then Uncle Fred walked in. 

All eyes turned to him and then, because my family believes it is impolite to stare, all eyes turned away. Uncle Fred nodded at a few people and walked over to the coffin.

He studied Grandpa’s remains for a few moments. (The fly was gone.) He turned away briefly to see if he was being noticed and turned again to Grandpa. He nodded. He harumphed. He turned sharply and walked out the door.

The whispers resumed immediately.

“Was that Fred?” “Was he crying?” “He wasn’t smiling was he?” Where did he go?”

Thus Grandpa and Uncle Fred brought life to this Gospel passage: “and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a gentile and a tax collector.” Of course, neither of them would have entered a church, and I suspect both of them wouldn’t mind being thought of as a gentile or tax collector. 

After mentioning tax collectors and gentiles, Jesus adds, “whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (18:18). This statement can be understood in several ways, three of which are especially compelling.

Professor Nicholas J. Shaser of Macalaster College in Saint Paul, Minn., offers some suggestions as to what Jesus mean when he says we will bind and loose on earth and in heaven.

First, because the language of binding and loosing appears in a discussion of sin and possible forgiveness (18:5), Matthew 18:18 may refer to sins being forgiven or retained. John’s Gospel offers a similar saying: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:23). This suggests that the fourth evangelist understood Matthew’s “binding” and “loosing” in terms of forgiving and retaining sins.

Second, Matthew’s saying may refer to the disciples’ authority to exclude and restore members of the church, a reading that fits the surrounding discussion in Matthew 18:15–20. Josephus, the first-century CE Jewish historian, describes the Pharisees of the first century BCE as “becoming administrators of everything—to banish and recall whom they want, to loose and bind” (Jewish War 1.111).3

Third, binding and loosing may refer to exorcism and authority over demons. Several Second Temple texts use the terms this way, including the account in which Raphael “bound” the demon Asmodeus and freed Sarah from demonic affliction (Tobit 8:3). The New Testament reflects similar usage when Satan is “bound” and “loosed” in Revelation 20:2–3, and when Luke describes a woman whom “Satan had bound” for 18 years before Jesus “loosed” her on the Sabbath (Luke 13:16).4 

Still, because Matthew 18:15–20 does not mention the devil or demons, the first two interpretations may be stronger.

The passage concludes by affirming God’s authority over church proceedings and Christ’s continuing presence with the gathered community. Jesus declares, “If two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (Matthew 18:19–20). 

Finally, we are reminded that although internal conflict is unavoidable, unity and fellowship and communication help sustain divine guidance and promote a forgiving spirit among believers.

And I must offer a shout-out to Grandpa and Uncle Fred by vividly showing us precisely how not to do it.

Dare to Forgive

September 13, 2026, Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y.

Then his lord summoned him and said to him, “You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?”

And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart. Matthew 18:32-35

Jesus. What gives?

This is the kind of passage that makes me want to hide my bible. God forbid some CIA agent find it and see a scriptural justification for water boarding.

“And in anger his Lord handed him over to be tortured …”

I’m searching the passage for loopholes (as W.C. Fields reportedly did when he studied the bible on his death bed). It seems an abuse of power for a king to send a flunky to the rack. 

At least it seems that way by our enlightened standards, which require turning a blind eye toward Alligator Alcatraz or the inhumane foreign prisons to which America sends its immigrants, as if they were some kind of anachronistic aberration. 

But kings are only human and we accept that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The unnerving part of Jesus’ intervention is that the reference to torture no sooner leaves his lips than he ups the ante: 

“So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

Pause for nervous laughter.

God will hand us over to be tortured if we nurse a grudge?

But we do nurse grudges. Your grudge list may be similar to mine, which includes Stalin, Osama Bin Laden, Roy Cohn. I nurse grudges over past and present presidents who start  unnecessary wars. And although most people don't remember him, I seethe with undiluted anger at Robert Strange McNamara, LBJ's Defense secretary during the Vietnam War.

