Women Who Won't Be Quiet
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For September 8, 2024:
Women Who Won’t Be Quiet
by Mary Austin
Mark 7:24-37
As Kamala Harris campaigns for the presidency, she’s showcasing the power of a determined woman. Like this Gentile woman in Mark’s gospel, women who won’t be silenced are everywhere right now. Pushy. Shrill. Bitchy. Powerful. This insistent woman who meets Jesus has counterparts all around us in women who are making a determined push for leadership, freedom, equality and recognition. This is the year of women who won’t be quiet.
Most prominent among modern women who won’t be quiet is presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Until Joe Biden dropped out of the race, Kamala Harris toiled away as the Vice President, mostly escaping our notice as she tried not to outshine her boss. She was criticized for her staffing, for what she did and didn’t do, and for her policy positions. She was praised for her shoes. The White House now concedes that they didn’t do enough to support her at the beginning of President Biden’s term. As a result, “many Americans, after three years of the West Wing’s poor stewardship of Harris, are now looking at their vice president as if for the first time.”
It's apparent that she’s much more seasoned as a candidate this time, and that her run for office has energized the race. Pew Research reports that, “Buoyed by growing Democratic enthusiasm, Vice President Kamala Harris is now in a virtual tie with former President Donald Trump in the presidential race. Among registered voters nationally, 46% say if the election were held today, they would support Harris, while 45% favor Trump.” Harris has learned when to speak up, and when to pass on a question, as she did when her recent interview asked about former President Trump. Asked a question about Trump’s comments on her race, “the vice president has sought to cut off oxygen to it.” She commented that it's the “Same old, tired playbook. Next question, please.” Asked if she had anything to add, Harris replied: “That’s it.”
Like the Gentile woman before her, Harris knows when to press hard on an issue…and when not to. These kindred spirits both teach us about the power of persistence.
In the News
The Democratic National Convention, which nominated Harris, also featured other determined women. Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Jasmine Crocket, all had time on the big stage, along with Deb Haaland, Elizabeth Warren, Jill Biden, Maura Healey, and others. Women told the story of a consequential election and gave a strong call to action. One writer observed, “Every night, women have outshined male party stalwarts — sometimes the ones they are married to — in a development that has highlighted the rising power of women in the Democratic Party and left some of the most famous men in politics seemingly playing more of a supporting role.”
Sarah Godlewski, Secretary of State in Wisconsin, commented, “I really do believe that this is the convention of the woman. For so long, we’ve just been told to sit down and shut up. And we’re not going to sit down and shut up anymore.”
Book lists this summer are showcasing other women who were silenced by religious traditions, and who have now found their voice.
Tia Levings has a riveting book about her own healing as a daughter and then a wife, from what she calls “high-control Christian Fundamentalism.” She recalls, “I was a trad wife living in Christian Patriarchy, in church-sanctioned domestic abuse. My friend’s husband was hitting her and freezing her out for days at a time. She knew something of my situation and wanted to know how I coped, because when last we spoke in 2004, my volatile marriage had gone through a change I’d been vague about, and two years later, I was still married.” Levings eventually left her abusive husband, and her writing explores the many years she was denied a voice by the fundamentalist churches her family attended.
Author lyz lenz married young after being raised in a conservative Christian family where she never imagined she had any other choice. In her writing, she notes that leaving an abusive or unfair marriage is its own kind of healing. “Free women are destabilizing. Single women, single mothers, their existence, their radical happiness — it upsets the whole enterprise. Women and love are the infrastructure of this exploitative culture. You begin to examine love and partnership, question it, reject it, the entire system becomes weak. And I am happy. I’m happier than I’ve ever been. Even when I was broke and ghostwriting op-eds to buy groceries, I was happy because I was finally free.”
In the Scriptures
In his commentary, Mark: Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, William C. Placher says that we can’t escape the cruelty of Jesus’ answer to this woman. He writes, “Jesus gives her a brutal answer. He has come to the Jews; she is a Gentile: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” What he says is harsh enough in our culture, but even harsher then, in a culture where dogs were not beloved house pets but disgusting scavengers who skulked about living on garbage. Calling someone a “dog” was a real insult (see for instance 2 Kings. 8:13). With some justice, the Jewish scholar Joseph Klausner remarks, “If any other Jewish teacher of the time had said such a thing Christians would never have forgiven Judaism for it.” Even in the face of ignorance and cruelty, this woman has the tenacity to answer Jesus, and then to expand his understanding.
Mark organizes his gospel so Jesus has this encounter right after he talks about the insides and the outsides of people, and how we assess people based on character. He comments about the Pharisees and the rules they follow, teaching “that there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile.” The things that defile people are behaviors like lust, greed, and hate. Meeting this Gentile woman forces him to consider his own words about God’s approval.
Matt Skinner adds, “It’s as if the anonymous woman inexplicably understands implications of what Jesus announced in Mark 7:14-23. Aren’t Jews and gentiles in the same boat, in terms of what makes all of them defiled? Then why should gentiles have to wait to participate in the blessings made possible through the reign of Israel’s God?” Why, indeed?
In the Sermon
Matt Skinner observes that this woman is also a theologian, and, as such, a match for Jesus. “It’s not simply that she cleverly reconfigures Jesus’ metaphors of crumbs and canines to fit her desires. Her words contain as much theological insight as they do wit or even humility. It appears she recognizes — somehow — a certain abundance about the things Jesus is up to.” The sermon might explore God’s abundance, and where we find it. Or, the sermon could examine the people who understand this better than we do. Who teaches us about God’s extravagant generosity? Some of our teachers are people we might overlook or think have nothing to teach us.
For Tia Levings, laughter was one source of her healing from a faith that was toxic for her. She writes, “My laugh is warm and gusty. I love a good wise crack, snark, irreverent humor, irony, dark humor, and clever wit. Even inside the cult, I would laugh at things I “wasn’t supposed to,” revealing peeks at my true character. And knowing what I know now about laughing trauma out, it’s likely that laughter kept me from screaming.” Kamala Harris has been criticized for her boisterous laugh, and Hillary Clinton got similar criticism. “Republicans have gone after uninhibited shows of happiness like this in the past. See: Hillary Clinton and her “cackle.” (In 2016, Trump voters could buy T-shirts of a grinning Clinton Photoshopped on a broom.)”
