Growth through Understanding (5 Sept 2021)

5 Sep 2021 by Rev Paul Bartlett in: Worship Services: 2021

 

 

INTRODUCTION & CALL TO WORSHIP

The Earth and its soil may not be as visually striking as a tropical forest or appear as vital as fresh water, but plain-looking soil is a natural resource just as essential to sustaining life on Earth.

Soil provides nutrients, water and minerals to plants and trees, stores carbon and is home to billions of insects, small animals, bacteria and many other micro-organisms. The multiple roles of soils often go unnoticed. God in creation calls upon the earth to bring forth all forms of vegetation and animals.

Soils don’t have a voice, except yours and mine.

We give thanks for soil which sustains and nurtures us.

We acknowledge we are intimately connected with the soil, and

have a responsibility to care for soil, for the earth, and all that grows in it.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF COUNTRY

We gather today to acknowledge those whose very being & identity comes from the soil, the earth, in all its diverse shapes and forms which speak of their Dreaming, giving meaning and connection.

We acknowledge the Dharawal People of this place and commit to walk with them in justice making.

 

CHRIST CANDLE

We gather as a people of God looking to Christ, as Word, as Light and as Wisdom in and through whom all things in heaven and on earth have their being and in whom all things are reconciled.

 

SONG TIS 137 ‘For the beauty of the earth’  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVQFEgT7E6c

For the beauty of the earth

For the beauty of the skies

For the love which from our birth

Over and around us lies:

Lord of all, to Thee we raise, this our joyful hymn of praise.

 

For the beauty of each hour

Of the day and of the night

Hill and vale and tree and flower

Sun and moon and stars of light:

Lord of all, to Thee we raise, this our joyful hymn of praise.

 

For the joy of human love

Brother, sister, parent, child

Friends on earth and friends above

For all gentle thoughts and mild:

Lord of all, to Thee we raise, this our joyful hymn of praise.

 

For each perfect gift of thine

To our race (humankind) so freely given

Graces human and divine

Flowers of earth and buds of heaven

Lord of all, to Thee we raise, this our joyful hymn of praise.

This our joyful hymn, our hymn of praise.                              Folliott Sandford Pierpoint 1835 - 1917

 

A RESPONSIVE PRAYER

To you, God who sang the universe into being, and cradles all creation within yourself.

God who became flesh, born as one of us offering yourself for creation’s redemption.

God who pours life and vision within our souls and who is present in and through all creation.

To you O God be all praise and glory

Throughout the earth and in this place where we are gathered.

 

Today we gather in celebration of soil. This complex part of our planet

which we walk over, grow our food from and yet so often take for granted.

We celebrate the microbes, vegetable matter, clay and rock particles

And give thanks for soil which is so vital for life.

 

We come in lament and confession, for not only have we taken soil for granted

We have distanced ourselves from soil and covered it over

We’ve overused it and drained it of nutrients and drained poisons upon it.

Forgive us our negligence and destructive practices

Forgive us that while soil sustains us, we often disregard soil.

Guide us our God to paths of living which sustain the earth to care for and delight in.

 

BIBLE READING James 2: 1 – 4, 9 – 10, 14 – 17 (NIV)          

My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favouritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

But if you show favouritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.

14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

 

BIBLE READING Mark 7: 24 – 30 (NIV)                        

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.  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. The woman was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter. “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.” “Lord,” (literally one supreme in authority) she replied, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Then he told her, “For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter.” She went home and found her child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

In this we hear God’s Word of Life. Let all who have ears to hear, say Amen!

 

SONG ‘We cannot measure’ vs 1 & 3 (Iona)           

We cannot measure how you heal
or answer every sufferer’s prayer,
yet we believe your grace responds
where faith and doubt unite to care.

Your hands, though bloodied on the cross,

survive to hold and heal and warn,

to carry all through death to life

and cradle children yet unborn.