My beef with McNamara is that he knew by 1967 that the Vietnam War was unnecessary and unwinnable. But he never told LBJ.

There are thousands of monuments to the price of his silence. Years after the war was over, Martha and I visited the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where her father once worked as a dish washer after he fled Cuba. We walked through the academy's peaceful cemeteries and realized tha West Point arranges plots by the wars in which their graduates fell.

As we walked past the graves of Vietnam veterans, I saw that a lot of those graves were of men and women who were killed after 1967. Every one of those heroes - and those who rest in cemeteries across the globe - died after their Secretary of Defense had concluded the war was unnecessary and unwinnable.

Why didn't McNamara speak up? Did he feel honor-bound to be loyal to an intransigent president? What were his thoughts when the casualty figures continued to mount: 16,592 in 1968? 11,616 in 1969? 6,081 in 1970? -- all for a cause he knew to be lost from the beginning?

In his later years, Robert McNamara was eloquent in his contrition. In a 1995 memoir he declared the war had been "wrong -- terribly wrong." He spent the rest of his life trying -- futilely, it turned out -- to prevent similar American disasters.

But the terrible question hanging over McNamara's life can't be avoided: what if he had spoken up sooner? Would the timely confession by the architect of the war that he had been wrong all along have forced LBJ to halt it? Would it have given subsequent warriors, Nixon and Kissinger, sufficient pause to sue for peace? Would it have saved thousands of lives?

Tragically, we'll never know. Personally, I think a public admission by Robert McNamara in May 1967 would have been loud enough to suck the air out of public opinion and silence the bombs over Hanoi.

And that's what I can't forgive. When his voice could have thundered around the world, he chose to be silent.

But I don’t think God cares whether I forgive Bob McNamara who I never met. Unfortunately, I think God is more concerned about my attitude toward my actual neighbor – that is, the guy next door – who curses at my barking dog, or the idiot who snatches all the donuts at the coffee table, or the mad max who cuts me off at rush hour on the parkway. To each I would hurl a Carnac curse from the old Tonight Show: may a bag of pop rocks explode in your shorts. 

Admittedly, that is not the kind of forgiving attitude that would convince God to send the torturer away. 

We all struggle with this, and to further darken our prospects, these annoying folks are easier to forgive than the people we actually live with or cannot escape.

In this category fall rancorous ex-spouses, misanthropic bosses, languid adult children still living at home, hypercritical in-laws who think you aren’t good enough for the family, and obsequious relatives who listen to them.

In each of these cases, you might find it possible to forgive these tormenters once or twice. But they keep coming back at you with new infamies and new miseries. Dear God, how much can we take? Wouldn’t Jesus be an empathetic listener?

You: “Jesus, she drives me crazy!” 

Jesus: “I know, right?”

That conversation will never happen. Jesus already had that conversation and it went like this:

Peter: “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” 

Jesus: “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” (Matthew 18:21-22.

Actually, Jesus was condescending to Peter’s literal mind. He wasn’t suggesting we use hash marks to keep track of the number of times we forgive. A redacted version of the conversation would have the same meaning.

Peter: “Shall I ever stop forgiving someone who sins against me?” 

Jesus: “No.”

This is certainly one of those utterances of Jesus that we would prefer to ignore. A lot of families have members who haven’t spoken to each other for years because of some terrible and unforgivable thing that happened. 

In many bible stories, antagonism between siblings was common. 

It’s no coincidence that this Gospel lesson is pared with another simmering sibling rivalry: the one that existed for decades between Joseph and his brothers. Genesis 50:15-21.

As the oldest of five siblings, I have a simple exegesis of the brotherly enmity that existed for so long: Joseph was a twit.

He was the youngest of his brothers and his father, Jacob, adored him. Joseph was somehow conceived long after Jacob had accepted erectile dysfunction as a badge of maturity, along with cataracts and unplanned flatulence. Joseph was obviously a miracle baby, and Jacob, his jaw unhinged and spittle dripping on his apron, stared at the child for hours.

