Pentecost 14 – Year B September 6, 2009
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23 / Psalm 146 / James 2:1-17 / Mark 7:24-37
I’m not going to preach this morning about Proverbs or the Psalm. This group knows about putting integrity before success, about the importance of generosity in the rich and justice for the poor, about sharing food with the hungry, about caring for widows and orphans. We’ve heard that “the Lord pleads their cause” to us, and so we do our best to respond. So, we probably don’t need to dwell on the Letter of James, either, when it condemns discrimination against the poor and calls us to supply their bodily needs. We get that and we know that, “faith without works is dead”, that works of compassion are a natural expression of (and evidence of, genuine faith). Justice and generosity and works will always “preach”, but I’m confident you’ve internalized that message. Anyway, that’s not what I’m thinking about this morning.
And I’m not really thinking about Mark’s gospel, either. Anyway, I don’t know what more I could say about this episode. Over the years, you’ve heard just about every interpretive angle on the showdown between Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman; the power of her persistence, the depth of her faith, Jesus’ breaking of gender taboos, or the evolution of his thinking about his mission. As for the healing of the deaf & dumb man, some of you remember that Sunday, a few years back, when we called out to each other, as Jesus called him (and us), “Ephphatha …be opened!” Be unstoppered, unfettered, irrepressible. Important stuff for living an enthusiastic, abundant, spirit-filled life. But again, that’s not what I’m thinking about today.
What I am thinking about today is being here, instead of up in Bean Blossom, about being unsettled, uprooted, unmoored, and uncertain, about being in unfamiliar territory, about a certain reality setting in. Last fall at this time, things were just starting to get real; we’d completed our capital campaign. We’d formed a building committee and chosen an architect. We were beginning to imagine the changes some of us had been talking about for years finally taking form. For a full year, as the committee worked through countless details, the project has become progressively more and more real. First, floor plans, then elevations, then construction documents, and then bids, and the hiring of a contractor.
Reality came right up close when we said farewell to the pin oak and said our prayers, and dug the first shovel of earth. From that time forward, it has rushed upon us unrelentingly as trees were felled, earth moved, trenches dug, slabs poured, new walls framed, old walls demolished…an empty church, stripped of its beautiful things, down to bare walls, and then bare studs. A hole in the south wall where the altar once stood. A shell where a community once gathered so confidently, so comfortably. And here, this morning, a community gathered, as if in exile, waiting for restoration. Reality has really set in. That’s what I’m thinking about, and I imagine some of you are thinking of it, too, this morning.
People have been working very hard. Extra planning for worship. Moving church furnishings and equipment. Monitoring the process and responding to circumstance. Helping out at the work site. Keeping egos in check and civil tongues in our heads…bearing with one another is always a challenge under pressure of uncertainty and change. They say building a home is one of the greatest challenges a couple will ever face. I suppose that means that remodeling and expanding a church home is one of the greatest challenges to a community of faith. When we are under pressure in the life of faith, it is crucial to remember to tend and feed and maintain that faithful life together, to draw fully upon its resources.
So, I hope you were tuned in as we began our worship this morning, saying the familiar “Collect for Purity”, appealing to God, who knows our innermost being and all that we think and feel, from whom no secrets are hid, to cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, so that we (unencumbered by worry or frustration) may love God without reservation, lose ourselves in praise, and enter into the refreshment and renewal of Holy Communion. Friends, it is the healing, restoring love of God which will sustain this faith community, as it always has, as wet work through these changes with the building and anticipate the changes in leadership that lie just ahead.
So, if there are any here this morning who feel off-balance, off-put or even off the reservation, I encourage you to stop now and close your eyes (if that helps) and take some deep breaths. As you inhale, think of the very air itself as the Being of God, entering your body, bringing divine life and energy.
And as you exhale, imagine the purification of your body, the removal of the by-products of respiration, the CO2 and the lactic acid, but also the cleansing of the thoughts of your heart. If there is unease or annoyance over what you’re hearing, well, that’s something to breath away now. Continue to breathe, receiving into yourself God’s healing love, expelling the toxins of fatigue, doubt, hurt feelings, resentments, fears about the future, struggles at home, at work, at St. David’s…whatever you carry in here today, so that you are opened and able to receive all that word and sacrament and fellowship have to offer.
I invite you to look beyond the strangeness of our temporary worship home and see as gift, as part of God’s provision. It’s a place to light, where we can take a breath, enter into worship as we always do, using the familiar, comforting forms, and place our lives, our hearts, our whirling minds on the altar for God to take and bless and break and give back. Oddly enough, this room (and we hope we won’t need it for very long) can become for us a new sanctuary (in the fullest sense of the word), where we lay down the burdens of worry and disruption and weariness and grief over the passing of the former things.
And so, the core of today’s message can be found in the words of our opening Collect of the Day, “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…”
You know, God, that I sometimes fail to trust in you, even half-heartedly. Sometimes (in the heat of the moment), I fail even to remember that you are there, having earned my trust many times over, waiting to be trusted. When I worry about the new worship space, what it will be like, whether we will love it and rejoice in it, help me to trust that all this is part of a bigger plan, a plan you know, a plan you are revealing to us slowly, as we have eyes to see it. Help me, in the words of the discernment prayer, to hold my convictions lightly, accepting that I don’t have all the answers and that those with whom I disagree most may be most in tune with your will. When I become aware of hurt feelings and bruised egos, let me be an instrument of your peace, but let me not confide in my own strength of perception or persuasion. You have knit this Body together and you, above all, know how to preserve and strengthen it.
When I feel out of my depth, as I do much of the time these days, remind me to take refuge in your mercy, your love for me, for this congregation, for this ministry to the wider world. When I become anxious about my own future, or the future of these, my beloved friends in Christ, as we begin the process of separation, replace my anxiety with your peace, which passes understanding, which appears to make no sense under the circumstances. And in all these things, God, may I always remember that I am not called upon to rise to these heights by my own strength, but by your mercy and by the power of your son Jesus Christ and his indwelling Spirit. AMEN
The Rev. Jonathan Hutchison – Vicar, St. David’s Episcopal Church, Bean Blossom, Indiana