Is this Gentile woman laughing a little bit at Jesus and his limited understanding? The sermon might explore how laughter insulates us from insults, and how people on the margins use laughter to lighten the burden of exclusion. Comedy columnist Jason Zinoman says about Harris, “Far from a liability, her laugh is one of her most effective weapons.”
Career coach Pamela Seabright says that women are part of the “4,000 Year Silence Project. If you look at the course of history, up until very recently women have been silenced; it’s been our role to be quiet.” The sermon might explore how we can help all women speak up, along with other people who have things to say. How can we evoke the spirit of this Gentile woman in our churches, homes, and communities? How can we learn from her example of going toe to toe with Jesus, and winning the argument? Her story invites us to honor her legacy, and to make her a model in our own faith communities.
SECOND THOUGHTS
Evidence Of Grace
by Dean Feldmeyer
James 2:1-10 (11-13) 14-17
It is said that Martin Luther called the epistle of James an “epistle of straw.”
Kinda harsh, if you ask me.
See, ML had staked his life on the power and effectiveness of God’s grace, unearned, undeserved, unconditional. And so focused was he on that grace that any hint of works righteousness, the notion that we can earn our way into heaven, was abhorrent to him.
When he read James’ letter, that’s what he saw: Works righteousness.
But I think his theological myopia may have done him a disservice. It made it impossible for him to hear the full measure of the challenge that James puts forth for the early church and for us, today.
In the Scriptures
Apparently, there was some partiality being shown in that early church, especially toward the rich. Wealthy people would show up at the worship services — usually held in someone’s home, around a meal table — and they would immediately be ushered to the head of the table and given heaping portions of the best meats. People who had power and status in the world were given power and status in the church.
This, for James, was the very opposite of what it meant to live by grace.
James was a big believer that if we claim to live by grace, we should be able to show some evidence to validate that claim. Currying favor with the rich was not the evidence he was looking for.
He goes on, then, to demonstrate how the wealthy people of his time and place showed not grace, but actual disdain, for the poor. The law, he says, calls us to love our neighbor as ourselves. And if we violate this one part of the law it’s just as serious as a violation of any part.
“But,” responds the interlocutor, “I am saved by my faith in God’s grace, ergo, I have no need to do good.”
James: “But that’s an inauthentic, empty, dead faith. True faith produces evidence of salvation. It is not enough to say, ‘I am saved.’ A person who is truly saved by God’s grace seeks, indeed runs, to show evidence of that salvation through acts of love and charity.”
And then he closes his argument with that famous theological aphorism: “Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”
Sorry, Martin. James is right on this one. The question that will soon be before the American people is if we see any of those acts of love and charity in either of the two political parties that show evidence of salvation by grace through faith.
In the News
For some years, now, the Republican party has claimed to hold the high moral ground, well above the “godless” Democrats. They are, after all, the party that proclaims that “all life” is sacred. Well, at least, all unborn life is sacred. They tout “family values” in all their literature and psychologist James Dobson, an evangelical/fundamentalist Christian and founder of Focus on the Family as well as the Family Research Council and the Family Policy Alliance, regularly endorses Republican politicians and causes.
The political right has the only president who has ever deployed law enforcement officers using tear gas and other riot control tactics to forcefully clear peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square, then pose for a photo op of himself, scowling and holding a Bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church parish house.
They have the only president who ever brought together church and state in a $60 “God Bless The USA” Bible complete with copies of the nation's founding documents and touting them as a Holy Week Special. “Happy Holy Week! Let's Make America Pray Again,” Trump wrote. “As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless the USA Bible.”
Christian evangelical/fundamentalist pastors showed up regularly at the Trump White House to have their pictures taken with the president. It has been said that, if rubbing shoulders with rich, powerful Christians was a measure of piety, Donald Trump’s ticket to heaven would already be punched and his parking validated.
Paula White, a televangelist and proponent of prosperity theology, was the chair of his “evangelical advisory board” for his 2016 campaign. She delivered the invocation at his inauguration, on January 20, 2017, the first female clergy member to deliver the invocation. In November 2019, Trump appointed her special advisor to the Faith and Opportunity Initiative at the Office of Public Liaison.
Other Christian evangelical/fundamentalist leaders who have claimed to have an inside track to the Oval Office include Franklin Graham, Rev. Jackson Lahmeyer (Sheridan Church, Tulsa), James Dobson, and his associates Gary Bauer, Tim Clinton, and Michele Bachmann.
Other MAGA pastors backing Trump: Jentezen Franklin, Greg Locke, Mark Burns, Darrell C. Scott, “worship warrior” Sean Feucht, and Samuel Rodriguez, founder and president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. Southern Baptist pastor James F. Linzey issued a press release announcing that he was the “First Minister to Publicly Endorse Donald J. Trump for President in 2016, [and] Endorses Trump Again for 2024.”
Eric Metaxas, a Christian radio host who has written two children’s books about Trump, attended Trump’s 2024 campaign announcement and says he gets “choked up thinking how good things were under Trump.”
“Trump prophet” Lance Wallnau and Turning Point USA President Charlie Kirk have partnered to mobilize swing-state churches for Trump. Evangelical Christian celebrities on the Trump bandwagon include actor Jim Caviezel and reality TV star Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame.
The “Project 2025” document that outlines the far-right Christian nationalist agenda aims to infuse the government and society with conservative, evangelical/fundamentalist Christian values and divert taxpayer funds to churches and religious non-profits.
So pervasive is conservative, evangelical/fundamentalist Christian influence in rightwing politics that Christians who have affixed their banner to rightwing politics and the MAGA agenda often refer to things they agree with as “Christian” this and “Christian” that, as though there is but one Christian perspective and it is the one held by conservative, evangelical fundamentalists.
People who hold other perspectives, ones informed by progressive Christian or non-Christian religious faith, people who disagree with the political opinions of Christian evangelical/fundamentalist religious right, are said to be “apostate,” or “anti-faith,” “anti-church,” “anti-Christian” and hostile to the first amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religion.
However, an astute observer of the politics of the left as it is currently being expressed under the leadership of Kamala Harris, might notice that things are changing. No longer can the right claim to be the only people for whom religious faith is important and the only ones to have an exclusive, infallible, omniscient hold on correct religion.