That alone would have annoyed the older brothers, but Joseph made it worse. Either out of insolence or innocence, Joseph boasted of dreams that showed he ranked far above his seniors.

What a schlemiel. As an older brother, I wouldn’t necessarily approve of selling the brat into slavery. But – to quote Chris Rock – I can certainly understand it.

As it turned out, the brothers plotted to kill Joseph but, out of mercy or guilt, they sold the boy to Midianite traders for 20 shekels of silver. In a breathtaking act of sibling cruelty, the brothers killed a goat and smeared the blood of Joseph’s coat so Jacob would think the boy was dead. 

The decades that followed this monumental act of sibling betrayal nursed festering resentments that would defy any possibility of reconciliation. When Jacob’s sons are forced to travel to Egypt to seek relief from a famine, they discover to their horror that little Joseph is now the king’s first minister. Not good news. The revelation was tantamount to a death sentence.

But, thousands of years before Jesus ordered aggrieved people to forgive seventy-seven times, God’s grace was powerfully manifest.

So the brothers approached Joseph, saying, “Your father gave this instruction before he died, ‘Say to Joseph: I beg you, forgive the crime of your brothers and the wrong they did in harming you.’ Now therefore please forgive the crime of the servants of the God of your father.” Joseph wept when they spoke to him. Then his brothers also wept, fell down before him, and said, “We are here as your slaves.” But Joseph said to them, “Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today. So have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones.” In this way he reassured them, speaking kindly to them. Genesis 50:16-21.

Joseph’s forgiving response to his brothers was unexpected. If he had reacted, shall we say, normally, he would have incited a bloody fratricide like the Red Wedding scene in George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones.

In fact, that might have been an easier reaction for Joseph than blithely dismissing all those years of treachery and pain.

But what would have been the point of vengeance? Who would have benefitted? And how would God have been served?

The dark landscape in which we live is satiated with deceit and betrayal, reprisal and recrimination. There may be some small satisfaction in striking back, but in the end retaliation begets more scores to be settled, more pain, more alienation from God’s eternal love.

Your assignment, Jesus said – if you choose to accept it – is to forgive and forgive as often as you are hurt.

The only way out of the obscene cycle of resentment and despair is to forgive the ones who hurt you most. 

Jesus did the math for us: we are called to forgive seventy seven times.

And that is where grace begins.

Moses the Fugitive Meets the Bush

 

August 30, 2026, First Lutheran Church, Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y. Exodus 3:1-12

RUN, MOSES, RUN!

Who’s that running down the street,

Down the street with feet so fleet?

That our Mose who’ll set us free?

Yellin’ “MOVE, I gotta flee!”?

Moses givin’ us conniptions

Runnin’ like a scared Egyptian!

RUN, MOSES, RUN!

Moses the fugitive? We always knew there was a reason he had to hide out among the smelly sheep in Gideon, but the notion of a wanted desperado is a hard to sync with our image of Moses the Liberator. We are more comfortable with Moses di Michaeangelo, the massive granite sculpture of a fierce, horned Moses scowling as he gathers his long beard. Or, of course, Charlton Heston’s Moses, covering his pecs with crude shepherd’s cloth and raising his staff against the mighty Pharoah. 

Moses the fugitive?

Most of us remember famous media depictions of fugitives, including the 1993 movie starring Harrison Ford and the 1963 television series staffing David Janssen, both actors playing Dr. Richard Kimble, an innocent man convicted of killing his wife. Both fugitives were entirely justified because – unlike our Moses – they did not do the crime they were accused of.

When I was in the Air Force, so long ago that the aircraft I supported are in the Smithsonian, my base commander was a famous fugitive during World War II. Colonel William W. Parramore, Jr., was a quiet man who never missed a chapel service and always wrote a 20-dollar check to the chaplain fund – a princely donation in 1966, worth about $193.10 in today’s money. When he was referred to in military letter codes, William Parramore was Whiskey Papa, which seemed amusingly inappropriate for this ascetic, teetotaling man. I don’t think anyone ever told him his lady wife was called Whiskey Mama behind his back. I always enjoyed using the military alphabet and often considered using Papa Juliet as as a nom de plume.

