A Fellowship of the Christian Church

The Bass River Pastoral Charge

The Presbyterian Church in Canada

St. Mark’s, Bass River; St. James, Beersville; St. Andrew’s, Clairville & Zion, West Branch

Organists: Heather Morton, Marly Sutherland, Rodney Girvan, Dolly MacDonald, Shanece Wilson

Minister: Rev. Alexander [Sandy] D. Sutherland; B.A., B.Th. M.Div

Manse #: 506-785-4383 Cell #: 506-521-0705 Email: thebrpc@gmail.com Twitter: thebrpc

Bulletin Announcements:  Cathy Little @ Fillmore Trucking #785-1083

www.pccweb.ca/brpc

ORDER OF SERVICE

The Tenth Sunday of Pentecost 

August 14^th 2011

Welcome & Announcements

 

Call to Worship I love you Lord

 

Prayer of Approach & Confession & The Lord’s Prayer (NBoP 831; BoP 605)

 

Opening Praise: BoP 230 When morning guilds the skies

 

Responsive Reading  – Psalm 67 [BoP 641]

 

Children’s story –

Children’s Hymn: BoP 251 Come. Children join to sing

 

Scripture Readings:

OT – Genesis 45:1-15

¹Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all his attendants, and he cried out, “Have everyone leave my presence!” So there was no one with Joseph when he made himself known to his brothers. ²And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard him, and Pharaoh’s household heard about it.

³Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph! Is my father still living?” But his brothers were not able to answer him, because they were terrified at his presence.

⁴Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come close to me.” When they had done so, he said, “I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! ⁵And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. ⁶For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will not be plowing and reaping. ⁷But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.

⁸“So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt. ⁹Now hurry back to my father and say to him, ‘This is what your son Joseph says: God has made me lord of all Egypt. Come down to me; don’t delay. ¹⁰You shall live in the region of Goshen and be near me—you, your children and grandchildren, your flocks and herds, and all you have. ¹¹I will provide for you there, because five years of famine are still to come. Otherwise you and your household and all who belong to you will become destitute.’

¹²“You can see for yourselves, and so can my brother Benjamin, that it is really I who am speaking to you. ¹³Tell my father about all the honor accorded me in Egypt and about everything you have seen. And bring my father down here quickly.”

¹⁴Then he threw his arms around his brother Benjamin and wept, and Benjamin embraced him, weeping. ¹⁵And he kissed all his brothers and wept over them. Afterward his brothers talked with him.

Epistle – Romans 11:28-36

²⁸As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies on your account; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, ²⁹for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable. ³⁰Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, ³¹so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you. ³²For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.

³³ Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!

How unsearchable his judgments,

and his paths beyond tracing out!

³⁴ “Who has known the mind of the Lord?

Or who has been his counselor?”

³⁵ “Who has ever given to God,

that God should repay him?”

³⁶ For from him and through him and to him are all things.

To him be the glory forever! Amen.

Hymn of Illumination: NBoP 675 Precious Lord, take my hand

 

Scripture Readings:

Gospel – Matthew 15:21-31

²¹Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. ²²A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession.”

²³Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”

²⁴He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

²⁵The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.

²⁶He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.”

²⁷“Yes, Lord,” she said, “but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”

²⁸Then Jesus answered, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed from that very hour.

²⁹Jesus left there and went along the Sea of Galilee. Then he went up on a mountainside and sat down. ³⁰Great crowds came to him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute and many others, and laid them at his feet; and he healed them. ³¹The people were amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled made well, the lame walking and the blind seeing. And they praised the God of Israel.

 

Sermon: Leaving Crumbs

My son David has entered into the stage of development that the dog has been wait for all of David’s life. You see every meal-time the dog takes position some where in the range of David’s high chair. She lies their patiently and she does not go unrewarded. Soon enough bits of cereal, a nice gob of buttered toast, or even the little bits of meat come lofting off the high chair tray. Then – with the wag of her tail, and a lick of her tongue – the delicious morsel is gobbled up.