The Vice President comes from an ecumenical background and her sensitivity to religious faith is no less ecumenical. She was born to a Hindu Indian mother and a Jamaican father who divorced when she was 7 years old. She spent many of her childhood summers with her grandmother whose downstairs neighbor took her and her sister to Oakland’s 23rd Avenue Church of God in Oakland. Harris now considers herself a Black Baptist, a member of the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco, led by the Rev. Amos Brown
Her husband is Jewish, and they co-celebrate Jewish and Christian holidays in their home.
This ecumenical spirit seems to have infected the Democratic party of late. Vice President Harris has hired the Rev. Jen Butler, a Presbyterian minister and well-known liberal religious advocate, as the new head of faith outreach for the Harris-Walz campaign, charging the experienced activist with overseeing efforts to court a range of religious voters.
The 2024 Democratic National Convention often resembled nothing so much as a religious revival as speaker after speaker not only heaped praise on Democratic White House hopeful Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, but also referred to religion, scripture, and faith, with at least one supporter delivering a Bible-filled address pundits referred to as a “sermon.”
The easiest place to find religious references at the DNC was in the invocations and benedictions. Opening and closing party business with prayers — including non-Christian ones — is a long-standing practice at American political party conventions: The first evening began with a prayer from Cardinal Blase Cupich, who oversees the Archdiocese of Chicago. He called on God to help Americans “truly understand and answer the sacred call of citizenship” and prayed for “peace — especially for people suffering the senselessness of war.” He also cited Pope Francis who said Americans shouldn’t strive for a country that “narrows our national vision” but rather “dream dreams and see visions of what, by (God’s) grace, our world can become.”
Monday night’s benediction featured a pair of faith leaders: Rabbi Michael S. Beals of Temple Beth El of Newark, Delaware, and Pastor Cindy Rudolph of Oak Grove AME Church of Detroit. Beals recited blessings in both English and Hebrew, referring to President Joe Biden’s “selfless, effective public service,” Walz’s “joy” in “public discourse and policy” and a mention of freedom inspired by Harris’ campaign slogan. Rudolph, similarly, used Micah 6:8 — “Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God” — to highlight the same three figures in her prayer.
Religion was also easy to find on the main stage. Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, a member of the AME tradition, referenced 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 in his speech, noting, “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair.” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who attends a Disciples of Christ church, spoke of the golden rule and the parable of the good Samaritan while discussing the need for abortion access.
The most overtly religious language of the night came from the most likely source: Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, who is also the pastor of Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, which was once the pulpit of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Warnock made many appeals to Christianity, such as referring to voting as a “kind of prayer” and describing the unofficial motto of the US — “E Pluribus Unum,” or “out of many, one” — as the “American covenant.”
Warnock also had harsh words for Trump’s use of the Bible, such as when the then-president brandished one after the clearing of Lafayette Square in Washington, DC, in June 2020, or when he recently endorsed the “God Bless the USA Bible,” for which he reportedly earned at least $300,000 this year.
“I saw him holding the Bible, and endorsing a Bible as if it needed his endorsement — he should try reading it,” Warnock said of Trump. “It says do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God — he should try reading it. It says love your neighbor as yourself. It says inasmuch as you’ve done unto the least of these, you’ve done it also unto me.”
Warnock then called for people to care for one another, referring to several different groups — including Israelis and Palestinians, as well as people in Haiti, Congo, and Ukraine — as “all God’s children.”
There were other Democratic speakers who didn’t lean into their religious faith, but nevertheless, emerged out of it: Bishop Leah D. Daughtry, the Rules Committee co-chair, is also a pastor, and spoke out earlier this year alongside other Black Christian leaders who called for a cease-fire in Gaza.
Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, who spoke shortly before Biden took the stage, is a Presbyterian (PCUSA) and Yale Divinity School graduate. He pointed out during his address that he also spoke at the 2020 DNC about Biden’s Catholic faith.
So, too, might Walz, who has referred to himself as a “Minnesota Lutheran,” or even Harris, a Baptist who launched her 2020 presidential campaign with a speech that included the line, “To love the religion of Jesus is to hate the religion of the slave master.”
Religion and religious values have always been near to the heart of many Democrats who didn’t feel comfortable joining hands with evangelical/fundamentalist Christianity. Their values led them toward a more open, inclusive, and welcoming expression of the Christian faith. Now, at long last, they are beginning to speak up and be heard from that segment of the faith community.
Senator Raphael Warnock spoke directly to the dynamic during an MSNBC interview on Tuesday, bemoaning what he characterized as Trump “weaponizing the symbols of faith.” “I think it’s important, particularly for those of us in the Democratic Party, to be full-throated in the ways our faith informs our values,” he said. “We’ve got to be full-throated in resisting this idea of Christian nationalism.”
In the Sermon
Voters this November will be confronted not just with two different political perspectives and systems, one conservative and one progressive, they will also be asked to choose between the two religious traditions that claim to inform and shape those political perspectives.
One, the exclusively conservative, evangelical/fundamentalist Christian version, which sees itself as the last bastion of conservative values that are being eaten away by liberalism and “woke” values and theology, identifies as muscular Christianity, ready to fight, kill, and die to preserve conservative Christian values and traditions.
The other, the progressive, ecumenical, inclusive, religions who believe in working and worshiping beside each other for the good of the world, struggle mightily to keep their hearts, minds, and doors open to all of God’s children, even those with whom they do not always agree.
These are ones who come from various religious expressions and, for some, none at all. But many are, in fact, Christians who claim as much right to that name as those on the other side.
The issue that religious voters will have to face when they choose is which side best represents faith that is truly alive, that shows evidence of salvation by grace through their commitment to acts of faith, hope, charity, and love.
Let us pray that they, and we, choose well.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Tom Willadsen:
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23
The Bible’s Bumper Sticker Archive
The three passages from Proverbs this week are bits of wisdom connected to one another only because they mention “the rich” and “the poor.” Tradition has it that Solomon is the author of Proverbs, but the book is mostly likely a compendium of wise sayings that have accumulated through the ages.
While generosity to the poor, and a recognition of the rich and the poor sharing a common creator, are attested, inequality is also accepted. In the book of Ecclesiastes and the book of Job, a kind of counter testimony is present — sometimes the wicked do prosper.
