the connection

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let us pray together:

 

God of grace,

     in your love and compassion

   strengthen our faith and enliven our hope.

 

God of grace

      by your Spirit’s breath

   help us to pray

and to trust you now and every day.

 

God of grace,

  give us wisdom to perceive you,

    diligence to seek you,

   patience to wait for you,

and eyes to behold you.

 

May the love of the Lord Jesus draw us to himself;

     may the power of the Lord Jesus strengthen us in his service;

  may the joy of the Lord Jesus fill our souls.

 

May the blessing of God Almighty,

     the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,

   be among us and remain with us always.

Amen

 

My hope is built on nothing less
     than Jesus’ blood and righteousness
I dare not trust the sweetest frame
     but wholly lean on Jesus’ name

When darkness veils His lovely face
     I rest on His unchanging grace
In ev’ry high and stormy gale
     my anchor holds within the veil

On Christ the solid Rock I stand
     all other ground is sinking sand
   all other ground is sinking sand

His oath His covenant His blood
     support me in the whelming flood
When all around my soul gives way
     He then is all my hope and stay

On Christ the solid Rock I stand
     all other ground is sinking sand
   all other ground is sinking sand

Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon.  A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.”

 

Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”

 

He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.

He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”

 

“Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

 

Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.

 

Holy, holy, holy
     is the Lord almighty

Glory to the Father

     amen

Holy, holy, holy

                   All praise to God
     is the Lord almighty

                          the Trinity
Glory to the Father

     amen

Hallelujah, hallelujah 

     hallelujah, hallelujah

Holy, holy, holy 

    is the Lord almighty
Glory to the Father

Hallelujah, hallelujah
     hallelujah, hallelujah

Hey everyone, it’s good to be with through the technology of waves and wires.  I hope this weekend is giving you some opportunity to take a break from the busy-ness of the week.  On Friday an email went out from Brendon, on behalf of the Elders and staff, regarding the survey results.  If you didn’t see it, the survey results indicate that a little over three quarters of our church family currently have reservations about re-opening Emmanuel for Sunday services at this time due to the current circumstances and the guidelines proposed by the government.  Our plan is continue to offer online services and then revisit the issue toward the end of August.  You may wish to gather in smaller groups and to listen to the liturgies and visit about them.

 

We are also working to create some smaller, physically distanced opportunities for people to see one another for little visits throughout the summer months. Our first attempt at this will be on Wednesday, July 8^th and we’re calling it Driveway Drop-bys.  The ideas is that on July 8^th, between 7 and 8:15 pm, you’ll be set up with three, fifteen minute visits, with other people from the connection community. (For those who may feel nervous about generating conversation out of thin air, we’ll also provide a couple of questions that you can use to get started.)   You can sign up as either a host or as a traveller.  You can sign up as a household, by yourself, or with a couple of people in your ‘bubble.’   Once we see who’s interested, we’ll set up a schedule, and send it out.  If you could, please register by Monday, July 6 at 6 pm.  If you’re interested, just click on the registration link below the link for this liturgy.

The last couple of weeks we have been do some thinking about racism and privilege.  These issues are complex in nature, but they need to be talked about, and thought about, and wrestled with, especially in how we can represent Jesus’s vision of peace and love and justice in the context of these issues. 

From my perspective, many of these issues are connected to the destructive systems that privilege-based power structures create.  A power structure defines who holds power and who does not. It’s a ladder, so to speak, with those at the bottom having the least amount of power and control and those at the top having the most power and control.  Often those at the top are considered to have more value than those at the bottom.  Privilege-based power structures create power dynamics based on things like skin colour, gender, affluence, and physical abilities.  Racism, sexism, classism, and ableism exist as the outworking of the values these systems create.

This week we were again reminded of how this plays out for Indigenous Peoples as the RCMP came under scrutiny for their treatment of Chief Allan Adam following the release of the in-car video footage of his arrest on March 10.  The RCMP is struggling to work out what it means to be an organization that (self-admittedly) has a systemic problem with racism. 

Sometimes it’s easy to think of it as a problem a certain group has—like the RCMP—or characterize it as a few ‘bad apples’ that have the problem. But the truth is we all live within these systems, we all live in context of a country struggling with these problems.  We all contribute to the problem or work to solve the problem with our actions and with our voice or with our silence.

So today I want to look at a story from Matthew in which there is a collision of power structures and let it guide our thinking and conversations for the coming week. 

Though the structure and rules of our society is obviously different than the structure and rules of the first century Palestine, there is still a commonality in how power structures created societal hierarchies.  For the people of Israel, it was system where men were at the top of the power ladder and a woman had no voice without a man.  The social status or class privilege was based on birth lineage.  Those who were not Jews were considered outsiders and were to be avoided.  This is the context in which this story unfolds.

Jesus has left Galilee and has travelled to the region of Tyre and Sidon.  He is away from the Jewish population and away from Jewish territory.  In this case, Jesus is really the outsider.

