BELLS CORNERS UNITED CHURCH

15th SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

September 5, 2021

The video recording of this service can be found here.
You can also dial-in by phone to listen to the audio recording at 613-820-8104.

Gathering Music: I Have a Dream – ABBA (Ulvaeus/Andersson) Abe:instrumental

I believe in angels Something good in everything I see
I believe in angels When I know the time is right for me
I'll cross the stream, I Have a Dream © 1979 Universal Music Pub All rights reserved

Acknowledgement of Territory Rev. Lorrie Lowes

As we begin our worship today, we remember that, in this congregation, we live and work on the unceded traditional territory of the Algonquin and Anishinaabe Peoples. We give thanks for their stewardship of the land and the water, the plants and the animals, through many generations. We also acknowledge their story, and our place in it, with sorrow. As we continue to live on this land with respect for it and for its people, may we commit to working toward truth, justice and reconciliation. All my relations.

Welcome & Centering for Worship Rev. Kim. Vidal

Good day everyone! On behalf of BCUC, I welcome and greet you in the name of Jesus Christ on this 15th Sunday after Pentecost. Wherever you are, whether you are joining us via online, or onsite, or even reading the printed text of the service in the comfort of your homes, we are glad that you have joined us today. On this Labour Day weekend, we remember and give thanks for all those who shoulder the tasks of human labour, both active and retired—in the farms, marketplaces, in factories and offices, in schools and churches, and in family living. We also lift up all the students and teachers who are returning to school in the coming week.

As we continue to be under pandemic restrictions, please be reminded that the work of the church carries on. Please take time to keep in touch with each other through prayers, phone calls, emails or via Zoom. Check also the many announcements on our website at bcuc.org to keep you informed and give you opportunities to respond.

Our sanctuary has re-opened for in-person worship service on Sunday at 10 am with a maximum number of 50 people. The Public Health recommends staying at home but if you wish to attend the service, you are most welcome. The usual health protocols will be in place which include masking, social distancing, hand sanitizing and staying home if you feel unwell. Take note too that our worship service will still be offered via Youtube, by email and by telephone.

Friends, let us come as a welcoming people, centering ourselves in a loving, welcoming God as we worship together.

Lighting of the Christ Candle Acolytes: Fowler Family

"No one lights a lamp and then covers it with a jar or puts it under a bed, but puts it on a lampstand so that those who come in can see the light.” (Luke 8:16)

May the light of Christ shines on!

Call to Gather & Prayer of Confession Rev. Lorrie

(Kate Crawford, The Gathering, Pentecost 2, 2014. Used with permission)

Come, people of dancing waves and burning sun!
Come to worship God!
Come, people of refreshing rains and growing things!
Come to this place of prayer and praise!
Come to sing! Come to deepen faith!
Come to rest in God’s love!
Come and we are strengthened!
We are lifted up in this community of friends!
Come, let us worship and give thanks!
People of God, the Spirit calls.
The Spirit calls us to a life of responsive relationship.
Sometimes we ignore or forget this call.
Let us not be afraid to seek healing for our brokenness and pain.
Let us confess and draw once again in the relationship that is truly life-giving.

Let us pray:

Broken, we turn to you.
Hurting, we look to you.
Mourning, we lean on you.
Failing, we beg of you.
Hear our confession as we offer our silent prayers.

(Moment of Silence)

You call us blessed and so we are blessed,
for this and for all your mercies, thanks be to God!

Hymn: Come, Let Us Sing of a Wonderful Love – Voices United #574 Mary Schmieder

1 Come let us sing of a wonderful love,
tender and true, tender and true,
out of the heart of the Father above,
streaming to me and to you:
wonderful love, wonderful love
dwells in the heart of the Father above.

2 Jesus, the Saviour, this gospel to tell,
joyfully came, joyfully came,
came with the helpless and hopeless to dwell, sharing their sorrow and shame,
seeking the lost, seeking the lost,
saving, redeeming at measureless cost.