I was in Northwestern University’s Marching Band four decades ago, when NU was in the throes of the longest losing streak in NCAA history. When the other team committed a penalty the band would chant, “Cheaters never prosper!” but they did, frequently routing the Wildcats by 60 or more points. There could be no better preparation for Christian ministry than four years in the Wildcat band.
* * *
Psalm 125
An Interesting Metaphor
The first three verses of today’s psalm concern Mount Zion’s inviolability. Mount Zion is a sign of the eternal strength and presence of the Lord. Though other, higher, mountains surround Mount Zion, it is still considered the connection between heaven and earth. In later Judaism, Mount Zion was considered the center of the universe, or even the universe’s navel. That’ll preach.
* * *
Mark 7:24-37
Location, location, location
When the seventh chapter of Mark’s gospel started, Jesus and his disciples were in Gennesaret, up on the Sea of Galilee. Some Pharisees and scribes had traveled from Jerusalem, a walk of about 70 miles, because they had heard that Jesus’ disciples did not wash their hands according to tradition. This took place in last week’s gospel portion.
At the start of today’s gospel lesson, Jesus and his disciples have traveled to the region of Tyre, a distance of around 35 miles. Even there, Jesus wanted to avoid the crowds. He was outside the kingdom of Herod in the Province of Syria, not on Jewish ground at all. There he was approached by the mother of a child with an unclean spirit.
From Tyre, they moved through Sidon, back to the Sea of Galilee and the region of Decapolis, Jesus’ home turf. This was hardly the most direct route. Sidon is about 25 miles north of Tyre. The Sea of Galilee is southeast of Tyre and Sidon. We can only guess why Jesus took this circuitous route. Perhaps Mark simply didn’t know the terrain. Or he wanted his readers to know that Jesus’ ministry ignored political and social divisions.
* * *
Mark 7:24-37
“You people are dogs.”
There is no getting around it, Jesus insulted Syrophoenicians when he said, “…it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” It was a highly insulting term. Dogs “were regarded as shameless and unclean.” [The Jewish Annotated Bible, Edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, New York: Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 75n.]
* * * * * *
From team member Chris Keating:
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23
Those who are generous are blessed
It’s best to avoid turning this verse into a proof text prosperity gospel. Instead, Proverbs 22:9 offers an opportunity to explore the ways practicing generosity leads one to the experience of feeling blessed. Columbia University medical school professor Kelli Harding suggests that generosity is an act that benefits the giver and the receiver. “What is so remarkable about giving,” writes Harding, “is it benefits both the recipient and the giver. Just think of the last time you gave someone a gift, expecting nothing in return, and how good it made you feel to do so. Maybe it was giving a toy to a child during the holidays or an act of service like making dinner for a neighbor who lives alone. The joy is really in the giving.”
She continues:
When it comes to giving, we’re hardwired for reciprocity. Even a small gift, like a cookie, activates our desire to respond in kind. What’s so lovely about giving is your kindness can inspire others to be kind, too. And generosity impacts our health and well-being in so many positive ways. It boosts mood, self-esteem, and our immune system. It also reduces stress, anxiety, and blood pressure.
* * *
Psalm 125
Peace be upon Israel
As the one-year anniversary of the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas, thousands of Israeli citizens staged massive demonstrations last week. The uprisings followed the killing of six hostages held by Hamas in Gaza and expressed widespread anger among those who are growing dissatisfied with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership.
As mourners buried the hostages, a general strike paralyzed commerce, Netanyahu defended his actions. “What message would it send to Hamas,” the prime minister said during a news conference. “Slay hostages and you’ll get concessions?” When asked when he would end the war, Netanyahu said that would happen “when Hamas no longer rules Gaza.”
* * *
James 2:1-10, 11-17
Do not claim faith while showing partiality
Many years ago, I had the privilege of visiting with an elderly couple who were members of a church where I was on staff. They lived in a small house in an older part of town, and rarely missed worship. They would arrive shortly before worship began, parking their older sedan on the periphery of the church parking lot. It was among the least expensive of the cars in the church parking lot on Sundays. In fact, based on their demeanor and dress, one might have figured they had lived lives of hard work with little gain.
During one of my visits, the wife remarked that they had made provisions for the church in their estate planning. I was surprised, especially since the house was a bit run down and the living room carpet worn. But they insisted that I share this with the head of staff, and I made a mental note to pass along the information.
The woman soon fell sick and was hospitalized. As I visited with her, I could tell things were not going well. She asked if I had relayed their message about their will to the pastor. I told her I had mentioned it, which was true. But I didn’t share his reaction with her. He’d laughed a bit when I reported on my visit, shaking his head. “They drive an old Ford and she wears a worn-out coat,” he said. “How much money could we be talking?” Regardless, he said, his schedule would not permit him the chance to visit right away.
Not long afterward, the woman died. Tragically, her husband died soon, as well. Within a few weeks, we had a letter from their attorney informing us that the church was the beneficiary of a rather large bequest from them. Apparently, this childless couple had been buying government bonds with every paycheck and earmarked it all for the church.
Sometimes I wonder how much the church might have received if the pastor had taken the time to visit. Instead, partiality for those with more outward trappings of wealth had captured his attention first.
* * *
James 2:1-10 (11-13) 14-17, Mark 7:24-37
Showing partiality
James advises his church leaders to avoid showing partiality to the wealthy who participate in their community, while Mark offers an image of Jesus overcoming racial and gender biases. Jesus’ words to the Syrophoenician woman are offensive and crude, yet he comes to see this “outsider” as having great faith, and thus overcomes his struggles with partiality. A 2013 interview in the Christian Century by Amy Frykolm reveals some of the ways Jesus’ bias remain with the contemporary church.
Frykolm interviewed sociologist Susan Crawford Sullivan, author of Living Faith: Everyday Religion and Mothers in Poverty. Sullivan had studied the lives of women living in poverty, exploring their challenges with parenting, poverty, and experiences of faith. She found that many of the women identified as having no religious preferences. Despite this, more than 80% religion played some sort of role in their lives. While many of the women enrolled their children in church programs and events, few of them actually participated. Frykolm asks Sullivan why she thought so few of these mothers participated in church themselves:
The women felt unwanted. It was hard to know how much of this was their perception and how much was being communicated by church members. One pastor told me he had the sense that these women thought the opportunity for a church-oriented life had already passed them by; they had made too many mistakes. The women largely felt that they didn’t have a “church lifestyle.” They would say, “I swear” or “I smoke” or “I sin.”
