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Sermon, Theology & Culture

Creflo Dollar, Last Rites and the Rich Young Ruler

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Mark 10:17-31

As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” …

Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” … But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” (Read the whole passage)

Sermon

Thanksgiving has become an odd holiday for us. And it isn’t just that Thanksgiving isn’t really a Christian holiday… since it isn’t about Christ specifically, because we do practice thankfulness as Christians each time we gather for the Eucharist or Lord’s supper. Eucharist means Thanksgiving in greek.

No, thanksgiving is odd because for most of us it is out of context. Thanksgiving’s origins are becoming distant from our lives. Thanksgiving is a North American holiday meant to celebrate the end of the harvest, time of abundance before the scarcity of winter. A time of rest following the hard work of keeping and tilling the land and animals through spring and summer.

Most of us don’t orient our lives according to nature’s seasons. We are far removed from the subsistence lifestyle… we don’t depend on our own hands to grow our own food.

And it is of course, still important for us to remember where our Canadian society came from and to give thanks that there are those who still do provide our basic needs… yet, how we do that by hosting a fancy meal for ourselves is a good question.

Thanksgiving is a holiday that survives mostly on tradition, but as we take the time to give thanks and to reflect on our own blessings… we might discover an uneasiness with our wealth and possessions much like the rich young ruler in the story we hear today.

Sometimes we can forget where the famous sayings of our language come from, and today we are reminded. As Jesus speaks with this wealthy young man and challenges him to give up his possessions, we hear familiar sayings. “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of heaven” and “The first shall be last and the last shall be first”.

Jesus seems to be coming down hard on the rich today. And this might make us uncomfortable. We know that we are the world’s wealthy. Anyone with an income over 34,000 is in the top 5% of income earners on the planet. And Jesus says that if you are rich, it will not be easy for you to enter the Kingdom of God. That means most of us. Ouch.

But for those who have been here week after week listening to a difficult year of Mark’s gospel, where Jesus has been uncharacteristically harsh, calling people dogs, or Satan, or telling them they would be better off dead or that they have hard hearts…

Jesus might just be letting us off the hook for our particular wealth today.

This story about the encounter between the rich young ruler and Jesus is all about absurdities. So let’s put it into modern terms so the point can be made.

If you watch TV preachers and televangelists you might have heard of Creflo Dollar… quite the last name for tv pastor. Anyways, Creflo Dollar recently shared the following gem of wisdom to his hundreds of thousands of twitter followers: “Jesus bled and died for us so that we can lay claim to the promise of financial prosperity.”

Jesus didn’t die for our sins. Or to show us God’s love. Or to conquer death.

But so that we can be rich.

Creflo Dollar also asked each one his church’s 200,000 members for $300 each so that he could buy a 70 million dollar luxury jet in order to bring the gospel to people around the world.

What does Creflo Dollar have to do with today’s story? Well, when we hear about this young man coming to Jesus, we aren’t meant to think of a nice young middle manager at the bank. We are meant to imagine someone like Creflo Dollar pulling up to Jesus in an expensive sports car with loud base booming in the air long before you can see the car and that neon glow coming from underneath. And then Creflo steps out to ask this wandering, near homeless street preacher named Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

It is easy to get bogged down in Jesus’ criticism of the rich… which may be warranted. But the point is not to hear Jesus criticizing us for trying to be faithful citizens, spouses, employees, and parents by providing for our families.

We are meant to see the absurdity of someone as rich a Creflo Dollar thinking he has fulfilled all the rules of righteousness and done enough to get himself into heaven.

The point isn’t the problem of heaving a certain amount of money or having possessions. The problem is thinking that being rich is a blessing from God.

When the rich young man walks away from Jesus unable to give up his possessions in order follow Jesus, the disciples want to know what is up too.