I think she almost smiles when she get certain things; this, that is if dogs can smile.

Jesus used that same sort of image when speaking to the Canaanite woman in today’s reading. She had chased after Jesus when he passed through Sidon and Tyre [those are coastal cities north and west of Nazareth], and after pestering Jesus disciples enough, she is given the chance to meet Jesus.

This passage is almost out of step with the chapter in some ways, the early part of chapter fifteen of Matthew’s gospel includes Jesus warning his disciples about the poor faith of the Pharisees, and Jesus chastising the intentions of the Pharisees that were gathered against Jesus.

Now, at verse twenty, Jesus goes on to deny the petition of this Canaanite woman in distress.

This is really not how we like to imagine Jesus to be. In Christ’s own words, Jesus says to the woman, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

The woman, in earshot of this, doesn’t budge. She does not budge, she does not relent, she does not back off. But any of us might react to the offence. Let’s not apologize here for the distinction Jesus makes here. Jesus says that he had come to be the revelation to the people, the nation that had held onto God promise and read God’s word, Jesus was sent to be the reward for long service and endurance on a people who had survived much in order to fulfill what they did fulfill.

They took possession of the land in God’s name, they built the temple and dedicated it for the worship of God and when that temple was destroyed they were rebuilding it within a couple of decorations. The Israelites, the Jews, sought always to be loyal and true to God. They believed in God, they sought to obey God.

Jesus only real criticism of the Pharisees had less to do with what they did – he openly said, “Do what the Pharisees and the scribes do.” – Jesus had a problem with the intentions of the Pharisees. There actions were doing exactly what God intended, those actions showed the strength in being obedient to God.

But in a quick reading of this passage it look like Jesus first ridicules the Pharisees and then turns around and rejects the Canaanite woman. This does not seem the way to make friends and influence people.

Jesus said, ““I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

And when the woman pleads for help Jesus says, and the seeming cruelty of this statement should toss the gentle Jesus image right out the window. He looks at the woman pleading for help and says to her, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.”

What is the difference between the Jews and the Canaanites. Well when Abraham had moved in, he moved into the area surrounded by Canaanites. When the Israelites returned from the bondage of Egypt they took the land from the Canaanites. When the Babylonians and Assyrians to the Jews into captivity the Canaanites stayed behind, and under the watchful eye of Babylon ruled the land once again. Then the Jews came back and the Canaanites again lost control of the land. In other words the Canaanites were the native.

The Canaanites had seem the people of God come and go, and come and go again. There was no love lost between the Jews and the Canaanites, and thought they were neighbours and both conquered under the Romans, there was no love lost between them.

Jesus, called the Canaanites dogs right to the Canaanite woman’s face. The people had along history together, but there was no togetherness in their history. The frustration for the Israelites and then the Jews, was that for generations, for years and years they showed, told and missioned about God to the Canaanites, the fought wars with them but they also had treaties with them and this whole time they did not come and follow God. They had been given a rare opportunity to know and worship God, but they sought God on their own terms, in their own way.

The Jews had one thing irrevocably right; they went to the place that God called them to worship. But like the church today there are lots of people on the fringes, who felt they could worship where they wanted to worship. Some even worshipped in their own homes, in private temples. And this kind of private separate worship should not be confused with the gatherings that took place in synagogues; synagogues were place for learning, and debate and discourse, but only in Jerusalem could the Jews properly worship God. That is why so many gather at the ‘wailing wall’ in Jerusalem. It is their last true place of worship.

The Canaanites were given the chance to be with the people of God and they always rejected it, but still they always wanted the privileges that comes with being one of the people of God. They fought to take what the Jews had, they signed treaties to be given what the Jews had, and for hundreds of years they were like a pack of wild dogs, raiding and yapping at the Jewish people.

Not all that different from the atheists of our society, and not all that different from many of little religions that trickle and tear through society. And at some point in your life you are going to meet these people, because like this woman once they catch the scent of salvation they are going to come running. They are going to come running, and they won’t come to me, they will come to you because it is from you they first tasted hope; and today I want you to sense the hard thing that any one of us must do in that moment. We need to confront them.

