At
Home Worship
First
Presbyterian Church of
Deport,
Texas
11th Sunday after
Pentecost, August 16, 2020
GREETINGS
OPENING SENTENCES
Maintain
justice, and do what is right. Isa. 56:1
God our Savior is coming soon.
How good and pleasant
it is when brothers and sisters
Dwell in unity!
It is like the precious oil on the head,
running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of
his robes!
Trusting
in the word of life given in baptism, we are gathered in the name of the
Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen
CALL TO WORSHIP
(responsive)
This is a Sabbath dedicated to our God.
Let this gathering place be a home for all people.
May
God be gracious to us and bless us.
May
God’s face shine over all the earth’s people.
Let all the people praise the God of all nations.
Let us give thanks and enjoy the blessings God
gives.
May God grant us
understanding and courage.
May
faith grow beyond our doubts.
The earth has yielded its blessing.
Let all the ends of the earth revere our Creator.
God brings us
together in unity of purpose.
May
our circle grow as we welcome newcomers.
PRAYER OF THE DAY (in unison)
How good and pleasant it is, O God, when kindred live together in
unity. Draw us now into the community
you intend for all your people. Help us
to listen and understand, both your word for us and our sharing with one
another. Keep us from being misled by
popular acclaim and the wisdom of the marketplace. May we not be unobservant guides to one
another but rather be fully open to your gifts and obedient to your call. Come to us now with healing and blessing. Amen.
Forgive us, O God, for the sin we recognize
in ourselves and the wounds we do not see.
Show us how we have hurt one another and grant us courage to seek
forgiveness and reconciliation. Reveal
to us our disobedience to you and keep us from leading others into our
sin. We seek your mercy for the times we
have willfully offended. Help us to put
aside all actions and comments that defile.
Cleanse us for new life in Christ.
Amen.
Silence
Prayer and Confession
God is merciful toward us and listens to our honest
prayers. Our thoughts and deeds are
fully known to God, who is eager to forgive and to lead us to new
understandings. When we earnestly seek
God’s help, we are set free to discover new opportunities. Even in the worst of circumstances, God works
with us to bring some good and to preserve life. May God be praised!
Glory be to the Father, and to
the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is
now and ever shall be, world withoutend.
Amen. Amen.
PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION (In Unison)
LISTEN FOR THE WORD OF GOD
Psalm
133
How
very good and pleasant it is
when kindred live together in
unity!
2 It is like the precious oil on the head,
running down upon the beard,
on the beard of Aaron,
running down over the collar of
his robes.
3 It is like the dew of Hermon,
which falls on the mountains of
Zion.
For there the Lord ordained his blessing,
life forevermore.
I
ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite,
a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. 2 God
has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.
29 for the gifts
and the calling of God are irrevocable. 30 Just as you
were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their
disobedience, 31 so they have now been disobedient in
order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may now[a] receive
mercy. 32 For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so
that he may be merciful to all.
Matthew 15:(10-20) 21-28
10 Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and
understand: 11 it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but
it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.” 12 Then the disciples approached and said to him, “Do you know
that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?” 13 He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not
planted will be uprooted. 14 Let them
alone; they are blind guides of the blind.[a] And if one blind person guides another, both will fall
into a pit.” 15 But Peter said to him, “Explain this parable to us.” 16 Then he said, “Are you also still without
understanding? 17 Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the
stomach, and goes out into the sewer? 18 But what
comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. 19 For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery,
fornication, theft, false witness, slander. 20 These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed
hands does not defile.”
21 Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre
and Sidon. 22 Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and
started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is
tormented by a demon.” 23 But he
did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send
her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” 24 He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house
of Israel.” 25 But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help
me.” 26 He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and
throw it to the dogs.” 27 She
said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their
masters’ table.” 28 Then
Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you
wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.
So, Last
week, Armel talked to you about Jesus walking on water. This happened right
after the feeding of the five thousand.
We’re getting into the real meat of Jesus’ ministry, the nitty
gritty. He is building up a reputation
as a healer and a preacher and teacher.
His reputation is spreading. So
now the Pharisees start coming to him with questions because he is starting to
break with some of the laws written in the Torah. And Jesus is put in the position of
fine-tuning some of the old rules and explaining them.
In
addition to this story giving us that beautiful pithy phrase of “the blind
leading the blind”, Jesus also gives us another short saying called an aphorism when he says
that “ dirty hands don’t defile you but what comes out of your mouth and your
heart is what defile you.” An
aphorism is a short saying of a general truth.
And the truth in this case is that you gotta be careful with what you
say. Or, you could be even more
brief and just say: Words Matter.
It makes a
lot of sense. Especially when Jesus
explains it so graphically in anatomical terms:
What you put into your mouth comes out the other end
and, basically does no harm. It
goes into the sewer, so to speak. Now, this is a great anatomy lesson. And we
know the Jews had very strict dietary laws.
These laws were handed to them in the books of Leviticus and
Deuteronomy, then elaborated on later by generations of rabbis.