And that is because like our world, they live in a world that thinks being rich is a blessing from God. They have been taught that being rich and wealthy and healthy is a sign of God’s favour. Just like so many of us have heard on TV or from pulpits or from well meaning friends and relatives. Our world thinks that God is in heaven dolling out the cash to the good people and suffering to the bad. That’s until we see a person who is rich but not a good person. Or we see a good person struck by illness or tragedy. And then we wonder what is going on with God.

An odd thing happened to me this week as I was leading a service at a personal care home. Right in the middle of my sermon, a staff member gave me urgent message that I was needed at the hospital for an emergency. Even though I was certain I was not the pastor who the message was intended for, I quickly concluded the service and left for the hospital.

There I found a family sitting by the death bed of a loved one. I also found out that I wasn’t the intended recipient of the urgent message. Never the less, I offered to pray with the family anyways… as this is part of the calling of a pastor and something I have done many times.

And so there was I was with a dying stranger and his family praying the commendation for the dying, or what used to be known as last rites.

In the commendation, a section of the litany goes like this:

By your holy incarnation,

deliver your servant. 

By your cross and passion, 

deliver your servant. 

By your precious death and burial,

deliver your servant. 

By your glorious resurrection and ascension,

deliver your servant. 

By the coming of the Holy Spirit,

deliver your servant. 

You will notice that we don’t pray:

By all the money he made in this life,

deliver your servant.

By all the good things he did,

deliver your servant. 

By all the rules he followed and commandments he kept,

deliver your servant. 

When all there is is a hospital bed, and a ventilator and tearful loved ones –

money, rules and good deeds don’t mean a thing.

And this is what Jesus is trying to make the rich young man understand. A camel could never pass through the eye of a needle. And even a rich man cannot enter heaven by his own effort.

Rich or poor.

Healthy or ill.

Sinner or saint.

The only way we get into heaven is by God’s mercy.

The only way the Kingdom of God is opened to us, is because Jesus died on the cross for us.

The only person who earns our salvation is God.

God is the one who does the work.

We do not inherit or earn or achieve eternal life.

God gives it to us.

Jesus accomplishes it for us.

And maybe, just maybe that is what Jesus means when he says the first shall be last and the last shall be first.

Those who are relying on their own righteousness, their own goodness, their own faithfulness, their own achievements, their own 70 million dollar jets, their own riches and health and wealth, those who are relying on those things to get themselves into heaven will be incredibly surprised when they find out none of that stuff mattered. They might go from feeling first to feeling last.

But those who feel like sinners, like wretches, like unworthy and unloveable people. Those who know that they don’t measure up, that they aren’t good enough, or powerful enough, or important enough, or rich enough, or pious enough for God to show them mercy… won’t they be shocked when they find out that none of that stuff mattered. That God gives grace and mercy even to them. They might feel like they have gone from last to first.

We might feel like we have gone from last to first… because we have.

Because, thanks be to God regardless of our blessings, possessions, wealth or lack thereof, God has decided to give us mercy, to show us grace, to grant us eternal life through Jesus.

Amen. 

Sermon

When Jesus talks about divorce, he is not talking about divorce

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Mark 10:2-16
Some Pharisees came, and to test Jesus they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.”

People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. (Read the whole passage)

Sermon

When I was 7 or 8 years old, I remember the first one of my friends telling us that his parents were getting a divorce. It was a strange and complicated situation. Over the following weeks and months, he began living one week with his mom and one with his dad. And while there were two birthday parties, two thanksgivings, two Christmases, I could tell that having parents who didn’t live with each other anymore and having to move your whole life back and forth every Saturday was not something I would ever want.

And then when I was 19 years old working as a camp counsellor, we got a panicked call from the camp director to our group of counsellors during our hour off. We were needed to come and settle a group of unruly campers. The old pastor who was doing bible study with the group of high school aged campers, had gotten into a heated discussion with one teenaged girl over whether or not it was a good thing for her parents to divorce. He was insisting it was a sin. She was insisting that the fighting, and anger and frustration that was tearing apart her family had finally gone away once her parents separated and that this was a good thing.