3 Jesus is seeking the wanderers yet;
why do they roam? why do they roam?
Love only waits to forgive and forget;
home, weary wanderers, home!
Wonderful love, wonderful love
dwells in the heart of the Father above.

4 Come to my heart, O thou wonderful love!
Come and abide, come and abide,
lifting my life till it rises above
envy and falsehood and pride:
seeking to be, seeking to be
lowly and humble, a learner of thee

Words: Robert Walmsley, 1900, Music: Adam Watson
Song reprinted with permission under ONE LICENSE #A-733214. All rights reserved

Storytime Rev. Lorrie

“This Is Our House” by Michael Rosen, illustrated by Bob Graham

Read by Rev. Lorrie, Katie, Owen, Bree & Jack Kelly and their friend Barrett Burgess

This is a story about some children who find a big cardboard box and use it to make a playhouse. One child, George, decides that it is his house and makes up reasons to exclude all the other children – no girls allowed, or small people, or twins, or people who wear glasses, or who like tunnels. When George leaves to go to the bathroom, the other children all go in the house and exclude him when he comes back because he has red hair. George throws a tantrum but then stops and thinks… he declares that everyone is welcome in the house because “This Is Our House!”

George learned a big lesson, didn’t he? The other children showed him that excluding others makes everyone unhappy and that welcoming everyone is a lot more fun.

In our Bible story today, a Syrophoenician woman asks Jesus to heal her daughter. We would expect Jesus to do this for her, wouldn’t we? - but this woman is from another country. She looks different and sounds different from the people Jesus knows. Jesus was brought up amongst people who said that people like this woman were no good and so he says he can only help the Jews. He excludes her! This woman, a stranger, teaches Jesus a lesson about inclusion. Jesus listens to what she has to say and realizes that God would not want him to exclude anybody, not even someone so different. Jesus changes his thinking and the woman’s daughter is healed.

Jesus learned from the Syrophoenician woman, just like George learned from the children in the book we heard this morning. Both of them came to understand what the situation looked like from the other people’s view and realized that excluding them made no sense at all.

There are so many things we can learn if we take the time to listen. Sometimes what we hear can change our thinking and make life better for everyone.

Hymn: Seek Ye First the Kingdom - Voices United #356 Ellen, Chris, Bernice & Angela

1 Seek ye first the Kingdom of God,
and God’ righteousness;
and all these things shall be added unto you.
Hallelu, hallelujah!

2 Ask and it shall be given unto you;
seek and ye shall find;
knock and the door shall be opened unto you.
Hallelu, Hallelujah!

3 We do not live by bread alone,
but by every word
that proceeds from the mouth of God.
Hallelu, Hallelujah!

Prayer for Illumination Reader: James Eaton

Be with us, O God, as we reflect on your Word.
Open our eyes, our ears and our hearts
to listen to your voice and make of us
witnesses and doers of a living faith in Christ. Amen.

The Gospel Reading: Mark 7:24-37 (NRSV) - Jesus & the Syrophoenician Woman’s Faith

24 From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice,
25 but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him,
and she came and bowed down at his feet.
26 Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin.
She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter.
27 He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
28 But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
29 Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.”
30 So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

May we find ourselves renewed through this story of faith. Thanks be to God!

Sermon: “Who Deserves the Crumbs?” Rev. Kim

In our partnership visit to Nicaragua in 2015, there were two kinds of dogs that caught my attention. One was the street smart and the other, the upper class. It was impossible to ignore the street-smart dogs that roamed around the city of Managua especially in the barrios or villages on which we did our work. Everything about these dogs’ demeanor and appearance were so different from the dogs we are accustomed to seeing here in Canada. The street-smart dogs were unbelievably skinny with ribs and hipbones sticking out, almost disturbingly in some cases. Most likely they have no owners and no families and no particular people to take care of them. They scavenge food wherever they can find it: in garbage, from the sewers, on the streets and scraps from people. The upper-class dogs, on the other hand, were properly fed and well taken care of. They were owned by the host families and the middle class, those who live in rich neighbourhood where we stayed.

