5th. September. 2021. Service.
Service of Worship 5th September 2021
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Prelude: Angel Bands
Introit: 791 “Open your eyes see the glory of the King”
Collect
Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Hymn 147 “All creatures of our God and King”
Call to Prayer
Put all your confidence in God.
Those who have God as their helper will rejoice.
God gives justice to the oppressed and food to the hungry.
God frees the prisoners and opens the eyes of the blind.
Now put your trust in God’s goodness.
Let God’s reign endure forever! Let us worship God.
Eternal God, first and last, our beginning and our end,
beside you there is nothing or no one greater.
You gave breath to all living things.
By your Spirit, you are among us still, breathing new life,
turning anger into reconciliation,
division into unity,
grief into consolation.
Through your grace, you open up new directions and new possibilities
for the world you love.
So, we offer you our lives and our labours in worship and in service,
joining in creation’s song of praise and adoration:
Holy, holy, holy are you, O God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit, now and always. Amen.
God of mercy,
we know you judge the world with an eye for the poor and outcast.
We confess we fail to live with the same eye for those on the margins.
We have been silent when we should have spoken up,
and uncaring in the face of injustice.
We have not shown the same generosity to others that you have shown us.
Forgive us for putting ourselves first,
and help us to serve you with the kindness we meet in Jesus Christ.
Assurance of Pardon
Hear the good news! Gracious God, you do not condemn us but in the mercy of y Christ who died for us; rose for us, reigns in power for us and prays for us, you receive and pardon us.
In Jesus Christ, we are forgiven and set free by God’s generous grace.
Prayer for Understanding
Your mercies towards us are new every morning and your word comes fresh from heaven to us. May we hear what you are saying to the church today and find the courage to follow your will. Give each of us a word of encouragement, challenge and hope to inspire our pilgrimage of faith. Amen.
The Lord’s Prayer in the version most familiar to you.
North Queensferry
Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, The power, and the glory, For ever. Amen.
Intimations
The coffee mornings will recommence in North Queensferry on Wednesday 15th September at 10:30 am. In Inverkeithing the first coffee morning will be on Tuesday 28th September. Social distancing, track and trace and masks when moving in the sanctuary will be required.
Invitation to the Offering
The Book of Proverbs declares that those who are generous are blessed, for they share theirbread with the poor. We do not bring bread today, but we offer a portion of God’s gifts to us. May our gifts and our labours, whether paid or volunteered, meet the needs of those who often go without.
Prayer of Dedication
Generous God, you call us to reach out to those in need in kindness rather than judgment, and with generosity, not just good intentions. Bless our gifts and our actions for Christ’s sake, that our faith in his love will show in our actions through the church that bears his name.
All Age Talk
What kinds of things come to mind when you think of back-to-school time? One school supply that many of you need when you go back to school is a box of crayons.
I have many crayons here, and they’re all different sizes and colors. Some are sharp and some are dull. Some have strange-sounding names. Some are like new, and others have been used quite a bit. The wrappers are fresh on some, while others are torn and dirty.
We can learn a lot from these crayons. Even though they may have differences, they all fit very nicely in the same box. That’s a good picture of the way the church should be. The people that make up the church come in all sizes and colors, and some may even have names that sound different from yours. Some are old and some are young. Some are dressed in very nice clothes, while others may wear clothing that is dirty and worn.
Have you ever noticed people being treated differently because they did not look or act like others?
James, the brother of Jesus, wrote in the Bible that the followers of Jesus should not show favoritism, or treat one person better than someone else. He said, “My friends, if you have faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, you won’t treat some people better than others.” James explained that if a rich person wearing fancy clothes and a gold ring comes to one of your meetings and a poor person dressed in worn-out clothes also comes, you must not give the best seat to the one in fancy clothes and tell the one who is poor to stand at the side or sit on the floor. That is the same as saying that some people are better than others, which the Bible says is wrong.
We must be careful not to show favoritism in our church or anywhere else. We’re all God’s children, whether we’re rich or poor, or of any kind of race. As James said, “You will do all right if you obey the most important law in the Scriptures. It’s the law that commands us to love others as much as we love ourselves.”