Despite being relatively common and something that many couples experience these days, divorce is still a word that carries stigma and shame. The wounds of divorce can be deep and slow to heal.

So, when we hear Jesus offer some pretty strong words about divorce, it can sound like condemnation. “Because of the hardness of your heart.” he says… and yet ask anyone going through a divorce what their heart feels like and they will probably tell you the story of a heart being ripped to shreds, a wounded and broken heart. Not a hard one.

So what is the deal? Doesn’t Jesus get how messy and complicated this is? Doesn’t God have compassion and mercy for two flawed people who don’t know how to find their way back to each other? Can’t Jesus see that sometimes a marriage needs to die for the individuals in it to live?

We can’t forget which Gospel we are reading today. This is the Jesus who has called the Syrophoenician woman a dog, who has called Peter Satan, who has told John that it would  be better if he were dead than get in the way of Jesus’ mission.

Jesus in Mark’s gospel does not suffer fools and he doesn’t have time for people who don’t get it.

So what are we not getting?

For a long time the church has used this passage to clobber anyone considering divorce. Pastors have told abused women that it would be a sin to leave their husband. We have told incompatible couples that they must continue to suffer together. The church has forbid divorce on any grounds, just like Jesus seems to be doing here.

So again, what we are not getting that Jesus gets? The clue is in the in the question. “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”

Not is it lawful for a couple to get divorced, but for a MAN to do the divorcing.

The Pharisees and Jesus are not talking about marriage as we know it. This is not about two people who enter into a loving covenant to share a life of love together.

This is about the contract between a man and a woman’s father. This is about men buying women just like they would buy a cow or a sack of grain or a piece of land.

In the world of the Pharisees, women were not people. They were property. Property whose function was to serve and provide pleasure for the man, and ultimately provide a male heir. And if these things were not provided whenever the man wanted them, this was grounds for divorce. In fact, pretty much any dissatisfaction was grounds for divorce.

All man had to do was say, “I divorce you.” and his wife was cast out of the marriage and onto the street, where her only two options were prostitution or begging for survival.

So when Jesus calls the Pharisees hard of heart, he is speaking of a power imbalance in a contractual and economic relationship. Not hardness of heart between a modern husband and wife.

Jesus is calling out the Pharisees for being selective in their reading of the law of Moses. They say that the legal procedure of divorce is simple. But they know that the law of Moses is full of concern for widows and destitute women. It was the duty of a widower’s brother to marry a widow. It was the duty of a widower’s kin to provide a widow with children if she didn’t have any. And if re-marrying was not possible for a widow, it was the duty of the community to care for her. The men harvesting fields were to leave a portion of the harvest behind to be gleaned and collected by the widows. It was a law that a portion of the offering collected in the synagogues and temple be given to the widows and poor.

For a set of laws to be so concerned with the care of husbandless women on a community to make it so easy for a man to divorce his wife doesn’t make any sense… it is a deliberate misreading of the rules.

And Jesus knows it. The Pharisees know it. The disciples know it. Mark knows it.

It is why the passage about people bringing children to Jesus is tacked onto this passage about divorce.

Jesus is calling the people around him to care for the weak and vulnerable among them. He is telling men that it is wrong to dump their wives onto the community to care for. He is telling those in power that they don’t get to abdicate their responsibility to care for the powerless. Jesus is calling out and condemning those who would tell the weak and vulnerable to pull themselves up by their own boot straps. He is telling those in authority that their power comes with the obligation to use it for good.

If Jesus were to have this conversation with us today, it would not be about divorce at all.

If Jesus were talking about our hardness of heart he would be calling us out for very different reasons.

Jesus would say, because of your hardness of heart you condemn women in niqab’s at citizenship ceremonies.

Let those are who taught to believe to hide their face in this world come to me because the Kingdom of God belongs to them.

Jesus would say, because of your hardness of heart you will not call for an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women.

Let those who are lost and forgotten by the world come to me, for the Kingdom of god belongs to them.