Be that as it may, William Parramore was a fighter pilot over Germany in the Second World War. His plane was shot down and he bailed out just ahead of a Wehrmacht patrol. He managed to elude them for days, sometimes finding himself crouching behind a thinning hedge row as enemy troops walked by so closely he could read their insignia. Finally, after several close calls he managed to escape across the Swiss border where he was taken in by sympathetic farmers and hunkered down until he could be rescued. William Parramore – Whiskey Papa – was a wartime fugitive and I was proud to serve under him.

But we don’t want to overlook another famous fugitive who, like Moses, was also guilty of the crime for which he was being sought. That fugitive was our own Martin Luther and his crime – at least in the view of Papal authorities – was heresy. Refusing to retract any of his 95 theses or the scores of heretical tracts he was circulating, religious leaders sought him out to be tortured or burned at the stake. Like Moses, Luther ran. Frederick III of Saxony pretended to kidnap Luther to keep him safe at Wartburg Castle. Luther discarded his monk’s robes, grew a beard, and used the name Junker Jörg until the coast was clear.

But let’s return to where we left Moses, a fugitive surrounded by sheep and Reuel’s daughters and possibly reconciled to living out his life in those cozy fields.

And that is where our scripture lesson today leaves him, a wanted murderer, a fugitive, content just to be alive.

But we all know that is not where the story ends. The texts that have been set aside for our summer readings will jump from here to Exodus 14 and 15, the deliverance of the Hebrews at the parting of the Red Sea. But what happens between Chapters 2 and 14?

Most of us know those wonderful stories very well, and that’s because most of us rely on scripture, not Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 epic, The Ten Commandments.

But not everyone is as biblically literate as we are. Martha had a parishioner at North Baptist Church who was distressed by the fact that the story Martha read from the pulpit was not the same drama she had viewed in VistaVision. In 1956 wags would go the movie so they could tell their neighbors, “I liked the book better.” But in fact, millions who saw the film had never read the book.

Many of the film’s characters are absent from Scripture but the actors are well known. Yul Brynner displays a frozen scowl with emotions ranging from angry to angrier. Edward G. Robinson plays a thuggish Israelite but we miss the cigar he made famous in Little Caesar. Vincent Price as Baka displays the cinematic creepiness that made him famous. John Derek’s sinewy body glistens with so much grease Debra Paget would have slid right off him. Yvonne DeCarlo previews the same character she brought to life in The Munsters. And Charlton Heston expresses the same righteous rage as when he defied NRA critics to pry a gun from his “cold dead hands.”

But we know very well that the crucial development that transforms Moses from a cowering fugitive to a mighty liberator is God’s miraculous appearance in a bush that burns but is not burned.

In the movie, if you listen carefully, the voice of God is Heston’s own baritone, inadvertently creating the illusion that Moses is talking to himself. That raises some Jungian issues that are far too complex to go into here. But it is a dramatic scene.

The most profound revelation in the scene – in scripture and on screen – is when God reveals his name to Moses:

God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, “I AM has sent me to you … This is my name forever, and this is my title for all generations.” (Exodus 3:14-15)

We know the name in Hebrew – Yahweh – is so sacred that Jews will not pronounce it aloud, some times substituting HaShem, “the name,” in conversation. One of our Diakonia teachers – now our Bishop, Paul Egensteiner – declined to pronounce the name aloud out of respect to Jewish brothers and sisters. 

But when God revealed God’s name to Moses, the importance of this revelation is enormous. God is revealing to Moses that God is not merely present today, but present outside of time. 

Referring to the past, we say, “I was.” God says, “I am.” 

Referring to right now, we say, “I am.” God says, “I am.”

Referring to the future, we say, “I will be.” God says, “I am.”