Dear God, please help us to love one another as You have loved us–showing us how every person is adored by You. We don’t want to play favorites with Your people. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Hymn 143 “Who put the colours in the rainbow?”
Reading: Psalm 125
A song of ascents.
1 Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion,
which cannot be shaken but endures for ever.
2 As the mountains surround Jerusalem,
so the Lord surrounds his people
both now and for evermore.
3 The sceptre of the wicked will not remain
over the land allotted to the righteous,
for then the righteous might use
their hands to do evil.
4 Lord, do good to those who are good,
to those who are upright in heart.
5 But those who turn to crooked ways
the Lord will banish with the evildoers.
Peace be on Israel.
Hymn 562 “Through the love of God our Saviour”
Reading Mark 7:24-37
24 Jesus left that place and went to the vicinity of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it; yet he could not keep his presence secret. 25 In fact, as soon as she heard about him, a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an impure spirit came and fell at his feet. 26 The woman was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter.
27 ‘First let the children eat all they want,’ he told her, ‘for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.’
28 ‘Lord,’ she replied, ‘even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.’
29 Then he told her, ‘For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter.’
30 She went home and found her child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
31 Then Jesus left the vicinity of Tyre and went through Sidon, down to the Sea of Galilee and into the region of the Decapolis. 32 There some people brought to him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk, and they begged Jesus to place his hand on him.
33 After he took him aside, away from the crowd, Jesus put his fingers into the man’s ears. Then he spat and touched the man’s tongue. 34 He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, ‘Ephphatha!’ (which means ‘Be opened!’). 35 At this, the man’s ears were opened, his tongue was loosed, and he began to speak plainly.
36 Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone. But the more he did so, the more they kept talking about it. 37 People were overwhelmed with amazement. ‘He has done everything well,’ they said. ‘He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.’
Hymn 691 “Be still my soul, the Lord is on your side”
Sermon
There was a story in the paper a week or so past about a mother who started a crowd funding event for her autistic daughter to be able to take up a place at the Hammond School of Dance in Chester. A single parent, she was unable to afford the £29,000 annual fees when daughter missed out on a bursary.
Arriving by bus from Leeds, at the audition the mother found herself confronted by privilege, having to wait in the rain for a Covid test result she watch as other children’s parents fetched them in comfortable cars and came equipped with the best gear. I haven’t heard how successful this has been, but I remember thinking how you have to have a lot of nerve to undertake such a venture publicly.
Of course it must be said that love drove her. I could not help but see a small parallel with one of the gospel stories before us today. Here it was not about a chance for a disadvantaged child to realise her dream of dancing, but for a deeply disturbed girl to have a chance to live a normal life.
Love drove her mother, an elemental, primal kind of love, the love of a mother for an afflicted daughter. Love and hope for all that her child could be, would have been, had not a demon taken possession of what was not the demon’s to take.
It is also a story of courage to step outside of one’s prescribed role, to bump up against the deeply embedded expectations of others: the courageous audacity to cross any boundary to do whatever it took, wherever it took her, to get what was needed most.
Behind it all in both cases was a clear, burning love which would not let go until it got what it came for. For one a place for the future of a talent, for the other for healing at the hands and from the heart of Jesus.
What was it that Jesus saw, heard, and felt when he turned to this person who had invaded his privacy to get what she needed? What crossed Jesus’ mind as he looked down to see this stranger, a woman, and a Gentile woman at that, bowed at his feet so that all he could see was the back of her head, so that all he could hear was the pleading in her voice?
It appears very strange to us that Jesus seems to dismiss the woman before she even begins. We do not know the tone of his voice or the reason for his challenge. Was it to test the woman’s courage? If so, it worked as she was determined not leave until she has what she came to receive.
Dare we say that Jesus initial reaction was one of pique that a foreigner should ask for something that he felt was only for his own people? Was Jesus tempted here? Are we, even as Christians, tempted to resent when foreigners try to avail themselves of the benefits of our welfare society? There are people who challenge our charity, people who demand of us a loving response, whether it is a difficult person who always seems to have needs or demands that we may feel are unreasonable, or more than we would ordinarily be willing to meet. Sometimes when people belong to another race, society or faith it can be tempting to let these things mask their essential humanity to us. On a national level, refusing refugees or restricting certain people’s rights is an example of this. Something which always astonishes me is that even so called Christian countries have policies which deny people’s human rights, including the right to be different in themselves. The USA for example in its own way is as bad as China for denying rights, and how do we fare in the UK?