Jesus would say, because of your hardness of heart you are afraid of refugees.

Let those who, because of persecution and strife, have to flee their homes come to me, for the Kingdom of God belongs to them.

Jesus would say, because of your hardness of heart you let vulnerable children fall through the cracks of underfunded child welfare systems.

Let the children who are forcibly taken from their homes, who do not have the care and support they need come to me, for the Kingdom of God belongs to them.

Jesus would say, because of your hardness of heart you have told married couples on the ropes that their need to divorce is a sin.

Let those who dying to separate in order to live come to me.

Yeah… it is hard to hear Jesus challenge the hard places in our hearts.

Yeah… it has been rough to listen to Jesus call us out week after week.

Yeah… this might not feel like good news.

And just when it feels like Jesus has just come to stomp all over us for having hard hearts, Jesus reminds us that we easily forget who we are, and we easily forget what Jesus is doing for us, to us.

Today, Kinsley will be brought forward to the baptismal font. She will be held by her parents. The pastor’s voice and hands will say the words and hold the water. We will all make promises.

But Jesus will be the one blessing her. For hers is the Kingdom of God.

And just as Kinsley is the little one brought to Jesus, so also are we. We are all the little ones who have been brought to Jesus to be touched and blessed. To be washed and forgiven. To be named and claimed as children of God.

And because it is Jesus doing the blessing, baptized is now not something we were, but something we become. Washed once, children of God forever.

Yes we have hard hearts. No we have not lived up to the power and responsibility we have been entrusted with.

Jesus names that and it is hard to hear.

But Jesus names us the little children too.

Despite our hard hearts. Despite what we have failed to do for the weak and vulnerable, Jesus says, come to me. All of you. Because you too are the weak and vulnerable. For because I have named you my children and the Kingdom of God belongs to you.

Amen. 

Theology & Culture

Why Christian? – The difficulty of having a Progressive Faith in a Conservative Tradition

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I consider myself an orthodox Christian.

Not Eastern, but orthodox in the sense that I adhere to the essential core doctrines of Christianity, like the Trinity, Original Sin, two natures of Christ, the real resurrection, etc…

I also belong a Lutheran denomination (ELCIC) that allows same-sex marriage, ordains women and LGBT people, teaches its pastors historical-critical methods of biblical scholarship, and does any number of other things that many Christians consider heretical.

There is an inherent difficulty in operating in an orthodox and small “c” conservative faith tradition while adopting socially progressive ethics and post-modern scholarship. This difficulty has been churning in the back of my mind for months, and this week it is about to come to the forefront.

My wife and I are headed to the Why Christian? Conference hosted by Nadia Bolz-Weber and Rachel Held Evans. In preparation for the conference, Rachel Held Evans asked the question on her Facebook page “why christian?”

And the question was asked in light of recent events in news: The hype around Kim Davis’ stand for “Christian values” in refusing to issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples contrasted by the photos of a dead three-year-old Syrian refugee washing up on a Turkish beach.

When fellow Christians are rallying behind someone trying to use the government to impose her beliefs on others in the name of religious freedom, how does one stick with this Christianity business?

When ‘Christian nations’ seem so passive about doing anything about the plight of refugees escaping violence because they are muslims, how do you continue to call yourself Christian?

By definition, Christianity is a conservative faith. No, not conservative in the political sense. Christianity is conservative in the practical sense. Christianity seeks to maintain, protect, promote and conserve the teaching, preaching and good news of God in Jesus Christ. Christianity is trying to bring the past forward – a conservative way of being. And yet, along the way Christianity has also conserved things like patriarchy, sexism, systems of power and abuse, bigotry and racism, judgementalism and close-mindedness.

Christianity has a lot of baggage to contend with, and our baggage is frequently getting in our own way. Our baggage is often the thing Christians mistakenly hold up and shout loudly to the world that this is what God – not just Christianity – is all about.