About a third of the women in my study felt stigmatized by churches. Some mentioned not having nice clothes. Some were ashamed of being on welfare, even though no one would know. One woman was terribly ashamed of having gone to jail for selling drugs and having lost her children. She hadn’t gone back to church since getting out of jail. I asked, “Would the people not welcome you back?” “Oh, no, no,” she said. “They would be glad to see me, but I just don’t feel right about it.” African-American women were more likely to say that they would be welcome in church; white women were more likely to express feeling stigmatized. But overall, it was much more of a subtle feeling of being excluded that they expressed, rather than that a church had said, “You are not welcome.”
* * * * * *
WORSHIP
by George Reed
Call to Worship
One: Those who trust in God are like Mount Zion, which abides forever.
All: As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so God surrounds the people.
One: Do not let the scepter of wickedness rest on our land.
All: Do not let the righteous stretch out their hands to do wrong.
One: Do good, O God, to those who are good
All: and to those who are upright in their hearts.
OR
One: Come and worship the God who created us in love.
All: We bow our hearts before the God who loves us.
One: To believe in God is to become like God.
All: We invite God to transform us into loving beings.
One: The God who loves us loves all of God’s children.
All: As God’s people, we will love our neighbors and our enemies.
Hymns and Songs
Praise, My Soul, the King (God) of Heaven
UMH: 66
H82: 410
PH: 620
GTG: 619
CH: 23
LBW: 549
ELW: 864/865
W&P: 82
AMEC: 70
Renew: 53
For the Beauty of the Earth
UMH: 92
H82: 416
PH: 473
GTG: 14
NNBH: 8
NCH: 28
CH: 56
LBW: 561
ELW: 897
W&P: 40
AMEC: 578
STLT: 21
Hope of the World
UMH: 178
H82: 472
PH: 360
GTG: 734
NCH: 46
CH: 538
LBW: 493
W&P: 404
O Jesus, I Have Promised
UMH: 396
H82: 655
PH: 388/389
GTG: 724/725
NCH: 493
CH: 612
LBW: 503
ELW: 810
W&P: 458
AMEC: 280
Jesus Calls Us
UMH: 398
H82: 549/550
GTG: 720
NNBH: 183
NCH: 171/172
CH: 337
LBW: 494
ELW: 696
W&P: 345
AMEC: 238
O Master, Let Me Walk with Thee
UMH: 430
H82: 659/660
PH: 357
GTG: 738
NNBH: 445
NCH: 503
CH: 602
LBW: 492
ELW: 818
W&P: 589
AMEC: 299
Cuando El Pobre (When the Poor Ones)
UMH: 434
PH: 407
GTG: 762
CH: 662
ELW: 725
W&P: 624
Lord, Whose Love Through Humble Service
UMH: 581
H82: 610
PH: 427
CH: 461
LBW: 423
ELW: 712
W&P: 575
Renew: 286
We Are His Hands
CCB: 85
God, You Are My God
CCB: 60
Music Resources Key
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
GTG: Glory to God, The Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African American Heritage Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
ELW: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
W&P: Worship & Praise
AMEC: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal
STLT: Singing the Living Tradition
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day/Collect
O God who invites us into relationship with you and with one another:
Grant us the wisdom to know that our human relationships
reflect the quality of our relationship with you;
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise you, O God, because you invite us come into relationship with you as you also invite into relationship with one another. Draw us closer into your heart so that our hearts will draw others closer to us and to you. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
One: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially our treatment of others does not reflect the close relationship we claim to have with God.
All: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We wear our relationship with you as a badge of honor and yet we withhold our love from others. We rejoice that you forgive us our sins, but we refuse to forgive others. We talk about being disciples of Jesus, but we do act like him. Forgive us our hypocritical ways and open our hearts to others so that we can open them to you. Amen.
One: God desires us to be whole even as God is whole. Allow the love God offers you to cleanse you and send you into the world to love and care for others.
Prayers of the People
Praise and glory to you, O Holy One whose love is shown in the way you care for your creatures. Because you are holy you are also whole and your love is not divided.
(The following paragraph may be used if a separate prayer of confession has not been used.)
We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We wear our relationship with you as a badge of honor and yet we withhold our love from others. We rejoice that you forgive us our sins, but we refuse to forgive others. We talk about being disciples of Jesus, but we do act like him. Forgive us our hypocritical ways and open our hearts to others so that we can open them to you.
We give you thanks for those who have shown us your love in the ways they have loved and cared for us. We thank you for the life and teachings of Jesus who did not just talk about your love but poured our love on others.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for the needs of all your children. We pray for those who find it hard to believe in your love because those who talk about you are so unloving. We pray for wisdom and courage for your Church that it may truly reflect the faith we talk about.
(Other intercessions may be offered.)
Hear us as we pray for others: (Time for silent or spoken prayer.)
All these things we ask in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ who taught us to pray saying:
Our Father....Amen.
(Or if the Our Father is not used at this point in the service.)
All this we ask in the name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. Amen.
* * * * * *
CHILDREN'S SERMON
No Debating God’s Grace
by Katy Stenta
Mark 7:24-37
In this story Jesus is very busy.
I am sure you have had the experience where someone is very busy and not paying attention to what it is you are telling them.
In this story a woman had a daughter possessed by a demon, which meant she was ill in some kind of way.
Jesus says to this woman, “I am tending to my own people, it is not fair that you take my attention from the children of God, let me attend to them — for you are Syrophoenician, you are secondary, like the pets who come after.”
And the woman remind Jesus, “But even the pets, or dogs, get the scraps after the children are finished being fed,” Jesus is won over and says, “Because of what you said, your daughter is healed.”
The woman went home and her daughter was healed.
Here, Jesus does not seem very nice. He has to be reminded to care for those who are not Jewish or from Jerusalem, but, once he is reminded, he does heal.
We may never know if Jesus was testing the woman, or if Jesus changed his mind. Did you know biblical scholars are still debating that today?
But what we do know is that God’s grace is extended, proving that God’s grace is for everyone no matter what.