  

So some have come who need your help
and some have come to make amends,
as hands which shaped and saved the world
are present in the touch of friends.
Lord, let your Spirit meet us here
to mend the body, mind and soul,
to disentangle peace from pain,
and make your broken people whole.                                   ©The Iona Community

 

MESSAGE                                            ‘Jesus, grows in understanding’

It is only in Mark 7 and in Matthew 15 that we find this amazing story of an encounter between Jesus and a Syro-Phoenician woman. Here a male Jewish rabbi is confronted by a Greek who is a Gentile and a woman, she is in effect someone who is doubly marginalised.

In Mark & Matthew the passage before today’s reading talks about what sorts of food we should eat.

Jesus concludes that robust discussion with the comment “Listen to me all of you, there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile (i.e. food) but the things that come out (words and actions) are what defile”. And as Jesus and the disciples were already in northern Galilee they journey to the region of Tyre & Sidon, Gentile country outside of Israel on the coast of the Roman Sea.

 

As if to underline the point just made about clean and unclean food, about our thoughts and habits, Jesus goes to Tyre and enters a house. There the food and the manner of its eating would have made even the disciples uncomfortable let alone if they had been the Pharisees who had previously come from Jerusalem to question his disciples ‘unclean’ eating habits. Jesus enters this house incognito but a woman who is about to gate-crash his visit, knows by faith who he is by calling out to him ‘Lord’.

 

Mark & Matthew alone have this story. They are 2 of the 3 ‘synoptic’ Gospels who along with Luke often share similar stories. Most commentators believe this is because they are using an earlier written Aramaic record that is now lost but which these early Christian communities had available along with their own remembered stories of Jesus. Here there is none of John’s supreme focus on Jesus as the Son of God where all his encounters are according to what had been prophesied, where Jesus rarely has an anxious moment. John writes 20 years after the others. In the earlier Gospel writers there is more evidence of the humanity of Jesus, of Jesus being a person of faith & not just the object of our faith.

What courage and desperation, what love and faith-filled insight this unnamed woman has. To enter a house where Jesus was staying and to plead for her child’s health. Who of us wouldn’t do something similar, no matter the odds to seek healing and health for one of our children or grandchildren.

But would we do so going against nearly every religious and social norm of the day?

 

There is nothing in the Greek text to suggest whether in Jesus’ derogatory quip to the woman he says it in all seriousness or with a wink and half a smile. This appears to be a genuine encounter and Jesus dismisses the woman’s demands with a common throw-away line of the time uttered by Jews towards Gentiles – about dogs and scraps. It’s insulting. The woman has every right to feel rejected, ridiculed, put in her place, but she confronts Jesus with a love emboldened faith - there is no greater courage!

 

She changes Jesus’ mind! And not for the first time Jesus understands more clearly that his mission is not just to the Jews, to the House of Israel, but to Jews and Gentiles. His faith & understanding grows.

 

A faith which grows & is formed in the context of all the encounters he has, even the unscripted, serendipitous ones, right up to the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before he died. This passage gives you and me hope, for we can follow one who is ‘one of us’ who can grow in faith out of the very relationship encounters he has. This is the blueprint for how we can grow in faith too! Faith isn’t just an intellectual statement, some divine knowledge test, divorced from daily life, it is dynamic, it can grow and it can and will do so amidst daily human interactions. It’s the ‘faith without works is dead’ truth.

 

And if we don’t open our faith to these daily encounters which we have in life, then faith does not grow, it withers or becomes hard and harsh, inflexible and dictatorial with no room for compassion; the compassion which sent Jesus to us in the first place. ‘For God so loved the world…

And in today’s focus on soil in this season of creation, we see another glimmer of insight and wonder.

Most people in 1st C Israel lived in houses with a beaten earth floor, here even crumbs that fall from the Master’s table can bear fruit just as 7 small loaves and a few small dried fish can in Mark’s feeding of the 4,000 which follows this passage. The woman’s belief in these crumbs opens Jesus’ eyes.

 

All it takes is a grain of wheat, a mustard seed, a crumb from a loaf, something minuscule, something unnoticed, even swept aside like today’s woman’s love emboldened faith is the opportunity for healing and new life. And those grains and crumbs are all we seem to have at present too amidst this COVID pandemic, but they can be enough to sustain and even enrich us in life and in faith if we cherish them.