A common refrain among those who struggle with the conservative baggage has been to drop the Christian label in favour of “following Jesus.” And who can blame them? Considering the Christianity that is so frequently presented in the media and practiced so widely, or when Kim Davis or Donald Trump or Fox News is our spokesperson, we should want to say, “I am not with them.”

The Kingdom of God is Near - the Lion of St. Mark
The Kingdom of God is Near – the Lion of St. Mark

Ten days ago, I got a tattoo (insert joke – “a pastor walks into a tattoo shop…”). Getting a tattoo is a very intimate experience. For four hours I had to lay still as someone literally did artwork on my body. And yet, during those four hours I had an extremely familiar experience. My tattoo artist and I talked for hours about all the ways that Christians are judgemental, agenda-filled and often put off and offend unchurched people like her. Yet she didn’t find me that way.

My tattoo artist told me that I was not like any pastor she has ever met (well, not quite, as my wife spent an afternoon with her a couple of  weeks before me). I get told that a lot. When I meet with unchurched couples coming to get married, when unchurched families come to have a child baptized, or when unchurched families come for funerals they often tell me that I am not what they expected. Most unchurched people that I get to spend some time with tell me I don’t sound like the Christians on TV, or like their one friend who can’t stop talking about their megachurch pastor, or like their grandma who looks down on them for having tattoos, piercings, not going to church, living in sin or whatever else. I don’t sound like those other Christians because I am cool with questions, even encouraging of them, I share my doubts, and I even share my own frustrations about the judgemental behaviour of many fellow Christians.

Maybe this should make me wonder if I got Christianity wrong along the way? Is the way I practice it so uncommon?

It isn’t.

I have spent far too long studying history and theology in university and at seminary to not know that the way I practice Christianity is fairly consistent with the way it has been practiced throughout history. And most of the Christians I know approach faith the way I do.

Yet, despite the baggage that Christianity carries these days, despite the undignified death that Christendom is undergoing, despite the pop-culture caricature that Christians have become, I can’t walk away from the religion.

I am a Christian, even if Kim Davis gets to speak for me, or Fox News or even… heaven forbid… Donald Trump. 

And I am Christian because following Jesus means being a Christian. It means hanging out with sinners and other people who struggle with the baggage. With people who want to hold on to the baggage at all costs, or people who have been trying to toss it from the bandwagon since before they can remember.

Because believing in Jesus just doesn’t work outside of community. Because taking up our cross and following means we don’t get to avoid all the crosses in the world, but instead Jesus’ ministry happens right where the crosses are. The crosses of hypocrisy, judgmentalism, abuse, control and power.

Dumping Christianity to follow Jesus doesn’t jive with the God who put our baggage on, who literally became our baggage, who used our baggage as his flesh in order to come and meet us in the incarnation.

And of course our baggage, our flesh, made things much more difficult for Jesus, but that was the only way to reach us.

As much as I shake my head this week every time I see a Kim Davis news story scroll by on Facebook. As much as I get enraged when I read that Christians are rallying behind Donald Trump, or rallying behind Stephen Harper here in Canada. As frustrating as it is that the Christianity that is represented in the media is one I neither recognize nor practice.

But I know that this is not the whole story.

I know that the church I grew up in is full of people just like Kim Davis, and they have sponsored 3 refugee families over the past 15 years. In fact, churches are some of the most frequent sponsors of refugees. I know that the grandmothers who guilt their grandkids into bringing their babies to be baptized also knit quilts for Canada’s northern communities and brought sweaters by the truck-load so that Canadian Lutheran World Relief could send 70,000 sweaters to Syrian Refugees last winter. I know that church people who struggle with how fast world is changing and who long for the golden age of Christendom are also regularly volunteering at the soup kitchen, filling the food bank, visiting people in hospitals and old folks homes and are caring for the world in their own small ways.

But most importantly, I know that Christianity is at its best when it is practiced by sinners. Even when those sinners like to tell everyone outside the church that they are the sinners. Christianity is still for sinners.