And that persistence is important to reach God.
Prayer
God
We are thankful
That you hear us
Even when
It seems
You don’t
And that
No one
Is outside
Your love.
Amen.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, September 8, 2024 issue.
Copyright 2024 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
- Women Who Won’t Be Quiet by Mary Austin based on Mark 7:24-37.
- Second Thoughts: Evidence Of Grace by Dean Feldmeyer based on James 2:1-10 (11-13) 14-17.
- Sermon illustrations by Tom Willadsen, Chris Keating.
- Worship resources by George Reed.
- Children's sermon: No Debating God’s Grace by Katy Stenta based on Mark 7:24-37.
Women Who Won’t Be Quietby Mary Austin
Mark 7:24-37
As Kamala Harris campaigns for the presidency, she’s showcasing the power of a determined woman. Like this Gentile woman in Mark’s gospel, women who won’t be silenced are everywhere right now. Pushy. Shrill. Bitchy. Powerful. This insistent woman who meets Jesus has counterparts all around us in women who are making a determined push for leadership, freedom, equality and recognition. This is the year of women who won’t be quiet.
Most prominent among modern women who won’t be quiet is presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Until Joe Biden dropped out of the race, Kamala Harris toiled away as the Vice President, mostly escaping our notice as she tried not to outshine her boss. She was criticized for her staffing, for what she did and didn’t do, and for her policy positions. She was praised for her shoes. The White House now concedes that they didn’t do enough to support her at the beginning of President Biden’s term. As a result, “many Americans, after three years of the West Wing’s poor stewardship of Harris, are now looking at their vice president as if for the first time.”
It's apparent that she’s much more seasoned as a candidate this time, and that her run for office has energized the race. Pew Research reports that, “Buoyed by growing Democratic enthusiasm, Vice President Kamala Harris is now in a virtual tie with former President Donald Trump in the presidential race. Among registered voters nationally, 46% say if the election were held today, they would support Harris, while 45% favor Trump.” Harris has learned when to speak up, and when to pass on a question, as she did when her recent interview asked about former President Trump. Asked a question about Trump’s comments on her race, “the vice president has sought to cut off oxygen to it.” She commented that it's the “Same old, tired playbook. Next question, please.” Asked if she had anything to add, Harris replied: “That’s it.”
Like the Gentile woman before her, Harris knows when to press hard on an issue…and when not to. These kindred spirits both teach us about the power of persistence.
In the News
The Democratic National Convention, which nominated Harris, also featured other determined women. Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Jasmine Crocket, all had time on the big stage, along with Deb Haaland, Elizabeth Warren, Jill Biden, Maura Healey, and others. Women told the story of a consequential election and gave a strong call to action. One writer observed, “Every night, women have outshined male party stalwarts — sometimes the ones they are married to — in a development that has highlighted the rising power of women in the Democratic Party and left some of the most famous men in politics seemingly playing more of a supporting role.”
Sarah Godlewski, Secretary of State in Wisconsin, commented, “I really do believe that this is the convention of the woman. For so long, we’ve just been told to sit down and shut up. And we’re not going to sit down and shut up anymore.”
Book lists this summer are showcasing other women who were silenced by religious traditions, and who have now found their voice.
Tia Levings has a riveting book about her own healing as a daughter and then a wife, from what she calls “high-control Christian Fundamentalism.” She recalls, “I was a trad wife living in Christian Patriarchy, in church-sanctioned domestic abuse. My friend’s husband was hitting her and freezing her out for days at a time. She knew something of my situation and wanted to know how I coped, because when last we spoke in 2004, my volatile marriage had gone through a change I’d been vague about, and two years later, I was still married.” Levings eventually left her abusive husband, and her writing explores the many years she was denied a voice by the fundamentalist churches her family attended.
Author lyz lenz married young after being raised in a conservative Christian family where she never imagined she had any other choice. In her writing, she notes that leaving an abusive or unfair marriage is its own kind of healing. “Free women are destabilizing. Single women, single mothers, their existence, their radical happiness — it upsets the whole enterprise. Women and love are the infrastructure of this exploitative culture. You begin to examine love and partnership, question it, reject it, the entire system becomes weak. And I am happy. I’m happier than I’ve ever been. Even when I was broke and ghostwriting op-eds to buy groceries, I was happy because I was finally free.”
In the Scriptures
In his commentary, Mark: Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, William C. Placher says that we can’t escape the cruelty of Jesus’ answer to this woman. He writes, “Jesus gives her a brutal answer. He has come to the Jews; she is a Gentile: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” What he says is harsh enough in our culture, but even harsher then, in a culture where dogs were not beloved house pets but disgusting scavengers who skulked about living on garbage. Calling someone a “dog” was a real insult (see for instance 2 Kings. 8:13). With some justice, the Jewish scholar Joseph Klausner remarks, “If any other Jewish teacher of the time had said such a thing Christians would never have forgiven Judaism for it.” Even in the face of ignorance and cruelty, this woman has the tenacity to answer Jesus, and then to expand his understanding.
Mark organizes his gospel so Jesus has this encounter right after he talks about the insides and the outsides of people, and how we assess people based on character. He comments about the Pharisees and the rules they follow, teaching “that there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile.” The things that defile people are behaviors like lust, greed, and hate. Meeting this Gentile woman forces him to consider his own words about God’s approval.
Matt Skinner adds, “It’s as if the anonymous woman inexplicably understands implications of what Jesus announced in Mark 7:14-23. Aren’t Jews and gentiles in the same boat, in terms of what makes all of them defiled? Then why should gentiles have to wait to participate in the blessings made possible through the reign of Israel’s God?” Why, indeed?
In the Sermon
Matt Skinner observes that this woman is also a theologian, and, as such, a match for Jesus. “It’s not simply that she cleverly reconfigures Jesus’ metaphors of crumbs and canines to fit her desires. Her words contain as much theological insight as they do wit or even humility. It appears she recognizes — somehow — a certain abundance about the things Jesus is up to.” The sermon might explore God’s abundance, and where we find it. Or, the sermon could examine the people who understand this better than we do. Who teaches us about God’s extravagant generosity? Some of our teachers are people we might overlook or think have nothing to teach us.