But it’s
what comes out of your mouth that you have to worry about because
that is connected to your heart and is, therefore, of more consequence. Jesus
says, “For out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual
immorality, theft, false witness, slander.
These are what defile a person.”
It is easy
to imagine a direct line from your heart to your mouth.
Notice
Jesus didn’t say there was this connection between the brain to
the mouth. It might have been better for
a lot of us if we had this – I know for myself this failure has gotten me into
a LOT of trouble. But this doesn’t seem
to be a valid connection for Jesus.
Certainly a connection to your kidneys or your knees or your fingertips
or your toes. No, it’s your heart that
he wants to connect to what comes out of your mouth.
And what
is your heart? In the 21st
century we know that our heart is basically a pump that circulates blood. But historically we consider the heart to be
the center of our emotions. Love, joy,
rage, bravery and such. Jesus says this
is where we get evil thoughts, murder, sexual immorality, theft, and lies.
Then he
says something that gets him in trouble with the religious leaders of the
day. He says that eating with unwashed
hands are small potatoes. This would
also probably get him in trouble with the Center for Disease Control today.
But I
think the point he was trying to make was that we shouldn’t waste time with
religious rituals like handwashing when things like being honest and kind to
each other are more important. He was balancing out spiritual matters versus
what looked like housekeeping. This is
very similar to the Mary and Martha situation when he told Martha to stop
worrying about cooking dinner and come listen to what he was saying.
But here
we have it from Jesus that we should be watching what we say. Our words make a difference.
Jesus is
being pretty clear here: he is telling
us a message that he repeats in other places using different words but the
message is the same: he has come to
refine God’s original arrangement with humanity. Some of the rules need to be changed. God has seen that they just aren’t
working. The old purity laws in the Old
Testament that God set up for God’s people to establish their relationship with
God, specifically the strict dietary laws, the hand washing, the no pork, the
no cooking an animal in its mother’s milk, some of these laws either aren’t
needed anymore or they are getting in the way.
Between Jesus and Paul, a lot of these rules will get shoved to the
side. God had bigger fish to fry
now.
I think
Jesus wants us to put more thought into what we say. And I think we can all agree. There’s
probably not a person in this sanctuary who hasn’t said something that we
regretted at some time in our life. Or
written that email—or text message—and once we saw it zip off into cyberspace
realized what we had done only to grasp at the air and wish to have it
back. Maybe you instantly regretted
it. Maybe it was the next day or month
you regretted it.
But I’ve
also noticed something else lately, with the Covid pandemic and all the
necessity of mask wearing. Of course,
nobody likes wearing a mask. It’s very restrictive. I realize this pandemic has affected my
relations with people in two very important ways: Nobody can see my smile when I’m wearing a
mask. Or when I grimace. Any shape my lips or mouth takes to indicate an
opinion. And I can’t hug people. And I’m a big hugger. Between facial
expressions and hugs I just might as well go out in public wearing a strait
jacket. It’s just a very frustrating thing.
Early on,
in some subconscious battle within myself I was desperate to do something to
express what I was thinking, what I was feeling. And the next thing I knew, I just said it in
words, out loud:
I love
you.
And to my
astonishment, the gift was accepted as it was given, understood, that it was
all I had to offer, that it stood for all the other things I had that I
couldn’t give. And I got an enthusiastic response back, “I love you, too.”
Now, I’ve
gotten in the habit of saying these things without embarrassment. I say them more often. I tell total strangers “I love you”. I tell the checker at the grocery store “I
love you” and they say it back to me.
There are
two things going on below the surface, I think.
We’re in a pandemic. Anytime you
turn on the television you hear news of folks dying, they count the dead and
the sick and you wonder if someone you love will become part of that
statistic. Life is starting to look a
little more fragile and precious. (2)
There’s no use beating around the bush or being coy. I am going to say good things to other people
now. And every word counts.
Words
matter. They are connected to our
hearts. If our hearts contain good
things our words will reflect those good things. So we must keep our hearts in good shape.
How do we
do that? In the words of the old
computer programmers, “Garbage in, garbage out.”
Watch what
you let enter your heart. Take care in
how you select what you read or watch on TV.
You might need to spend less time watching the news. Even the people you spend time with can
affect your spiritual health. Yes, there
is such a thing as “spiritual health.”
Tend to your own spiritual health.
These are the things coming from our hearts that defile or build us up.
This
pandemic season
Let us
mend a quarrel
Build
peace
Seek out a
forgotten friend
Gladden
the heart of a child
Speak your
love
Speak it
again
Speak it still
once again
Amen.
Sermons: Armel Crocker CIM
Matthew 15:10–28; Romans 11:1–2a, 29–32
Give me your tired, your poor, those you consider dogs.