This is no rhetorical exercise. It is a mind-boggling disclosure about the nature of God. It is a stunning revelation that our concept of God may be too small.

Because God exists in all of time. If, to us, the bondage of the Jews in Egypt took place five millennia ago, we must try to grasp the fact that to God it is happening and is always happening.

That is one reason events reported in the bible are so important to our lives. To our feeble frontal cortexes, the liberation of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage is a dim, distant historical event. But in God’s time it is happening.

To our feeble frontal cortexes, Jesus was crucified two thousand years ago, so long ago that it’s difficult for us to even imagine it. We rely on ancient scrolls and archaeological digs to remind us what happened, and sometimes it’s difficult to comprehend why the dusty past would have anything to do with us.

But in God’s time, the death and resurrection of Jesus is not an isolated historical event from long, long ago. In God’s time, it is happening now. It is happening yesterday, it is happening today, it is happening tomorrow, it is happening for all time, forever and ever.

And that is the message of the burning bush: a declaration to Moses that God’s liberating and saving power extends not only to the enslaved Hebrews, but to all creation, wherever and whenever we walk the earth.

Praise be to HaShem. Praise be to God.

Amen.

Was Jesus Rude?

August 16, 2026, First Lutheran Church, Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y. 

Have you ever said something you regretted? Something that was rude or uncalled for?

I could write a book about my verbal faux pas. 

Chapter one would date back to my youth when I was a teenage airman. Perhaps my youth would explain my indiscretions. I joined the Air Force when I was 18 and was discharged four years later at 22. The entire time I was a cold warrior, my frontal cortex was still years away from adult maturity. Looking back, I tell myself: that explains a lot.

On some week nights I would visit the base Airman’s Club, a large Quonset hut that was equipped with a bar, a dance floor, and juke boxes. Although NCOs and officers were excluded from the club, the wing commanders would drop by on occasion to schmooze with the airman.

One night Colonel Daniel “Chappie” James strolled through the doors. He was a massive African American man who seemed too big to fit into the F-101 fighter jet he flew so adeptly. “I don’t get into the aircraft,” he explained. “I put it on.”

The airmen in the club that night started to snap to attention but Colonel James waved us down. “Let’s have a beer and take the night off,” he said.

He made the barstool look fragile and small when he sat down. “How about a brew?” he asked the airman tending the bar.

Soon several airmen began to gather around the Colonel, enjoying his friendly banter and asking questions. “Are we going to Vietnam?” “Are you bothered by G-forces when you make a max-effort takeoff?” “What do you think 0f LBJ?”

The Colonel answered each question with good humor and the airmen, soothed by several beers, began to relax around him. We laughed uproariously at something funny he said (as one does when a Colonel says something funny).

The airman sitting on the stool next to him, apparently drunk enough to think the Colonel could take a joke, lifted his full glass and poured it over the Colonel’s head.

The room froze. The Colonel looked dumbfounded at the airman and for a minute I thought the Colonel was about to hit him or rip the chevrons off his sleeves. But the Colonel accepted a towel from the bartender and wordlessly dabbed it on his head.

The big man stood up and the other airmen moved several paces away from him. The airman who poured the beer looked like he was going to cry.

I was feeling the effects of too many beers myself and I decided the airman needed support.

“He didn’t mean it, Chappie,” I said, my words slightly slurred.

I was stunned by my abject familiarity as soon as I said it. The Colonel looked stunned, too, and staired at me as if he was memorizing my face. I staired back, horrified.

Finally the Colonel threw the towel on the bar and hauled his six-foot-four inch frame off the stool. He stood long enough to allow his wet uniform to settle and marched resolutely out of the club.

That was in 1965, which makes it 61 years since my most egregious faux pas. My terrible bad choice.

Our adult daughter Katie is a developmentally disabled adult on the autism spectrum. This doesn’t slow her down much and she often has insights the rest of us miss.

We often tell Katie that when she does something inappropriate, she’s not being bad. She simply made a bad choice.

