I would be real interested to know what people actually heard from this sermon. I think it had a high emotional register, but I’m not sure if I used that emotion to the proper end.
The core concern that I think the text addressed is God’s truth. And God’s truth can be real ugly. It can be offensive. Because God’s truth tells us how ugly we are in our nature. The cross tells us and shows us what and who we are. Jesus became our ugliness. And God works in the middle of that ugly. He works through the messy and incomplete and ugly. That task of faith is to recognize that even how ugly this crucified God might appear, his love is revealed there. And it is a love that is wide and deep and more than enough. The scraps that fall, the pieces gathered after the dinner, are enough to fill his people and those like this Canaanite who were not his people but have been grafted in.