Even dare I say something as small as a ‘succulent care package.’

May the conversations and encounters you do have on the phone, via FaceTime, on Facebook, via text, email or on Zoom help grow your faith as it did Jesus’! To His name be praise and glory. Amen 

 

PRAYERS FOR OTHERS ‘For The Sake Of The Planet’        

Creator God, breath and source of life, in love you called the world into being and in grace you made us and call us your children. We stand in awe of the wonder of your creation: its beauty and wildness; complexity and power; resilience and fragility.

God of life, you call us to be participants in the web and wellspring of life: to be nurtured by the planet; to be nurturing of the planet; to cherish the world and all that lives.

But we have failed and creation groans under our weight. God of grace, forgive us in our brokenness: when we have taken too much from the earth; when we have not spoken out

against greed and destruction; when we have allowed our most vulnerable neighbours

to be harmed. We seek courage and forgiveness to be made whole.

God of love, we pray for those people, communities and nations already suffering the devastating effects of climate change; and we pray for the diversity of life on earth, so much of it already threatened by our actions.

God of hope, we pray for the world’s leaders. Bless them with wisdom and creativity, and a shared vision of hope for all creation. May they find the determination to take strong action against human accelerated climate change and the political will to act for the common good.

Creator God, we pray for us all, that we might restore our relationships with each other and work together to heal the earth. Renew us in your grace for the sake of your creation. Amen

© 2015 UCA Assembly

 

 

SONG TIS 674 vs 1, 2, 3 & 5                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuApTydEi_o

Inspired by love and anger, disturbed by need and pain,
Informed of God's own bias, we ask him once again:
"How long must some folk suffer? How long can few folk mind?
How long dare vain self-interest turn prayer and pity blind?"

 

From those forever victims of heartless human greed,
Their cruel plight composes a litany of need:
"Where are the fruits of justice? Where are the signs of peace?
When is the day when prisoners and dreams find their release?"

From those forever shackled to what their wealth can buy,
The fear of lost advantage provoke the bitter cry:
"Don't query our position! Don't criticise our wealth!
Don't mention those exploited by politics and stealth!"

God asks, "Who will go for me? Who will extend my reach?
And who, when few will listen, will prophesy and preach?
And who, when few bid welcome, will offer all they know?
And who, when few dare follow, will walk the road I show?"           ©John Bell & Graham Maule

HOLY COMMUNION

Dear friends, we gather in community to break bread and to share wine, fruit of the earth.

We gather in community to eat that our hunger for many things may be satisfied and our thirst quenched in you O Lord. Bread and wine that human hands have made, bounty of God’s goodness.

We listen again to the words that gift this sacrament to and for us, lest we forget its wonder & grace.

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts.

We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

It is right to give our thanks and praise.

 

INVOCATION & DISTRIBUTION

OFFERING & ANNOUNCEMENTS

HYMN Altogether OK 412 ‘Sent by the Lord am I’  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRGy2XNJDnQ

Sent by the Lord am I, my hands are ready now

To make the earth the place in which the kingdom comes.

 

Sent by the Lord am I, my hands are ready now

To make the earth the place in which the kingdom comes.

 

The angels cannot change a world of hurt and pain

In to a world of love, of justice and of peace.

 

The task is mine to do, to set it really free.

O help me to obey, help me to do your will.             

 

©1991 Jorge Maldonodo, WCC Geneva. Administered in Australia by Hope Music Publishing

 

BLESSING

We are blessed with the diversity and uniqueness of creation, the beauty and mystery of life.

As we leave this time together, go out into the rest of this new day and week.

May you know God’s love and healing presence enabling you to work and live in newness of life.

And the blessing of God be present to and for each of us in the words of this Julie Perrin song:

 

‘For you deep stillness’           https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpPLReD-Zuw

For you, deep stillness of the silent inland

For you, deep blue of the desert skies
For you, flame red of the rocks and stones

For you, sweet water from hidden springs.

 

From the edges seek the heartlands
and when you're burnt by the journey
may the cool winds of the hovering
Spirit soothe and replenish you.

In the name of Christ, In the name of Christ.