If there is a wide gap between the rich and the poor in Nicaragua, likewise, dogs have similar fate there. I remember Elly Crow’s comments one night when we gathered for reflection. She said: “I feel sad looking at the dogs on the streets. In Canada, we feed our dogs with human food and are considered family members. But here, they are left on the streets to survive on their own.” Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere. And I certainly understand that getting enough to eat and basic survival are real concerns for a considerable proportion of the population. Nicaraguans, like other people everywhere, choose to feed their children first. Only when poverty is adequately addressed by the worldwide community can the lives of individuals of all species, including dogs, be expected to improve.

How would you feel if someone calls you a dog? If you answer this question in Jesus’ time, you will realize that calling someone a dog is an outright insult and a put down. Let’s admit it. In this particular story in Mark, Jesus uttered a racial slur by calling the Syrophoenician woman and her sick, dying child, “dogs”. Calling Gentiles "dogs" was a form of verbal abuse. We call it racial prejudice in our modern language. Although the term “race” was a human construct brought about by the slavery of Africans in the 17th century, we can say that “racism” is already present in Jesus’ time as verbal and physical abuse, but also in less explicit ways, more hidden, covert and unconscious. Perhaps “racism” in the Bible is closer to the word “prejudice.” As a Jewish man, Jesus was brought up in a tradition that taught a covenant theology where Jews were the only people on earth who deserves God’s mercy and grace. This is absolutely one of those difficult gospel moments with which Christians must wrestle. Who is this Jesus, portrayed in this Markan story, who seemed to be scornful of other ethnic groups? How are we to understand such an indifferent and prejudiced Jesus?

In this story, a Syrophoenician woman, challenges Jesus to practice what he preaches. The woman nagged and begged Jesus to heal her daughter who was diagnosed with an unclean spirit. In those days, it was unseemly for any woman to approach Jesus directly, but she was also a Syrophoenician, a Gentile, a foreigner, an intrusion into the holy boundaries set by Mosaic laws. This woman, living in Tyre, which is modern-day Lebanon, just beyond the borders of Israel, is a descendant of those who were the most outcasts of the outcasts. The Markan Jesus barely listened to her plea and then uttered an odd remark: “it is not fair to take the children's food and feed it to the dogs.”

If one is familiar with Mark’s agenda of showing Jesus as being sent first to the Jewish people, the children in this story refers to the Jewish people, the one whom God favoured above all others and the dogs were the Gentiles, the pagans, the unclean, the outsiders. Jesus turns the woman away by using a metaphor that implies a limited supply of food that only the privileged – the children of God - may eat while those in the margins – the dogs - go hungry. Now isn’t that something? Surely Jesus of all people should know that God's goodness is extravagant - that there is more than enough food for everyone. And this is essentially what the Gentile woman points out to Jesus. She believes that in God’s abundant grace, there's plenty of food for everyone – children and dogs alike.

The woman does not back down. She had a crumb of confidence and that was enough to make her persist. The woman answers Jesus’ remark point-blank: "You are right, Sir, but dogs eat the children’s crumbs under the table. Yes, Sir. I agree that you were sent first to the house of Israel. Yes, I understand that we may not be your first priority. But I also believe that there is more than enough to feed us all. If we are dogs, then at least let us have a dog's rations. You have more than enough to feed us with the crumbs, some scrap of grace for someone a dog like us that are left under the table.” Karoline Lewis interprets the woman’s response like this: "What are you going to do, Sir? Judge me by my race and colour -- or judge me by my heart? Who are you to reject me when the God of justice, the God beyond borders said yes to me. God said yes to me when you came here in Tyre, this pagan land instead of spending all your time in Jerusalem. It’s okay to be me, so get over yourself, Sir”. Jesus was mesmerized, awestruck by her remark. Her response stopped Jesus from his tracks. It was a learning moment for him. Jesus realizes that the woman tells the truth. And when the truth gets told? The world changes. Her world changed. Same for Jesus. The rest of Jesus’ ministry was never the same again because of her. Jesus learned a lesson from this outsider, this non-Jewish, marginalized woman. Her faith astounds Jesus: "Woman, you have made an excellent point. You’re right- You get the same food as all of God's other children anyway, so why not have a seat at the table?" In that historic encounter, the "dog" becomes a dinner guest and gets to sit at the table with the "children.” And Jesus healed her dying daughter!

