Listen to the sermon.
Good morning, St Hilda St Patrick!
It is so good to be here with you! I am looking forward to building relationships and ministry with you over the coming months.
Some of you may not know much about me, so here are three quick things to get us started:
- I grew up in this diocese at Good Shepherd in Vancouver and I was ordained from Saint Mark’s Cathedral 12 years ago.
- In my first 10 years of ordained ministry, I shared ministry with congregations in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania before coming home to Seattle 2 years ago.
- My given name is Elisabeth, which can help you remember how to say the name I go by. Just drop the first 3 letters and say “Sa-beth.” I’m not big on titles. I answer best to Sabeth. If you need a title for me, you can call me Reverend or Pastor Sabeth.
I am looking forward to getting to know each and every one of you. One thing that helps me immensely is for you to wear your nametags. I am a visual learner, and seeing your name in close proximity to your face really helps seal those two together in my mind.
Getting to know one another takes time, as does all relationship-building. Let’s work together to know and love one another as we create a little bit of God’s kingdom.
I have to admit that it feels a bit odd or out of step to be entering into an interim relationship when you have already been in transition for over a year. I’m not sure what it is that God has in mind for us in these months together, but I am quite certain that it will be inspired by the Holy Spirit and it will bring the Good News to our neighbors who yearn for hope and peace and community.
What else will do together? We will keep doing what we do as a community of faith - and maybe even dive deeper into this life we share.
We will praise God in worship: by proclaiming our faith, by learning from the Good News how Jesus came to show us God’s love, and by gathering around a meal made holy by the fact that we invite God into our lives in the sacrament.
We will glorify God in our every day lives: by striving to be living examples of God’s love to everyone we meet, by welcoming new and different faces into our faith family, by taking care of one another, and by serving Christ in our sisters and brothers in the wider community.
We will attend to our own spiritual lives, as individuals and as a community: by continuing to ask and listen for the Spirit’s nudgings about who and what God calls us to be and do, by supporting this community with prayer, service and giving, and by holding one another accountable for our continued growth in faith.
Transition time is, quite naturally, full of many and varied emotions. Some of us are mourning the relationships lost with Mother Cynthia and/or Father Mark. Some of us are feeling quite disheartened or anxious or nervous about re-opening the search process. Some of us can’t quite put our finger on what we’re feeling, but we know we aren’t quite feeling settled or sure about things.
These are real concerns and real feelings. In the midst of uncertainty and change, one thing remains constant: God’s constant and abiding love for us. We know and share that love with and through one another, as we gather in worship, as we serve side by side, as we care for one another. We are blessed to have all that we need, already, to bear witness to God’s love.
As today’s Gospel reading begins, we find Jesus far from home in Tyre. Tyre, on the Mediterranean Sea, is at the far north edge of the area where Jesus travelled during his ministry. If you can imagine, Tyre on the coast to the NW of the Sea of Galilee.
So far in his ministry, Jesus has been teaching among mostly Jewish audiences, and much closer to his home and native culture. In Tyre, he is in an area that is predominantly Gentile, not Jewish. Culturally, Tyre is much closer to Greece. The people look different and speak with unfamiliar accents. It’s very different from Jesus’ usual context. And, although Jesus knows his message is one of Good News for all people, we can imagine that he might feel some uncertainty or trepidation about how to engage with this different context.
Jesus’ potential discomfort is highlighted as he is approached directly by a woman, who is a Gentile, and of Syro-Phoenician descent. She is different from Jesus in nearly every observable way - in culture, religion, accent, skin color, gender. And yet she is not so different from others who come seeking Jesus. She has heard about Jesus, how he healed so many people, and she comes to beg for healing for her daughter.
Jesus barely hears her request before he dismisses her with an insult, belittling her because she is not Jewish, not “the usual” disciple. This woman, in a moment of courage or faith or perhaps plain defiance, challenges Jesus to see her and her child as real, full human beings. She challenges Jesus’ assumption that God’s gifts of healing are only for the Jews, only for the kinds of people he already knows. Talk about gutsy!
This Greek, Gentile woman is the only person in the gospels to challenge Jesus with a logical argument. And she is the only challenger who changes Jesus’ mind. From this point forward, his ministry of healing, of hope-bearing, of embodying God’s deep and abiding love, shifts to include communities that are primarily Gentile, not Jewish - communities very different from where Jesus had shared the Good News previously. We can imagine that Jesus might have felt stretched, uncomfortable, unsure of how to proceed at times. And yet, all people - rich and poor, male and female, young and old, Jew AND Gentile - craved the healing message of God’s all-forgiving, all-encompassing love and the hope of peace.
The takeaway for us is not that we can argue logically with God and change God’s mind. The Good News for us today is that we too are called to be stretched in our ministry, to faithfully go to places we have not yet imagined, to be uncomfortable for the sake of bringing God’s transforming love to neighbors we have not yet met, neighbors who may be very different from us.
God has something amazing in mind for St Hilda St Patrick. It may be more than we can ask or imagine right now. Our job, our ministry, is to journey together, to uphold one another and this community in prayer, and to be open to the stranger who maybe not-so-subtly challenges us to stretch our ministry into uncomfortable places for the sake of the Gospel.
Let us pray.
Lord of the changing, you help us find our voice that we might find our faith: we praise you for the Gentile woman who answered back to the Son of God; release us from the crowds which command our silence and free our tongues to demand from you the healing of the earth; through Jesus Christ, the opener of the gate. Amen.
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