Mother's Love.
I. Our Lord judged this woman after He had tried her, as gold is tried in the fire. Why He did so we cannot tell. Perhaps He wanted by the trial to make her a better woman, to bring out something noble which lay in her heart unknown to her, though not to Him who knew what was in man. Perhaps He wished to show His disciples, who looked down on her as a heathen dog, that a heathen, too, could have faith, humility, nobleness, and grace of heart. Be that as it may, our Lord was seemingly stern. "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." And this woman was a Greek, a Syro-Phœnician by nation of a mixed race of people, notoriously low and profligate, and old enemies of the Jews.
II. Yet in the poor heathen mother's heart there rose up a whole heaven of perfect humility, faith, adoration. If she were base and mean, yet our Lord was great and wise and good; and that was all the more reason why He should be magnanimous, generous, condescending, like a true King, to the basest and meanest of His subjects. She asked not for money or honour or this world's fine things; but simply for her child's health, her child's deliverance from some mysterious and degrading illness. Surely there was no harm in asking for that; and so, with her quick Syrian art, she answers our Lord in those wonderful words so full of humility, of reverence, and yet with a certain archness, almost playfulness in them, as it were turning our Lord's words against Him, and by that very thing showing how utterly she trusted Him: "Truth, Lord; yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's table." By her words she was justified. By those few words she proved her utter faith in our Lord's power and goodness perhaps her faith in His Godhead. By those words she proved the gentleness and humility, the graciousness and gracefulness, of her own character. And so she conquered, as the blessed Lord loves to be conquered, by the prayer of faith, of humility, of confidence, of earnestness, and she had her reward.
C. Kingsley, All Saints' Day and other Sermons,p. 76.
Reference: Matthew 15:22; Matthew 15:23. E. Bersier, Sermons,2nd series, p. 159.