Christianity, the religion with all this baggage, is also the means by which God meets our broken world and speaks words of promise, grace, and mercy. The baggage filled traditions of Christianity are the means by which God washes and claims us as God’s own, the means by which God feeds us with God’s very Body.

Christianity is the community where God transforms us from broken and flawed people into forgiven and whole. 

And as filled with baggage as Christianity is these days, I need it. We all need it.

Because we need God

and those promises

and that washing

and that food.

I can’t believe in Jesus alone, I need all these messed up people – Christians – to do it with me.

 

Why are you still a Christian? What are your frustrations with Christianity? Share in the comments, or on the Facebook Page: The Millennial Pastor or on Twitter: @ParkerErik

Sermon, Theology & Culture

Alan Kurdi, the Syrophoenician Woman and Breaking Jesus’ Prejudice

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Mark 7:24-37

Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 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.” But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”  (Read the whole passage)

Sermon*

Most of us had a moment this week when we first saw the image of little Alan Kurdi lying face down on a beach in Turkey. The scene seemed unreal: childlike innocence contrasted with devastating tragedy. It seemed to jar the world out of our summer sleepiness and into a deeper awareness of the reality of the humanitarian and refugee crisis happening out of Syria.

It’s not that there haven’t been news reports, articles written, and videos posted showing the thousands of migrants clashing against police, migrants struggling to cross borders or telling us of migrants dying trying to make their way to a better life.

It’s also not that we haven’t responded to the crisis, which has been going on for 5 years: CLWR asked our national church for 10,000 sweaters and we responded with 70,000. We’ve given with financial support, we have hosted fundraisers, and we have even had ongoing conversations in our congregation about how we can support refugees.

And yet, the reality of this crisis has always seemed far away. Something distant and removed from us. That is until this week when one photo scooped us up from our living room couches, plucked us away from computer screens, and transported us around the world.

Unlike the news reports, the articles and videos of migrants, one photo of a Turkish beach made us feel like we were standing just a few feet away from little Alan Kurdi and demanded that we come near and truly see this humanitarian crisis.

Perhaps it is serendipity or perhaps the Holy Spirit is up to something, because Jesus has his own close encounter with a foreign woman this week. A parent doing anything she can to provide a better life for her child.

And it is this desperate parent who seeks Jesus out, hoping that he will help her and her demon possessed daughter.

As seems to be usual in Mark’s gospel, Jesus is tired and cranky. He is seeking refuge from the demanding crowds, and so when this woman comes into the house where he is staying, Jesus is well… very un-Christ-like with her.

She begs for his help, and Jesus puts her off. In fact Jesus tells her off. Jesus compares her to a dog. And not the beloved family pets many of us have at home, but a pest and nuisance. The word he uses is more akin to that pejorative name for a female dog.

Mark the gospel writer, doesn’t usually provide details unless they are important, so the fact that he mentions that this woman is Syrophoenician should not escape our notice. Syrophoenicians were mixed race gentiles living in the border lands of Tyre and Sidon, just beyond Galilee. Syrophoenicians were half Phoenician and half Syrian (the coincidence here should not be lost on us).

The Israelites of Jesus’ day saw these particular gentiles living just beyond their borders as lesser peoples. People unworthy of Jewish attention or compassion.

As the Syrian-Phoenician  woman comes to Jesus, she humbles herself at his feet, and she begs for his compassion on her daughter’s behalf. And she crosses the boundaries of proper social behaviour, by being a woman who speaks to a man in public, by being a gentile who approaches a Jew, by being a beggar hounding a respected teacher and authority. And Jesus responds to this woman’s bold yet desperate plea by expressing a common Jewish prejudice of his day in the way he deals with this desperate mother. He is willing to put her off, because her needs, her tragedy, her desperation are not worth his immediate action. Jesus makes it clear that she, and others like her, will only get help once the people the world has deemed more worthy have their needs met.

