OPENING UP

September 9, 2012

Pentecost 15

James 2:^1-17

Mark 7:^24-27

[David Wilcox - Beyond Belief  YouTube]

I have been a fan of David Wilcox for more than a decade.  Patti and I have travelled to Calgary, Kelowna, Los Angeles, New York and even Hendersonville, NC to see him perform and in the case of North Carolina to hang out with him in a retreat setting.

What draws me to his music (besides his wicked skills with the six-string-ax) is his ‘poetry’:  he knows how to phrase music and words in such a way that reaches deep within me and pulls out thoughts and challenges that speak to how I can be as a person.

“BE the mercy!”  Be the mercy.

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‘Welcoming In and Reaching Out.’

We say it.  It is our congregational motto.  A lot of churches say something like that.  They are good words; they are nice words; they are noble words.  They look great in a church bulletin and newsletter: the framed version of St. David’s motto and mission statement (in the south entrance hall) looks impressive on the wall.  ‘Welcoming In and Reaching Out’ makes a good first impression on our website and letterhead.

‘Welcoming In and Reaching Out’, as amazingly profound as these words of faith are, they are just words.  They mean nothing in reality, unless they are experienced.

We don’t strive to have Jesus call us hypocrites, by making welcoming in and reaching out an empty promise.  We don’t want to be another version of the example the Letter of James cites in today’s first reading, where we pick and choose our welcome based on the needs of those who are already here.

We strive to let the words of faith (Welcoming In and Reaching Out) live!

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Faith, without works, is dead.

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In the second chapter of the book of Acts, one can read an account of how the earliest post-Easter Christian community tried to live out its faith.  It goes like this starting at verse forty-four:

⁴⁴All who believed were together and had all things in common; ⁴⁵they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds^* to all, as any had need. ⁴⁶Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home^* and ate their food with glad and generous^* hearts, ⁴⁷praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

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Now this still is focused pretty internally - as the video said earlier, within the gated community.  But it did not take long for the early church to wrestle with (and move beyond) issues of inclusiveness.

Faith without works is dead.

The early church knew this!

The early church knew this because they learned from Jesus’ example and they had prophetic voices like that of the authors of the book of Acts and the Letter of James to inspire faith into action.

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The first six and a half chapters of the gospel of Mark are set in the region of Galilee.  Jesus stays pretty close to home - sticking to the towns and countrysides around Lake Capernaum (aka the Sea of Galilee).

But starting with today’s gospel reading from Mark 7, verse 24, Jesus moves beyond what is familiar, beyond people like him, beyond those who share his faith and culture. 

At first, he seems to try to avoid this kind of contact, by staying with people he knows, perhaps a traveller from Tyre who had met Jesus in Galilee.  The opening verse of our passage for today says quite clearly that Jesus ‘did not want anyone to know he was there.’

In my experience, ‘avoidance’ only works for so long.  Issues of welcome and inclusion were bound to come up on this road trip for Jesus.

They did.

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A reputation based on Jesus’ skills as a healer had travelled with him to the Lebanon coast.  A gentile (non-jewish) woman from the southeastern region of the roman province of Syria, near Phoenicia, comes to Jesus to beg him to help her daughter, who suffered from some mental illness ailment (in the language of the day: an unclean spirit or a demon).

Jesus’ response is shocking when we hear it in the context of all that we have come to know about Jesus.  He treats the woman like an unwanted dog, who is threatening to take away a family’s food.  Jesus tried to make the case that this was an issue of fairness.  A street dog does not deserve what belongs to a child.  When the gospel of Matthew (which was written after Mark) relays this story, it says that Jesus completely ignored the woman until his disciples got annoyed at her incessant shouting. Matthew clarifies what Mark likely meant about Jesus belief that the ‘children must be fed first’:  ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’  It is the children of Israel who are Jesus' focus.

The woman’s response is the same in both gospel versions: 

‘Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs (Mark) that fall from their masters’ table (Matthew).’

Jesus thought that he could ignore this foreign woman’s needs because she was not like him - because she was outside the walls of the limits of his faith.  She was to him like an annoying animal compared a beloved child.

But this un-named woman does what may be unprecedented in all of scripture … she gets Jesus to change his mind.  It takes a big man to admit when he is wrong, and Jesus is a big man in this story.

She doesn’t shoot for full equality at the beginning – all struggles for equality seem to be forced to go through stages of ever increasing levels of inclusion.

But she invites Jesus to make a slight adjustment in his metaphor.  Instead of viewing her as an annoying wild street dog, can he see her as a family pet?

As a pet owner myself, I know that the reality often is that our pets are ‘like’ children in our families. 

If this woman Jesus couldn’t get Jesus to see her in the full status as a child [of God], maybe he could think of her as someone who is ‘like a member of the family”.

Jesus reverses his previous position:  “go, your daughter is well”.  In Matthew’s gospel, the woman is praised for her faith.

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That is the last time in the gospel narrative that we hear of Jesus limiting his work and ministry to, solely, people who fully shared his religion and culture.  The very next story in Mark’s gospel that we also read today is Jesus healing a man whose deafness had left him with a speech impediment.  This time there was no nationality or faith test from Jesus – he just responded to the need.  Jesus simply said, ‘be opened’ into the man’s ears (probably had to whisper it directly into his deaf ears) and it was suddenly as if he had been able to hear all along.  Even the speech impediment was gone.  Miracles abound.

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Faith in action!