For Tia Levings, laughter was one source of her healing from a faith that was toxic for her. She writes, “My laugh is warm and gusty. I love a good wise crack, snark, irreverent humor, irony, dark humor, and clever wit. Even inside the cult, I would laugh at things I “wasn’t supposed to,” revealing peeks at my true character. And knowing what I know now about laughing trauma out, it’s likely that laughter kept me from screaming.” Kamala Harris has been criticized for her boisterous laugh, and Hillary Clinton got similar criticism. “Republicans have gone after uninhibited shows of happiness like this in the past. See: Hillary Clinton and her “cackle.” (In 2016, Trump voters could buy T-shirts of a grinning Clinton Photoshopped on a broom.)”
Is this Gentile woman laughing a little bit at Jesus and his limited understanding? The sermon might explore how laughter insulates us from insults, and how people on the margins use laughter to lighten the burden of exclusion. Comedy columnist Jason Zinoman says about Harris, “Far from a liability, her laugh is one of her most effective weapons.”
Career coach Pamela Seabright says that women are part of the “4,000 Year Silence Project. If you look at the course of history, up until very recently women have been silenced; it’s been our role to be quiet.” The sermon might explore how we can help all women speak up, along with other people who have things to say. How can we evoke the spirit of this Gentile woman in our churches, homes, and communities? How can we learn from her example of going toe to toe with Jesus, and winning the argument? Her story invites us to honor her legacy, and to make her a model in our own faith communities.
SECOND THOUGHTSEvidence Of Grace
by Dean Feldmeyer
James 2:1-10 (11-13) 14-17
It is said that Martin Luther called the epistle of James an “epistle of straw.”
Kinda harsh, if you ask me.
See, ML had staked his life on the power and effectiveness of God’s grace, unearned, undeserved, unconditional. And so focused was he on that grace that any hint of works righteousness, the notion that we can earn our way into heaven, was abhorrent to him.
When he read James’ letter, that’s what he saw: Works righteousness.
But I think his theological myopia may have done him a disservice. It made it impossible for him to hear the full measure of the challenge that James puts forth for the early church and for us, today.
In the Scriptures
Apparently, there was some partiality being shown in that early church, especially toward the rich. Wealthy people would show up at the worship services — usually held in someone’s home, around a meal table — and they would immediately be ushered to the head of the table and given heaping portions of the best meats. People who had power and status in the world were given power and status in the church.
This, for James, was the very opposite of what it meant to live by grace.
James was a big believer that if we claim to live by grace, we should be able to show some evidence to validate that claim. Currying favor with the rich was not the evidence he was looking for.
He goes on, then, to demonstrate how the wealthy people of his time and place showed not grace, but actual disdain, for the poor. The law, he says, calls us to love our neighbor as ourselves. And if we violate this one part of the law it’s just as serious as a violation of any part.
“But,” responds the interlocutor, “I am saved by my faith in God’s grace, ergo, I have no need to do good.”
James: “But that’s an inauthentic, empty, dead faith. True faith produces evidence of salvation. It is not enough to say, ‘I am saved.’ A person who is truly saved by God’s grace seeks, indeed runs, to show evidence of that salvation through acts of love and charity.”
And then he closes his argument with that famous theological aphorism: “Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”
Sorry, Martin. James is right on this one. The question that will soon be before the American people is if we see any of those acts of love and charity in either of the two political parties that show evidence of salvation by grace through faith.
In the News
For some years, now, the Republican party has claimed to hold the high moral ground, well above the “godless” Democrats. They are, after all, the party that proclaims that “all life” is sacred. Well, at least, all unborn life is sacred. They tout “family values” in all their literature and psychologist James Dobson, an evangelical/fundamentalist Christian and founder of Focus on the Family as well as the Family Research Council and the Family Policy Alliance, regularly endorses Republican politicians and causes.
The political right has the only president who has ever deployed law enforcement officers using tear gas and other riot control tactics to forcefully clear peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square, then pose for a photo op of himself, scowling and holding a Bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church parish house.
They have the only president who ever brought together church and state in a $60 “God Bless The USA” Bible complete with copies of the nation's founding documents and touting them as a Holy Week Special. “Happy Holy Week! Let's Make America Pray Again,” Trump wrote. “As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless the USA Bible.”
Christian evangelical/fundamentalist pastors showed up regularly at the Trump White House to have their pictures taken with the president. It has been said that, if rubbing shoulders with rich, powerful Christians was a measure of piety, Donald Trump’s ticket to heaven would already be punched and his parking validated.
Paula White, a televangelist and proponent of prosperity theology, was the chair of his “evangelical advisory board” for his 2016 campaign. She delivered the invocation at his inauguration, on January 20, 2017, the first female clergy member to deliver the invocation. In November 2019, Trump appointed her special advisor to the Faith and Opportunity Initiative at the Office of Public Liaison.
Other Christian evangelical/fundamentalist leaders who have claimed to have an inside track to the Oval Office include Franklin Graham, Rev. Jackson Lahmeyer (Sheridan Church, Tulsa), James Dobson, and his associates Gary Bauer, Tim Clinton, and Michele Bachmann.
Other MAGA pastors backing Trump: Jentezen Franklin, Greg Locke, Mark Burns, Darrell C. Scott, “worship warrior” Sean Feucht, and Samuel Rodriguez, founder and president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. Southern Baptist pastor James F. Linzey issued a press release announcing that he was the “First Minister to Publicly Endorse Donald J. Trump for President in 2016, [and] Endorses Trump Again for 2024.”
Eric Metaxas, a Christian radio host who has written two children’s books about Trump, attended Trump’s 2024 campaign announcement and says he gets “choked up thinking how good things were under Trump.”
“Trump prophet” Lance Wallnau and Turning Point USA President Charlie Kirk have partnered to mobilize swing-state churches for Trump. Evangelical Christian celebrities on the Trump bandwagon include actor Jim Caviezel and reality TV star Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame.
The “Project 2025” document that outlines the far-right Christian nationalist agenda aims to infuse the government and society with conservative, evangelical/fundamentalist Christian values and divert taxpayer funds to churches and religious non-profits.
So pervasive is conservative, evangelical/fundamentalist Christian influence in rightwing politics that Christians who have affixed their banner to rightwing politics and the MAGA agenda often refer to things they agree with as “Christian” this and “Christian” that, as though there is but one Christian perspective and it is the one held by conservative, evangelical fundamentalists.