This story should stop us also in our tracks. David Henson comments that this story “presents Christians with some difficulty, particularly if we understand ethnic prejudice and racism as the systemic sins they are. When faced with the complexities of personal and systemic sin, it is much easier to think of Jesus as transcending them all and loving all peoples regardless of skin color or culture of origin. We want Jesus to be the simple, easy answer to all our problems and to all of society’s problems. Perhaps part of the difficulty of this passage…is that we want Jesus to be colorblind. We want Jesus to be colorblind because that’s what many of us want to be or think we should be.” Don’t you find this story encouraging and challenging? I do. Jesus, the rabbi, the leader of a movement, the Jewish man from Nazareth became a learner just like many of us. His teacher was a woman, an outsider, a Syrophoenician, a gentile. From his encounter with this woman, Jesus realizes that God’s love was for all people, that there were no outsiders, no distinction of ethnicity, colour or creed. From this point on, Jesus does not hold his healing power to only those in the inner circle, but expands the circle of God’s mercy and grace to include those once considered outsiders. Jesus opens himself to the whole world Jews and non-Jews alike.

Does anyone deserve only the crumbs? Or should we all have a seat at God’s table of grace no matter how poor or rich we are, no matter what faith we possess, no matter if we are children or dogs? Jews or non-Jews? Does God have boundaries regarding those receiving God’s grace? I strongly believe that the day the good news went to the “dogs” was the day it came to all of us. We are the recipients not of the crumbs under the table but a whole feast laid for us on the table. No one deserves the crumbs. We deserve to eat real food, real grace, real blessings from God. Through the Syrophoenician woman’s faith and persistence, Jesus fully understood that in God's love, there was more than enough food to go around!

How can we not pay attention to this story when the world is in a mess? When millions of refugees, migrants and immigrants across the world come to ask persistently for sanctuary and shelter in a new country, who come seeking the crumbs from the bounteous table of richer nations? This week, the world continues to be in horror as thousands of Afghans are fleeing their beloved country because of a change of government that dehumanizes particularly women, children and those of ethnic and religious minorities. This crisis has revealed so many failings and injustices. It highlights the evils of war, violence and persecution that desecrates humanity.

Dear friends, how do we respond as the body of Christ on the issue of racism? Are we willing to be an ally and to have our boundaries pushed back and to let go of the walls that divide people and communities? We don't have to go far to have our boundaries pushed back. We can proclaim Jesus and act like Jesus to a lonely new neighbour, to change our behaviour towards whites and non-whites and those of other faiths, to support and advocate for the refugees and immigrants that knocks on our doors for safety and refuge. The opportunities to serve are limitless. Where ever we are tempted to draw back, to judge, to turn away, to avoid someone's eyes, to tighten our protective circle - that's where God is calling us to let go of our limits, to a right relationship with someone outside our boundaries, our comfort zones. Who deserves the crumbs? No one - because God’s grace is outrageously abundant for all. We can all eat together on God’s table of grace. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Sources that helped me with my sermon:

Rev. Peter Lockhart, Does Jesus learn a lesson? A Different Heresy.
Heidi Husted, Christian Century, August 16, 2000
David R. Henson, “Crumbs: Jesus and the Ethnic Slur”, Lectionary Reflection, Mark 7:24-37, September 2, 2015, patheos.org.
Alyce Mackenzie, Jesus Is In the House! Reflections on Mark 7:24-37. patheos.org.
Commentaries of Karoline Lewis, preaching.org.
Elly Crow’s reflection – Mission Trip to Nicaragua 2015.