So, was Jesus in his humanity tempted to deny this woman’s prayer because she was Greek and from Syrian Phoenicia, a foreigner? “My ministry is only for the Children of Israel, and I have to feed them to the full.” Possibly so. After all last week we did say that Jesus was tempted as we are, but also that it is not a sin to be tempted. Even so, why did he insult her by implying that Gentiles were as dogs in the midst of the family? I canvassed a number of commentators on this one. The favourite explanation is that Jesus was testing the woman. I am not convinced about this but understanding the cultural exchange may help us here. Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, by Kenneth Bailey, a theologian who lived in the Middle East, has this understanding of the story.
In the culture of the time, it was inappropriate for a woman to speak to a male stranger. That she was a Gentile and he a Jew made it even worse. They were of different communities, and he owed her nothing. But her use of the Jewish title ‘Son of David’ is designed to cross that barrier. In Bailey’s reading, as well as the conversation with the woman, there’s a conversation going on with the disciples. Jesus speaks and acts as he does because he knows their thoughts: ‘This is a Gentile woman who has nothing to do with us, and Jesus shouldn’t be bothering with her.’
So when he says, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’ and ‘It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs’ – a deeply insulting metaphor – he is not saying what he believes himself, but what the disciples believe. And by doing so, and making them see the consequences of their attitudes, he is making them ashamed.
What seals their shame is her response – ‘Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.’ She knew Jesus did not mean what he said, she had faith in his ability to help and she would not, as a desperate mother, take no for an answer. There is even a touch of humour in her reply.
As Bailey says: ‘The disciples are watching and listening. Indeed, in all Israel they have seen neither such total confidence in the person of Jesus in spite of his hard words nor such compassionate love for a sick child. Her response is a deadly blow to their carefully nurtured prejudices against women and Gentiles.’
He concludes that ‘an enormous amount of sophisticated spiritual formation is taking place in the hearts of the disciples and indeed potentially in the hearts of any readers of Matthew’s Gospel’.
The story makes us think about our own prejudices, the barriers we put up and the lines we draw around our communities. The disciples judged the woman because she was female, a Gentile and had a sick child. Where do our judgments fall, and what words of Jesus do we need to hear?
We might say that this woman’s love appears to open up even Jesus himself to the unending abundance of what God intends for the world… and that even the left over ‘crumbs’ of God’s transforming love will be more than enough.
We know that our call as followers of Jesus is to pattern our lives after his. So we need to pay close attention to this ‘Gentile woman of Syrophoenician origin. We may wonder at her resilience, her willingness to go up against seemingly insurmountable odds for the sake of love, not to mention the hope and the courage which brought her love to life. How might our own worlds also be transformed if we, likewise, were just driven by love like that?
What might that look like even now in this particular confusing, demanding, exhausting time as society is divided about so many things?
What would it look like if we were able to recognize and name what and or who we are called to love and to stay laser focused upon it.
What risks might we take, what barriers might we overcome, what world views might we also change if we were sent out by that kind of love?
Can we catch a glimpse of this kind of love lived into and out among us as it is focused and honed by our own live by the times when we have come up against challenges of our own, the sort that perhaps threatened to break us, too, but which somehow we overcome for the sake of someone else, or maybe many others.
Every day we may encounter challenges to love. We may not have the power to heal a demonically affected child. Indeed we might call such a child by a different name today. Some children are afflicted by behaviours that are difficult to understand or manage. Mental health professionals have the DSM-5 diagnosis manual which uses recent medical research to describe behaviours like psychosis, autism or various personality disorders. We see these as afflictions as illness. The Biblical description of it being demonic was in fact a kindness because it recognised that the cause was from beyond a person’s control and the sufferer was deserving of compassion rather than condemnation.