The story kind of starts full throttle.  Jesus arrives in the region and all of a sudden there is a woman crying out to him to help her.  Remember that in that culture a woman was not supposed to talk to a man – her action of calling out to Jesus is already pushing against the system.  Matthew goes to the trouble of pointing out that this is a Canaanite woman – which is worth paying attention to.  It’s kind of an old school way of identifying her as being part of the group of the people who were the enemy of Israel.  (See Deuteronomy 20)  

You wouldn’t expect this woman to be asking for help from an enemy and yet the woman keeps crying out to Jesus, imploring him to help her.  And on top of it, she seems to have a deeper insight into who Jesus is than even the some of the disciples do.  She calls him ‘Lord’ and ‘Son of David.’  She recognizes him as the Messiah.  (In the course of the book of Matthew it takes Peter a couple more chapters before he declares that Jesus as Messiah)

At first Jesus just ignores her.  But she persists in her crying out.  So much so that the disciples are like, ‘Dude, you need to get rid of her.  But Jesus doesn’t send her a way.  He just keeps walking.  The disciples are getting amped up by all of this. I imagine they try again to talk to Jesus, this time reminding him of the system and how things work.  Like, ‘Jesus, You need to tell her to buzz off.  This is causing a scene – what are people going to think?’

So finally Jesus answers her.  Which is a big deal – that he is talking to a woman.  But his answer is not exactly what I would expect him to say – actually it’s nothing like what I would expect.  Jesus said to her, ‘I was sent here for the people of Israel – not for people like you.’  What!  That seems crazy. 

But the woman isn’t having any of the ‘official’ party line. She comes to Jesus, kneels at his feet, and asks Jesus again to help her.  (Incidentally, the word kneel is a code word for the women knelt and worshipped Jesus)  She kneels before the one whom she recognizes as having authority not only to sit on the throne of David, but to wield power over evil.

Jesus’ response to her second cry for help includes a reiteration of his mission to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And then it gets a little crazy.  Jesus likens her (her status as a non-Jew) to the status of the small, pet dogs who long to be fed from the table.  He says ‘It’s not right that I take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.’  At that moment I think I would be like, ‘You know what, screw you!

 

The woman, however, is not deterred. Instead, she says, ‘Yes it is.’  She pushes back against a system that prevents her as an outsider from receiving from Jesus based on where she was born.  It’s almost as if she is saying, ‘Yeah, I’ve heard that dog argument before, but I’m not buying it.  Are you about loving people or not!?’   Instead, she claims a place in the household, maybe not a position of privilege or even the position of an insider, but still the status of a family’s dog by claiming that even the dog enjoys crumbs from the table.

Her statement is striking. She places hope in what others have discarded. Jesus, this Son of David has so much power that there is enough power for the house of Israel and more than enough left over for her. She is not trying to impede his mission. She just wants a crumb, recognizing that even a crumb is powerful enough to defeat the demon that has possessed her daughter.

 

And immediately Jesus responds by saying, ‘Woman, your faith is great!’  And Jesus heals her daughter.

This woman seems to understand what the members of the household of Israel have yet to grasp – Jesus is not just hope for Israel, but hope for the world.

Her words demonstrate that the boundary separating her from the house of Israel must be reconsidered. And with a faith so pure, how could she be deemed an unclean outsider?

No matter how structures have been created to contain, prevent, exclude, push down God’s love can’t be contained.  It’s almost like Jesus and the Canaanite woman form an alliance, a pact to resist the systems imposed by corrupt power structures. God is in the unsettling business of meeting outsiders and granting them not just a crumb, but a place at the table. 

And that is our work too.  To be people that challenge and work to erode systems that create inequality and injustice.  But it starts with evaluating our own ways of living.  Of asking ourselves the hard questions around what stories our actions tell.  Asking ourselves the hard questions around what voices we support with our own voices or what silence we support with our silence.  To take risks, like the woman in this story, and insist there is a place at the table for everyone.

One way to continue this thinking in the coming week is to use the Decolonize First workbook that we have been referencing this month to go through a self-actualizing exercise.  The link to download that section of the workbook is under the link for this liturgy.

 

God all loving and all caring,

     we come before you with hesitant steps

   and uncertain motives.

We ask for courage to open our eyes

     and unstop our ears,

   that we may be aware

     of all that distracts us from

  whole hearted commitment to Christ.

We want to see ourselves as you do

   and live our lives as you intended.

Expose in us the empty and barren places

   where we have not allowed you to enter.

Reveal to us where we have been indifferent

   to the pain and suffering of others.

We want to sweep out the corners

     where sin has accumulated

  and uncover the places 

      where we have strayed from truth.

Create in us a clean heart, O God,

   and put a right spirit within us.

Nurture the faint stirrings of new life

     where your spirit has taken root

   and begun to grow.

We long for your healing light to transform us,

   for you alone can make us whole.

In your mercy shine upon us, O God,

   and make our path clear before us.

 

Amen

Will we ever rise
     will we ever rise above the fear
Can we learn to see the need
     can we share humanity
I can see another day come

Broken people we can be made whole
     we can be made whole
   we can be made whole
As we lay down our weapons
     open up our hearts
Love is breaking us

     love remaking us

Will we ever rise
     will we ever rise above the hate
Can we learn another way
     forgive as you forgave
I can see another day come

Broken people we can be made whole
     we can be made whole
   we can be made whole
As we lay down our weapons
     open up our hearts
Love is breaking us

     love remaking us

 

Come heal now

     take away the blindness
So we can see

     as we were meant to see
We feel light devastating darkness
     I can see another day come
   I can see another day come

Broken people we can be made whole
     we can be made whole
   we can be made whole
As we lay down our weapons
     open up our hearts
Love is breaking us

     love remaking us

 

Will we ever rise
     will we ever rise