We need to confront them with all the forgiveness we can, but ib order for that to happen we need to confront hem and say to them, ‘You know – when it comes to God and faith, you have been like a dog.’

Most of the time we don’t like getting into ‘IT’ with too many people. Oh, we might have a heartfelt conversation with a long time friend who is struggling, and we might call up our minister or an elder to help us understand a passage of the bible, but to say to someone ‘you are a dog when it comes to faith’, Well that is a little colder than many of us can handle.

But Jesus handles it, Jesus can handle it because he knows the hunger in that woman, and he feels the starving faith inside her soul. He turns around t her and to her plea he confronts her sin, and she gives her sin over to Jesus says, “Yes I know I sin, I know my people sin, but I also believe.”

That is the point of transformation. You know all those people you have been carrying through the years spiritually. I know you know them because you have been praying for them everyday. These are the people that have been living on the scraps and crumbs for your table. They have been wanting what you have, they have been starving for the confidence that you carry, and now I am saying that you need to confront them with this and then you need to start really feeding them.

People have been living on crumbs, they have been following Christians around for decades – it is not just you – looking for some morsel of faith to be the miracle in their lives, and they just aren’t getting much of anything, certainly not enough to keep them going. The church has been struggling it seems to keep the bread on its own table let alone letting the overflow of crumbs reach the searching hungry souls of the world. We have even barricaded our faith so much, and put up so many protections, and defenses, and excuses that the world cannot even get a sniff of the crumbs of faith that overflow from us.

You do not have to look to far into your own lives to see the hungry people around you starving for faith, for a purpose in life and purpose for their family. They are hungry for what you have and they need something more than the smell of faith, or the taste of a crumb. They need to be welcomed to the feast of faith. We need to let that desire to believe be answered.

What morsels of faith have you been letting trickle to the edge of your table. Have you been forgetting Today devotional books at friend’s houses? Have you children heard you talking out loud, or have they caught you praying?

Jesus turned to her in her need and confronted the shortcomings of her life. Then he reached into her life and offered her forgiveness, and the fullness of God’s grace. Let us, like Christ, welcome the world to God’s table. For in God’s love there are no dogs anymore and we all eat at the same table, the wonderful meal of Gods love and forgiveness.

 

Prayer of Thanksgiving and Intercession

God’s Tithes and our gifts

Doxology (NBoP 830; BoP 603)

Offertory Prayer

Commissioning Hymn: BoP 425 How firm a foundation

Benediction

Dismissal: Holy Spirit on Us Fall [see back of bulletin]

 

These bulletins for August are dedicated in loving memory of Earle, Laura and Marion by their family

We are glad to be a welcoming fellowship, and we hope you all find a wonderful fullness of God’s Spirit in today’s worship. If you are visiting, or are new to the community we hope you will get to know us, as we are very glad to have you be a part of this loving community.

 

Memorial Services:

August 28th at 2:30 pm – St. James’ Presbyterian Church, Beersville

Next Week’s Services:

9:30am – Zion Presbyterian Church (West Branch)

11:00am – St. James’ Presbyterian Church (Beersville)

Mission Moment MALAWI: Todd Statham

Through our gifts to Presbyterians Sharing, The Presbyterian Church in Canada has sent Dr. Todd Statham, his wife Annika and their two children, Sophia and Mio, to serve the Blantye Synod of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian in Zomba, Malawi. Todd is lecturing in church history and theology at Zomba Theological College the CCAP’s seminary. Annika is caring for the children and hopes, in the future, to use her training in pedagogy and her experiences working with physically and mentally disabled children and adults. This spiritual and physical journey began in Todd and Annika’s home congregations where missions were avidly promoted and supported: Todd in St. Andrews Presbyterian church in Duncan, B.C, and Annika in the Lutheran Church of Germany. Let us pray for the Statham family as they acclimatize to their new life in Malawi.