What is important here is that we see beyond differences to the essential humanity of people whom society dismisses, disregards, or worse, victimises because they are different, or challenge us by their beliefs or behaviours. We are called to transcend the barriers, and certainly never to reinforce them – to find ways to share God’s blessings with such people.
Jesus responded in this story by showing that the crumbs of God’s blessing on us, are in fact seeds of an even greater bounty for others. What we receive we must share.
When our hearts are broken and our lives broken open to compassion God has a chance to light a fire within us, to move us forward out of love for the vulnerable, whoever they may be.
Sometimes this can happen within the context of our daily lives. I can think of someone who had a very difficult childhood, and later, as a successful, adult acquired a rare liver condition and now spends her life running a charity to support other sufferers.
A mother whose child was born too soon and who spent many days at his bedside in the neonatal intensive care unit before finally bringing him home. Today she is training to be a NICU nurse.
Someone who lost a child to a heroin overdose and who has since devoted her life’s energy to educating about drug addiction and advocating for families who find themselves where she has been.
These may be secular examples, but they illustrate how the love which Jesus gives us can drive us to advocate for and help people for whom this life is a huge challenge.
What has so broken your heart that you are now so wide open that you find yourself driven by love to change what matters to the most vulnerable ones you know or encounter? This is what God calls us to live out in ever greater love for the world.
Today’s encounter between the woman driven by love and Jesus teaches us that God’s gifts are more than enough for all. It is also stark reminder that when we find ourselves driven by such love, we also are called to keep going in it. This for the sake of a specific love, but also for a deepening love of the people around us.
For the woman in the story her love was a particular one for her daughter. Perhaps we might imagine what she may have done with the deep compassion and hope she experienced that day for others who were similarly afflicted. What ripples of love and compassion extended through her community when she took her restored daughter home again?
We are to pattern our lives after Jesus. And that is exactly what the woman in the story was doing as she acted out of great love. And put herself at risk to do so.
For that is what Jesus did repeatedly in all the stories we hear about him. This was most especially true on the cross, but it was also so in countless ways as he encountered the world on countless days before then. He calls us to do the same. Amen.
Prayers of Thanksgiving and Intercession
O God in whom we live and move and have our being, we thank you for the love that drives us to seek the best for those whom we love who suffer from limitations and disadvantages in their lives. We pray that for such love you will give us the Syro-Phoenician woman’s courage determination and faith as we bring our prayers for to you. We begin with thanks for the blessings we have known.
As the summer season draws nearer to its close:
We thank you for the times we have enjoyed catching up with family and friends after the trying months of lockdown, for opportunities to travel for recreation and for time to restore our souls and let our worries go.
We are grateful moments enjoying the beauty of the creation in summer. Refresh us for the challenges of the cooler seasons ahead we pray and renew our commitment to serve you.
Father, Jesus faced many demands wherever he went,
and pressure from critics, whatever he did.
We pray for all those who have not found rest this summer:
for those whose work is stressful, exhausting, or unappreciated.
for those whose livelihoods remain uncertain, because of the pandemic or through upheaval as caused by heat, fire, flood, or storm. We pray for those which hard choices to make,
about their work or school or what comes next, for people who are still affected by Covid-19 or who must make choices about social policy and community leadership.
(Hold silence for 20 seconds)
May they know your strength and guidance day by day.
Today we remember those for whom this summer has been filled with suffering: We pray for friends or family who have lost loved ones, and people facing an uncertain future or a difficult diagnosis.
We pray for people who have lost their homes, for whatever reason or have been forced to leave their homeland or to rebuild their lives from nothing and for those who despair about the climate crisis and what can be done to repair the suffering earth.
(Hold silence for 20 seconds)
We pray for all those who join efforts to relieve suffering who are impelled by love to act on behalf of the weak or disadvantaged.
Give courage and hope for tomorrow because O God, we need the embrace of your presence, each in our own way.
As we prepare to leave our time of worship walk with us,
and show us how to live each day as followers of Jesus, our Lord and Saviour. Amen.
Hymn 716 “Come and find the quiet centre”
Sending out and Benediction
Feel the power of Christ’s healing love restoring you. Go in peace, offering help and hope to others. And may the peace of God always be with you. AMEN.
“May God’s blessing surround you each day”
Postlude: I can tell the world