Jesus sounds a lot like our political leaders have sounded this week… and that should not sit well with us. In fact, it should make us squirm in our seats. This is not the Jesus who eats with tax collectors and sinners, the Jesus who is forgiving prostitutes, the Jesus who is welcoming the unworthy.

Jesus today sounds too much like world leaders who can’t be bothered with people who are just too different from them. Jesus sounds like those who blame others for the problems facing the poor and marginalized, passing the buck. Jesus sounds a little bit too much like us.

It is uncomfortable to watch Jesus succumb to the same prejudice that we fall victim to. It is disturbing to see him place walls and barriers in front of suffering people just like we do. It is strange to think that Jesus would deny anyone compassion just because they are different from him, just as we are often guilty of doing.

Our prejudice often affords us the excuse to remain passive in the face of human suffering. This week it was a photo of Alan Kurdi that reminded us of this fact. Last year, it was the story of Tina Fontaine. The year before, it was the case of Brian Sinclair… and the list goes on from there. Maybe it goes all the way back to the Syrian-Phoenician woman.

“Even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs”

Just when we expect the Syrian-Phoenician woman to reject Jesus’ prejudice and bigoted words, she does the opposite. She holds them up as a mirror to Jesus’ prejudice and accepts the dog epithet. She is still begging for compassion, she is still asking Jesus for help. But instead of asking for help person to person, she is willing to lower herself… she is already on her hands and knees at Jesus’ feet… to the place of a dog. She is asking for the least that Jesus could do.

And in that moment, Jesus is faced with either turning her away and abandoning not only her humanity, but his own, or dropping his prejudice in order to show compassion.

Ephphatha. Be opened. 

It is not just the deaf man who is opened up today, but he instead re-iterates the opening up that Jesus experiences just before. When Jesus unplugs the ears and loosens the tongue of the deaf man, he makes a connection to a person who had no voice, who was on the margins and excluded from normal community. The deaf man can now speak because Jesus is listening.

It is a connection that Jesus first learns through the Syrian-Phoenician woman who presses him to show compassion. Jesus learns something about giving up his own prejudice, Jesus learns what it is like to have his own walls and barriers broken down. By holding Jesus’ prejudice up before him, by making her need for compassion heard, Jesus breaks open God’s compassion into the world. Compassion and mercy given to more than just the children of Israel, compassion now for Jew and gentile alike, compassion for all creation.

What starts as a tired and cranky Jesus refusing to help a person whom he thought was too other, too different, too unworthy becomes the means for God’s transforming compassion and mercy to enter the world. As Jesus is opened, God’s compassion meets a Syrian-Phoenician woman and a deaf man. As God is opened, the world is opened.

And it is the same thing that happened to the world and to us, this week. A single photo of a young Alan Kurdi, holds up a mirror to our prejudice, to the walls and barriers we build between ourselves and people who are different from us. When faced with tragedy like this, we are left with the option of going on with life as usual, where people like Alan don’t matter, or having our prejudice broken down and our compassion broken open by the realities of the Syrian migrant crisis through the heartbreaking photograph of a three-year old boy lying dead on a beach.

Still, even as the world now calls for compassion, even as we have been sending sweaters, praying, giving what we can, and discerning how to do more, even if our country opens our doors to as many refugees as we can take… we know that it is not enough. We know that our compassion has not and will not save the world. The power of the human spirit cannot do it alone, if at all.

Today, we are reminded, even as the Syrian-Phoenician woman pushes Jesus for compassion, that God is doing the work of breaking us open. God is speaking to us Ephphatha – Be open. 

There is no human cry for compassion, no human grief that will save Alan. There are just some walls of prejudice, some walls of indifference that we cannot break down.

And so like the Syrian-Phoenician woman, like the deaf man, and now like Alan Kurdi, we turn to God.

God alone who can meet our prejudice and open us up. 

God alone who can meet the walls and barriers we place in front of the suffering of our brothers and sisters.

God alone who can meet death,

God who knows what it is like for a son to slip from his arms and die on a cross. God who knows what it is like to die in the borderlands of a foreign and oppressing empire.