Prayers of the People & the Lord’s Prayer Rev. Lorrie

Holy One,

We marvel at the wonders of Creation and all the blessings we have been given.

We know that this planet and all life that inhabits it are suffering, in great part because of the way we humans have used earth’s resources without thought about how it affects the beautiful balance of nature. We know that many people around the world are suffering due to exclusion because of perceived differences – race, skin colour, sexuality, economic status, or differing abilities. We know that change is necessary to ensure that we, and all living things, can continue to thrive as you intended – but we also know that change is difficult.

Help us to learn. Help us to be open to new ways of living in respect with each other and with the ecosystem that supports all life. Help us to look at our way of life through new eyes, with the new information and wisdom that is available to us, with new understanding, and with your dream for creation as our focus and goal.

We pray for those who are dealing with the terrible effects of climate change – fires, floods, earthquakes, and ravaging storms. Move us to provide immediate relief and move us to action that will keep these things from worsening in the future.

We pray for all who are suffering today from illness, injury, grief, or loneliness. Help us to listen with open hearts and minds, that we can be a source of compassion and comfort.

We pray for all those living with fear and violence, for those experiencing the terrors of war, oppression, and abuse. We pray for all who have suffered from this pandemic – physically, economically, emotionally, and mentally. Help us to be agents of justice and a source of help and hope.

As Jesus was open to the wisdom of the Syrophoenician woman, may we be open to the voices of wisdom around us. Help us to look past our cultural assumptions and our fear of change so that we can transform our lives in a way that transforms the world.

All these things we ask in the name of Jesus, who urges us to see the world through the eyes of compassion and justice, and in the words he taught his disciples:

Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kin-dom come, thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread, And forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kin-dom, the power and the glory,
Forever and ever, Amen.

Invitation to Offer Rev. Kim

Engaging the wholeness of life is what God is all about. Our ministry as a church is to accompany others in this journey toward wholeness and so we offer our time, talents and treasures knowing that we are all God’s beloved children. If you are not on PAR and wish to send in your offering and donations, you can drop them in the mailbox by the kitchen door of the church or mail them to BCUC. You can also send in your support through e-transfer. Thank you for your continued love and support to BCUC.

Offertory Prayer

Teach us God to offer the very best of who we are. Through these gifts, may we offer hope, joy and healing to a world so much in need. Receive what we offer in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Sending Forth Rev. Kim

Go from this place like the Syrophoenician woman:
bold, daring, ready to take a risk.

Go to be a blessing!
Be people of courage!
Be people of healing and love!

Go to bless others because you have been blessed
and tell the world that God: Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer
loves us all! Amen.

Hymn: “Bless Now O God the Journey” - Voices United #633

1 Bless now, O God, the Journey
that all your people make,
the path through noise and silence,
the way of give and take.
The trail is found in desert
and winds the mountain round,
then leads beside still waters,
the road where faith is found.

2 Bless sojourners and pilgrims
who share this winding way,
whose hope burns through the terrors,
whose love sustains the day.
We yearn for holy freedom
while often we are bound.
Together we are seeking
the road where faith is found.

3 Divine Eternal Lover,
you meet us on the road.
We wait for lands of promise
where milk and honey flow.
But waiting not for places,
you meet us all around.
Our covenant is written
on roads, as faith is found.

Departing Music: Thank You for the Music – ABBA Abe:instrumental

So I say Thank you for the music, the songs I'm singing
Thanks for all the joy they're bringing
Who can live without it? I ask in all honesty
What would life be?
Without a song or a dance, what are we?
So I say thank you for the music
For giving it to me

Zoom Fellowship – 11 am

Sunday Worship Service - September 5, 2021