An eight-year-old boy looked at the bronze memorial plaques on the wall in his church, like we have in our narthex, and asked his father. "Daddy, why are those names up there on the wall?" His father explained, "Son, these are the members of this church who died in the service." The little boy replied, "Daddy, did they die in the 8:30 service or the 11:00 service?"

Sometimes Jesus gets frustrated with his service or turned off with his own ministry. Pressures to heal and feed and comfort. Resistance and opposition. Disappointment and anger. Comes a time to slow down and take a break.

St. Vincent de Paul once observed, "Be careful to preserve your health. It is a trick of the devil, which he employs to deceive good souls, to incite them to do more than they are able, in order that they may no longer be able to do anything."

And so, Jesus draws apart from the crowds, leads his band of disciples northward, away from Judea and Galilee, heading toward the Mediterranean Coast. As far as we know this is the first time Jesus leaves his homeland and enters foreign territory, where the Syrians and Phoenicians have long ruled.

Jesus’ little band finds a vacation house in the city of Tyre. Today this city of Tyre is in Lebanon, where warfare dominates the news these days. Tyre is half way between Beirut and Haifa. Maybe this vacation cottage is overlooking the Sea, a good place to be quiet and stay out of sight. But news about this strange new healer gets there before he does. First time Jesus steps outside a crowd starts to gather, and this woman breaks away and runs toward Jesus. No woman should do this. She should ask her father or husband to speak for her. But this is no ordinary woman. Let’s give her the name Helen, Helen of Tyre. A feminist of sorts before her time. She breaks with custom because she is desperate. Her little daughter is dying. "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David," she shouts, "My daughter is tormented by a demon."

We know little at all about Helen. Does she have a husband? Is she a single mother, alone in the world with her little daughter dependent upon her? She is a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. But we can be sure she feels the anguish any mother feels who is watching her little daughter die before her eyes. No one else has been able to deal with this demon, whatever kind of disease modern medicine would call it. Helen has heard little about this Jesus, this Jewish rabbi, but she reaches out in hope and trust, in her desperation believing and pleading, going against every social custom that tells her to be quiet and stay in her place. But her deep and desperate need trumps how she’s supposed to behave. "Have mercy, Lord," Helen pleads, her voice weak from weeping, hoping with her last ounces of courage she will be heard and not flogged for this public disturbance.

Helen is sobbing, waiting, but Jesus answers not at all. Silence. His disciples jump up and run to intervene. "Lord, send this woman away. Get rid of her. Look how she is pestering us with all her shouting. We will never get any rest with her hanging around us." Helen is being rebuked and she should back up, and slink away, accept this rejection and go back home where she belongs and behave herself, as she should. She has no right to demand to be heard.

But now Jesus does speak. "I am sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Helen looks up, draws closer, now drops to her knees and pleads, "Lord, help me." Jesus’ disciples start to remove Helen. Jesus speaks again, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs." The disciples look relieved. Jesus has rebuked her. Surely this rude woman will now listen and go home. Jesus turns as if to leave.

Helen hears. She is stunned, her jaw drops, momentarily speechless, but quickly she looks up, directly into Jesus’ face and, her voice quivering with courage and hope, speaks these words, "Yes, Lord, but even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps and crumbs that fall down from their master’s table." The disciples gasp, stunned at such a counter-rebuke. What a rude, disrespectful woman this is.

Jesus pauses, smiles, takes a deep breath, turns to Helen, reaches out to lift Helen up from her knees and speaks these words, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish. For saying this, you may go—the demon has left your daughter."

Helen hears, begins to shake, to weep with joy. Can she believe what she hears? She turns and runs home and finds her little daughter sitting on her bed, at peace, healed, the demon gone.

Salvation has come to this house. Salvation through Jesus, but salvation despite his initial reluctance to share his Father God’s healing love with foreigners, with Gentiles. And Helen has this strike against her—she is a Gentile and this second strike, that she is a woman and females are supposed to follow the lead of males, never to take such a lead.

Helen hears Jesus declare "It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs." She hears Jesus give her an opening, for his word for dog is not the wild, unclean, scavenger who roams with jackals and hyenas. Jesus chooses the diminutive word for house pet, puppy dog or lap dog, the animal who lives within the family, underfoot and eats the leftovers from the table. Helen is quick to welcome even this affirmation of her people, herself and her little daughter, not cast out but included, to receive scraps of the precious spiritual food that flows from the master’s table.

Jesus wakes up, turns on, recognizes her trust in him and what he offers, this pleading trust coming from the mouth of a foreign woman. Jesus honors her pleas, her persistence, her explicit claim upon his spiritual food, her insistence and trust that he will share his salvation with her and her family. And he does share. He shares because she, both merely a woman and an outsider, a foreigner, she yet reaches out to him with need and trust Jesus has rarely seen. And Jesus finds his eyes opened, his horizon expanded, his family of believers growing, all because this Helen of Tyre moves him so. In her persistence she speaks to him; Jesus listens, Jesus learns, Jesus responds, Jesus saves, all because this woman in her need ministers to Jesus.

Yes Jesus can change, Jesus can grow, and Jesus can take in and absorb and assimilate learning. As Luke puts it, Jesus increases in wisdom and in divine and human favor (Luke 2:52). And if it’s true Jesus lives within his family today; if it’s true we as Christians are Christ’s body; if it’s true we Christians are the arms, legs, hands, feet, eyes, ears and voices for Christ in this our world, then as Jesus does, we too can hear and learn and share Christ’s healing and saving love with children of God whom we, like Jesus, might be reluctant to hear calling out to us. If we’re honest, we may find ourselves like Jesus’ first disciples working to reject and send away this annoying and uppity woman whose need defies normal values and rules.

Helen’s story shows us how true it is that God our creator has created every human being to bear and to share God’s very own image and likeness. And this is true not only for God’s chosen people. This true of Gentiles and other foreigners. Yet this is a new awareness for Jesus, and certainly for his disciples, the truth that every stranger, every alien outsider, every enemy has the built in need for Christ’s love and the innate ability to respond to Christ and to trust Christ to share healing and saving love. And Helen of Tyre has little knowledge of who Jesus truly is, she is not educated in the scriptures, she has no synagogue experience or influence. Yet this woman, Helen of Tyre, does what the Apostle Simon Peter calls for when he says, "…everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved"(Acts 2:21). And here is a roadmap for growing our church as we obey Christ’s commission to go out to make disciples, teaching and baptizing.

As we study our plans for our capital campaign, let us think not only of better and safer buildings, not only of better air conditioning and better sound systems. Let us think of equipping ourselves as disciples, equipping the saints, gearing up to take seriously new and future generations of young people and families who are hungry, who, like Helen of Tyre, may be desperate for healing and salvation, if only we are ready and prepared to welcome Christ to speak, to sing, to serve, to share through us this love only Christ can share.

You know, Jesus does not go to Tyre to seek out Helen with her dying daughter. Jesus goes for rest. But Helen’s antennae are up and working; Helen’s radar detects Jesus nearby and her need connects with Jesus whose surprise or shock also connects with her.

"Test me," our Lord God says. "Try me. Bring your tithes into the storehouse." Give of yourselves, faithfully; give what God has blessed you with and placed into your hands for your care taking. Give your thanksgiving unto God and see if God is faithful to God’s promise to pour out unto us God’s people such a blessing we can neither count nor number.