The scripture Katie quotes most often is Matthew 15:21-28. Jesus is approached by a relentless Gentile woman screaming “Lord help me” and begging him to drive an evil spirit out of her daughter.

Jesus pointedly ignores her. The disciples’ testosterone spills out in manly resentment and they growl at Jesus to send this trash away,

Jesus continues to ignore her. When she persists, he dismisses her emphatically.

“I was sent only to the children of the house of Israel.”

Katie’s commentary is precise.

“Jesus made a bad choice.”

Perhaps Katie is seeing a side of Jesus we rarely talk about. The human Jesus, tired and harassed by crowds seeking his attention. The human Jesus who, out of exhaustion, might say, “Don’t bother me.”

We know Jesus relents because of the woman’s faith and we may think Jesus was just testing her.

But Katie sees another side of Jesus.

“He made a bad choice.”

Eunyung Lim, Assistant Professor of Religion at Middlebury College, says, “I often introduce this to my students as the ‘When Jesus goes low, the woman goes high moment.’”

Are we disturbed by this side of Jesus? Do we agree he is making a bad choice?

“Jesus’s replies are cold, if not disrespectful, from the outset,” says Professor Lim. “His indirect refusal to heal her daughter echoes Matthew 10:5–6, where he clearly circumscribes his disciples’ mission within an ethnic boundary (‘Go nowhere among the gentiles … go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’).

Some scholars suggest this is the first time Jesus has encountered a woman outside his own ethnic family and he may need some time to work his way out of the prejudices of his people. He is surrounded by his disciples who complain about the woman, reflecting the enmity Jews feel for Canaanites as well as their rancor that an apostate woman has the impudence to approach the Master.

But the woman is so worried about her daughter’s suffering that she overcomes the fear she must feel in the presence of hostile and powerful men.

She persists. She kneels respectfully and refers to Jesus by his Davidic title, Lord. She remains respectful and calm despite Jesus’ harsh responses. 

“It is not fair,” he tells her, almost cruelly, “to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

The woman’s response is one of the most courageous and faith-filled declarations in Matthew.

“Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumb’s that fall from their master’s table.”

Was Jesus only testing her? Or was she testing him? Did she dramatically expand his understanding that his Messiahship was for all God’s people, not just Jews? Did she convert him? Did he suddenly understand he had made a bad choice?

Matthew uses the story to express his and his followers’ determination to shed the binds of ethnic prejudices and declare that Jesus came not just to Jews but to all people.

“The petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, once uttered by Matthew’s Jewish members,” says Professor Lin, are now actualized in the lives of gentile believers, Professor Lin notes “the Canaanite woman hears, ‘God’s will be done’ for her as she wishes; on earth as in heaven, she too finds her share in God’s daily ‘bread.’” 

And praying those petitions is always a good choice.

Bad Choice No Choice

August 9, 2026, Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y.

Our adult daughter Katie is a developmentally disabled adult on the autism spectrum.This doesn’t slow her down much and she often has insights the rest of us miss.

The scripture she quotes most often is Matthew 15:21-28. Jesus is approached by a relentless Gentile woman screaming “Lord help me” and begging him to drive an evil spirit out of her daughter.

Jesus pointedly ignores her. When she persists, he dismisses her emphatically.

“I was sent only to the children of the house of Israel.”

Katie’s commentary is precise.

“Jesus made a bad choice.”

Perhaps Katie is seeing a side of Jesus we rarely talk about. The human Jesus, tired and harassed by crowds seeking his attention. The human Jesus who, out of exhaustion, might say, “Don’t bother me.”

We know Jesus relents because of the woman’s faith and we may think Jesus was just testing her.

But Katie sees another side of Jesus.

“He made a bad choice.”

In Matthew 14:22-33, we see another side of Jesus we haven’t seen before.

The disciples are used to – dare we use the phrase? – gentle Jesus meek and mild, the unflappable Jesus who teaches in parables, the Jesus who patiently persuades people to enter the kingdom of God, the Jesus ever ready to cure the sick, the Jesus who welcomes sinners and tax collectors into his presence.