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I know that Jesus words, Be Open, are literal in this story.  The man's ears were to be opened up so he could hear.  But, I see a broader (more than literal) message in Jesus' words to this man from region of the Ten Cities (Decapolis) – how open are we to receiving the grace of God?  Do we hear those words of Jesus (Be Open) as a challenge for how to live?  I mean, look at the man's response - he was told to not make a 'big deal' about it, but he couldn't keep silent.  Are we open to going beyond ourselves as a result of the grace and love of God?

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God’s open and unfailing love to those in need is a consistent theme in the texts of scripture we have before us today.

Faith has to be lived authentically and with integrity for it to have any real meaning.  Our faith must be as obvious to the eyes of the world as it can be to its ears.

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As some of you may know, I am a bit of a news and politics junkie.  I watched on TV and online and in news clips most of both the US republican and democratic conventions.  Even though I am Canadian, I still try to view things I see and hear within the contexts of my values and worldviews.

As I reflected on the challenges of our scripture passages today with-respect-to openness and inclusivity, I could not miss the irony that the party whose platform was overtly religious in its tone seemed to be less consistent with the messages in James and Mark than the party who struggled to maintain its one and only direct reference to God in its platform.  Either way, political parties can say all they want – they can write all of the policies and plans they desire – but it will be the actions that dictate what is really important.  Churches, in this respect, are no different.

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So, St. David’s, it is not enough to just proclaim the desire to welcome in and reach out.

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As your minister for the last decade, I do think that we try very hard and have done well in many ways to live out these words.

Over the past year, we (in Leduc and Beaumont) spoke to each other about cooperation within the United Church.  In the end, we took conscious actions to allow two congregations to become one.

We have melded our resources, some of which are physical that you can see, even in this sanctuary.  Worship chairs that once provided comfort and function for Beaumont United Church, now allow for flexible seating at the front and back of this sanctuary.  Even something as simple as making the second row from the front one chair shorter, means that there is room for people in wheelchairs to sit within the congregation and not on its edge.  And, one of the first impressions of this sanctuary is a now circle of play and worship for young children and their parents as part of the gathered community in worship, not in the hallways.

This past week, at both the Beaumont and Leduc registration and information days, we had a display that invited people to ask, “Is there more?” and proclaimed that we are an ‘open-minded church for the 21^st century’:  words that challenge us to live them out.

I believe that our broadly inclusive wedding policy that does not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation is a active sign of this, as well.

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These examples are all active signs of Welcoming In at work.

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Reaching Out, on the other hand, continues to be our growing edge and greatest potential.

Yes, we do work in this area: good and faithful work.  When I arrived in Leduc, this church already encouraged regular donations to the food bank at least one Sunday a month.  As you can see, we gather a significant enough amount of donations that the foodbank has left us a fairly large bin.  As we fill it, we are doing the active work of Reaching Out.

When the We-Can Food Co-op needed new organizers and a new host, people from St. David’s stepped up.

And for the last several years, our Inreach-Outreach Committee has organized and hosted a free Thanksgiving Day dinner.  This morning, they met again and committed to this project again for October 8^th, 2012.  Sign-up lists are at the back for people to take an active part in making this plan a reality.

In early December for the past several years, people in this church are given information on issues of human rights and have the opportunity to participate in Amnesty International’s Write4Rights letter-writing campaign.

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Aside: I notice that much of our local outreach is food based.  I guess, we really listened when Jesus told Simon Peter that a response to a love for Christ was to feed his sheep.

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We also have participated in the outreach work of the United Church of Canada (in Canada and around the world) through regular and special donations to our denomination’s Mission and Service Fund.

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Let me pose the question on our information display, “Is there more?”  How else can Reaching Out be an active ministry of this church and not just great words on paper?

A lot of churches (St. David’s included) do a pretty decent job of looking after their active church-folk, internally. That is a primary focus of most churches.  And that is good.

And there are a good number of churches (again, I would include St. David’s here as well) do a decent job of welcoming people to come into the life of the church.

But many churches (too some degree St. David’s as well) can be disproportionally inward-focused.  
I would like to challenge this congregation, through its people and committees and Church Council to find one new means of selfless outreach (non-food related) to add to our ministry sometime before next summer.  We can’t be everything to everyone, but reaching out is a corporate growing edge for us and I encourage you all to be thinking about a new way of reaching out, either locally, regionally or globally.  Submit your ideas to the Inreach-Outreach committee, via the church office.

Worship and work must be one!

Faith is shown in our works!

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For the most part, this morning, I have been applying the lessons in James and Mark to the church at the congregational level.  Before we go, I also want to remind us all that these are personal challenges as well.  In fact, I believe that it is the small acts of faithful work that really make a difference in this world.

In each of our lives, we encounter situations where our welcome and outreach can be tested; we face opportunities to see if the rubber is going to hit the road.  Jesus met this challenge and had his eyes opened by someone that his prejudices had already written off.

One of us can come up against a new wall of exclusion in this walk of life when we can proclaim in our words (but more so, in our actions) that the grace and love of God will not be contained.
The grace and the love of God will not be contained - not if we have anything to do about it.

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Each of us has heard the invitation of Jesus in Mark chapter seven:  be opened.

May the world see that this is an authentic truth about us as followers of Jesus.

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I want to end this message the same way I began it, with those inspiring words from David Wilcox. [replay video]

#137MV 

“Welcome Jesus, You are Welcome”