Jesus leaves familiar, comfortable territory and people, the
disciples and the Pharisees, to enter a sort of red-light district, a place
most people would not dare to go. Going there is socially unacceptable; it’s
where the so-called outcasts, unclean, disenfranchised, and undesirables live. On
the contrary we discover that the outsider finds a place on the inside of the
heart of God.
Being both a Canaanite and a woman is a double whammy. Yet
the Canaanite woman is not afraid to confront this Jewish man named Jesus. He’s
in her neighborhood now, and she has a desperate need, her daughter is
tormented by a demon. What mother would not want her child healed? She goes
against social and religious norms for the purpose of receiving healing for her
child. She speaks up and out to this man she calls “Son of David” for mercy,
not knowing what his response will be. She takes a stand, a risk, and crosses a
borderline.
At first, Jesus doesn’t even respond. But the disciples do,
taking the opportunity to show their bias when they say, “send her away.” The
woman, to whom the text gives no name, receives no apparent compassion from the
disciples. She is a foreign woman; they have no concern for her kind; they want
to build a wall, like a border wall. And Jesus doesn’t appear to react much
better, he seems concerned only with exclusivity in favor of the house of
Israel.
But this woman doesn’t give up easily. She presses up
against resistance; as a woman she is used to this as in today’s world. She knows
that she is discounted by men. She continues to speak up and out until she gets
what she wants, she is a protestor. She knows there are cultural norms that may
prohibit her deepest desires, but she is not willing to accept those norms as
normative, she wants to change the order of systems, she decries salvation and
reparations. She pushes against them and reveals her humanity to Jesus: “Lord,
help me.” She is a human in need like any other human.
Jesus seems slow in empathy toward her. He even calls her a
dog, as opposed to a child of God, a valued human. Yet she doesn’t allow his
insensitive, insulting words to deter her. When Jesus says, “It is not fair to
take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs,” she replies, “Yes, Lord,
yet even the dogs eat crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” One might
say her nerve saves her. Because she speaks the truth, Jesus says her faith is
great, and her daughter is healed. The truth opens the door to freedom.
This woman shows how a person can be bold and brave in
approaching God without fear. She has her eyes on the prize of the healing of
her daughter, and nothing can deter her, not even an apparent insult from
Jesus. Society’s strikes against her do not limit her faith, or her tenacity to
reach beyond existential borders. Silence is not an option, only salvation and
healing. She believes that her daughter, a valued human being, deserves
healing, health care, like any other human being.
Though there is resistance at first, Jesus gives in to this
foreigner and embodies God’s mercy for all. Through engagement with the other,
it is possible to learn of their human need, that is, that they are not dogs
but valued humans, God’s children, who have feelings, needs, and children, who
desire mercy and healing like everyone else. Through this encounter, it is
possible to see, even if the disciples do not, that we are more alike than
different, that we are all children of God.
Jesus engages Pharisees, disciples, and Canaanite women,
revealing the expansion of the heart of God to include foreigners, the
disenfranchised and outcasts. God is an inclusive God; those we despise are our
brothers and sisters, too. We may want to send them away but God brings them
near, even to the master’s table. Crumbs are enough for the Canaanite. It may
not be what everyone else receives, but she’s grateful for even a little piece
of bread, because in the brokenness of that crumb, her daughter finds healing.
She fights for a little piece of the dream so that her child’s nightmare can
end.
And it does end, because the Lord has mercy on her, revealing
how ultimately, as Paul puts it in the reading from Romans, God is “merciful to
all.” Jesus welcomes her and her daughter, however begrudgingly, despite
cultural, religious, and gender differences.
This scriptural border crossing brings to mind “The New
Colossus,” the sonnet by Emma Lazarus inscribed on a plaque on the inner wall
of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, the “Mother of Exiles”:
From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome . . .
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
A poetic remix might add, Give me those you consider dogs.
Send these to me: black Americans, indigenous people, the refugee at the border
with her children, people of color, the disenfranchised, the foreigner, and
more. Send the wretched refuse, the ailing daughters of ostracized women,
because they yearn to be free. The unnamed Canaanite woman reaches out to touch
the golden door of God, to set her daughter free.
Amen
APOSTLES’ CREED
I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and
earth. And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy
Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified,
dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the
dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father
Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe
in the Holy Ghost; the holy Catholic Church; the communion of saints; the
forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting.
Amen.
PRAYERS OF INTERCESSION
Friends in Christ,
God invites us to hold the needs of our sisters and brothers as dear to us as
our own needs. Loving our neighbors as ourselves, we offer our thanksgivings
and our petitions on behalf of the church and the world. Hear our prayers, God
of power, and through the ministry of your Son free us from the grip of the tomb,
that we may desire you as the fullness of life and proclaim your saving deeds
to all the world.
We ask this through Christ our Lord who taught us to pray;
Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name; Thy kingdom come:
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread; And forgive us our debts as we forgive
our debtors. And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. For thine is
the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory forever.
Amen.
CHARGE AND BLESSINGS
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, 2
Cor. 13:13
the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be
with you all.
Amen.