In Matthew 14:22, he’s not asking. He’s telling. He’s ordering his disciples: get in the boat.

The updated edition of the New Revised Standard Version puts it clearly enough: “he made the disciples get into the boat.”

The writer of Matthew chooses the word anagkazō. This word means “to compel, to constrain, to force.” The New American Standard Bible translates it plainly: He “compelled” them. This verb appears only nine times in the entire New Testament, and in every instance it carries the weight of compulsion rather than invitation.

New Testament scholar Zina Jacque notes Jesus had no intention of allowing the disciples off the hook. “He put (the disciples) in that boat the way a teacher puts a test on your desk. You did not ask for it. You may not be ready for it. But it is here, and you are going to take it.”

This is where the rubber of faith hits the road. The disciples have been talking a good game but their faith has not yet been tested. Now they have been compelled to board a small boat that is being tossed about violently on a churning sea.

“Look how Matthew describes it,” Dr Jacque writes. “Verse 24 says the boat was basanizomenon, tormented, by the waves. Our English Bibles may say ‘battered”’ or ‘tossed.’ But the Greek is far more violent. Basanizō is the word used elsewhere in Matthew for demonic torment (8:29). This is not rough weather. This is the kind of experience that exhausts every resource you have brought with you. The disciples’ arms are spent. Their strategies have failed. Every skill they have for managing a boat in a storm has been used up. This test has left them defeated and in despair. And this is precisely when Jesus shows up.”

That’s the test: will we have the faith to endure the worst, trusting that Jesus will show up?

There are many in our church history who summoned great courage to pass the test. Foremost among them was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor, teacher, and writer.

For Bonhoeffer the cost of discipleship was severe. He had left a tenured position at Union Seminary to return to his native Germany to oppose the Third Reich. On April 9, 1945, barely a month before the war in Europe ended, Bonhoeffer was cruelly executed by the Nazis for participating in a plot to assassinate Hitler. Piano wire was wrapped around his neck and he was strung up until he slowly strangled to death.

Eberhard Bethge, a student and close friend of Bonhoeffer, writes of a man who saw the execution:

“I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer... kneeling on the floor praying fervently to God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the few steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.”

For those who ponder discipleship, this account should be kept in mind. When Bonhoeffer decided to become a Lutheran pastor he may have anticipated a quiet life of writing and teaching. Instead, he died a martyr at 39.

He passed the test. God grant that we will never be tested that severely.

Back on the tossing boat, the disciples are struggling to submit to God’s will.

In this scene, the storm is not merely the setting for a miracle; it is the place where Jesus reveals himself as the sovereign I AM and teaches his disciples where true rescue begins.

As the disciples hold on for dear life on the raging sea, we must remember that the tempest is not merely the backdrop for a miracle.

Jesus appears walking on the water with reassuring words: “Take heart. I AM. Do not be afraid.” (Tharseite, ego eimi, mē phobeisthe.)

“He says the bare, unfinished, unqualified I AM, the name that needs no completion because it contains everything,” says Dr Jacque. “He is the one who walked on the waters at creation (Job 9:8), the one who rules the surging sea (Psalm 89:9), the one who was present before the foundation of the world. The one who can help them finish this test.”

But Peter, who makes us think of the student in class who reminds the teacher no homework has been assigned, is determined to get extra credit for the test.

Peter cried out, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” (Matthew 14:28)

Jesus may have stifled a smile when he said, “Come.”

We all know what happened next.

“Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened and began to sink.” (Matthew 14:29-30)

Moments later, sitting on the boat as lake water drizzled from his nostrils, did Peter feel embarrassment? Chagrin? Did he feel liken he had flunked the test?

The lesson, ultimately, is not to seek extra credit or to strive to be head of the class.

Peter sank beneath the waves and had no power to save himself.

The test Jesus compelled Peter and the disciples to take is distilled into a three word lesson:

Kyrie, sōson me. “Lord, save me.”