God alone who on the third day walked out of the tomb, breaking open death once and for all.

Today, we turn to God who speaks to us in the midst of prejudice and tragedy –

Ephphatha – Be Open. 

Amen

*This sermon was co-written between my wife, Courtenay @ReedmanParker and I. We haven’t done this before, but as we talked about our own reaction to the photo of Alan Kurdi this week, we decided to come together and write one sermon. It is something we will definitely do again. 

Theology & Culture

When our words are weak – A Lament for Alan, Ghalib and Rehanna Kurdi

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Yesterday, I was scrolling through my social media feeds and a vivid photo of a beach passed by. I scrolled back to see a very young boy in shorts and a t-shirt laying in the sand.

It took me a moment to piece together that this wasn’t a child playing on the beach, but instead a wordless and unimaginable tragedy. It was Alan Kurdi.

 I have a son. A little boy that has often been dressed in shorts and t-shirts this summer. Those hands and feet, those legs and arms, that little body is one I see everyday.

It was heartbreaking to see the same arms, legs and body as my little boy lying lifeless on a turkish beach. It was guilt inducing and gut wrenching to be grateful that there was dark hair and not my son’s reddish blonde.

I have regularly prayed for Syrian refugees in my church. I have just slipped in a few words for them along with prayers for rain in spring and sunshine in harvest, prayers for world leaders and peace, prayers for church ministries and programs, prayers for sick and dying people. It was the very least I could do.

I have regularly forgotten to pray for Syria when all those other things took all my attention.

I have have encouraged my congregation to collect sweaters for displaced Syrian refugees, to give money to our denominational aid organization working in the refugee camps, to be open minded about our muslim neighbours.

I haven’t pressed them as hard as I could have.

A few months ago as I sat in my office, a muslim refugee family came to me to ask for help. A father and mother just like Abdullah and Rehanna, 6 children just like Ghalib and Alan. A family just like Alan’s sat in my office and I hemmed and hawed about how much help I could provide, secretly wondering about how much effort I would need to put in helping them.

As a pastor, I have had grieving mothers cling to me. I have had to offer failing words and inadequate comfort to those who are grieving the death of a child – young and old.

My job is to point to hope, even when no one else can. My vocation is to be the one who declares “Life” when everyone else declares “death.” My calling is to give words to the grieving.

Words for Alan, Rehanna and Ghalib. Words to Abdullah.

Words that somehow make sense of death.

I wish I could say there is some purpose in this tragedy, but there isn’t. I hope that Alan’s  photo becomes as significant as the naked Vietnamse girl’s is, but it would better that neither needed to be taken. I wish that Alan’s death had some greater meaning, but would you volunteer your child’s life to be the one that moved the world to action?

I hope that Alan reminds us that the words ‘Syrian’, ‘Migrant’, ‘Refugee’ are synonymous with ‘person.’ I hope that we remember that Syrians, migrants and refugees are human beings, not numbers, not news headlines, not problems to pass off, or expenses we don’t want to incur.

The world – 5 years too late – cries out for Alan and for Syria.

Finally. 

Yet, world leaders, NGOs, military campaigns, and good intentions will not solve this crisis. At best, they will mitigate it, they will make things slightly less tragic.

That is where my job to speak words for Alan, Ghalib and Rehanna comes in…  to speak words that somehow spark hope in the midst of tragedy and death.

Words that are not mine… words that belong to and are given by God. 

Because when are confronted with images of tragedy that make us cry out,

Because when we know that our leaders don’t have the will to respond, nor could they adequately respond if they did will it,

Because our good intentions have never solved our problems.

Because the human spirit, as noble as it might be, will not save us.

Because when we cannot redeem senseless death, God can. 

God makes sense of that which we cannot. 

God turns our tragedy into something better – into mercy and resurrection.

God does have the answer, God has life and love for a little boy laying on a beach.

God has life and love for our broken world.

Featured photo courtesy of Leadnow.ca