People who hold other perspectives, ones informed by progressive Christian or non-Christian religious faith, people who disagree with the political opinions of Christian evangelical/fundamentalist religious right, are said to be “apostate,” or “anti-faith,” “anti-church,” “anti-Christian” and hostile to the first amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religion.
However, an astute observer of the politics of the left as it is currently being expressed under the leadership of Kamala Harris, might notice that things are changing. No longer can the right claim to be the only people for whom religious faith is important and the only ones to have an exclusive, infallible, omniscient hold on correct religion.
The Vice President comes from an ecumenical background and her sensitivity to religious faith is no less ecumenical. She was born to a Hindu Indian mother and a Jamaican father who divorced when she was 7 years old. She spent many of her childhood summers with her grandmother whose downstairs neighbor took her and her sister to Oakland’s 23rd Avenue Church of God in Oakland. Harris now considers herself a Black Baptist, a member of the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco, led by the Rev. Amos Brown
Her husband is Jewish, and they co-celebrate Jewish and Christian holidays in their home.
This ecumenical spirit seems to have infected the Democratic party of late. Vice President Harris has hired the Rev. Jen Butler, a Presbyterian minister and well-known liberal religious advocate, as the new head of faith outreach for the Harris-Walz campaign, charging the experienced activist with overseeing efforts to court a range of religious voters.
The 2024 Democratic National Convention often resembled nothing so much as a religious revival as speaker after speaker not only heaped praise on Democratic White House hopeful Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, but also referred to religion, scripture, and faith, with at least one supporter delivering a Bible-filled address pundits referred to as a “sermon.”
The easiest place to find religious references at the DNC was in the invocations and benedictions. Opening and closing party business with prayers — including non-Christian ones — is a long-standing practice at American political party conventions: The first evening began with a prayer from Cardinal Blase Cupich, who oversees the Archdiocese of Chicago. He called on God to help Americans “truly understand and answer the sacred call of citizenship” and prayed for “peace — especially for people suffering the senselessness of war.” He also cited Pope Francis who said Americans shouldn’t strive for a country that “narrows our national vision” but rather “dream dreams and see visions of what, by (God’s) grace, our world can become.”
Monday night’s benediction featured a pair of faith leaders: Rabbi Michael S. Beals of Temple Beth El of Newark, Delaware, and Pastor Cindy Rudolph of Oak Grove AME Church of Detroit. Beals recited blessings in both English and Hebrew, referring to President Joe Biden’s “selfless, effective public service,” Walz’s “joy” in “public discourse and policy” and a mention of freedom inspired by Harris’ campaign slogan. Rudolph, similarly, used Micah 6:8 — “Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God” — to highlight the same three figures in her prayer.
Religion was also easy to find on the main stage. Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, a member of the AME tradition, referenced 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 in his speech, noting, “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair.” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who attends a Disciples of Christ church, spoke of the golden rule and the parable of the good Samaritan while discussing the need for abortion access.
The most overtly religious language of the night came from the most likely source: Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, who is also the pastor of Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, which was once the pulpit of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Warnock made many appeals to Christianity, such as referring to voting as a “kind of prayer” and describing the unofficial motto of the US — “E Pluribus Unum,” or “out of many, one” — as the “American covenant.”
Warnock also had harsh words for Trump’s use of the Bible, such as when the then-president brandished one after the clearing of Lafayette Square in Washington, DC, in June 2020, or when he recently endorsed the “God Bless the USA Bible,” for which he reportedly earned at least $300,000 this year.
“I saw him holding the Bible, and endorsing a Bible as if it needed his endorsement — he should try reading it,” Warnock said of Trump. “It says do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God — he should try reading it. It says love your neighbor as yourself. It says inasmuch as you’ve done unto the least of these, you’ve done it also unto me.”
Warnock then called for people to care for one another, referring to several different groups — including Israelis and Palestinians, as well as people in Haiti, Congo, and Ukraine — as “all God’s children.”
There were other Democratic speakers who didn’t lean into their religious faith, but nevertheless, emerged out of it: Bishop Leah D. Daughtry, the Rules Committee co-chair, is also a pastor, and spoke out earlier this year alongside other Black Christian leaders who called for a cease-fire in Gaza.
Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, who spoke shortly before Biden took the stage, is a Presbyterian (PCUSA) and Yale Divinity School graduate. He pointed out during his address that he also spoke at the 2020 DNC about Biden’s Catholic faith.
So, too, might Walz, who has referred to himself as a “Minnesota Lutheran,” or even Harris, a Baptist who launched her 2020 presidential campaign with a speech that included the line, “To love the religion of Jesus is to hate the religion of the slave master.”
Religion and religious values have always been near to the heart of many Democrats who didn’t feel comfortable joining hands with evangelical/fundamentalist Christianity. Their values led them toward a more open, inclusive, and welcoming expression of the Christian faith. Now, at long last, they are beginning to speak up and be heard from that segment of the faith community.
Senator Raphael Warnock spoke directly to the dynamic during an MSNBC interview on Tuesday, bemoaning what he characterized as Trump “weaponizing the symbols of faith.” “I think it’s important, particularly for those of us in the Democratic Party, to be full-throated in the ways our faith informs our values,” he said. “We’ve got to be full-throated in resisting this idea of Christian nationalism.”
In the Sermon
Voters this November will be confronted not just with two different political perspectives and systems, one conservative and one progressive, they will also be asked to choose between the two religious traditions that claim to inform and shape those political perspectives.
One, the exclusively conservative, evangelical/fundamentalist Christian version, which sees itself as the last bastion of conservative values that are being eaten away by liberalism and “woke” values and theology, identifies as muscular Christianity, ready to fight, kill, and die to preserve conservative Christian values and traditions.
The other, the progressive, ecumenical, inclusive, religions who believe in working and worshiping beside each other for the good of the world, struggle mightily to keep their hearts, minds, and doors open to all of God’s children, even those with whom they do not always agree.
These are ones who come from various religious expressions and, for some, none at all. But many are, in fact, Christians who claim as much right to that name as those on the other side.
The issue that religious voters will have to face when they choose is which side best represents faith that is truly alive, that shows evidence of salvation by grace through their commitment to acts of faith, hope, charity, and love.
Let us pray that they, and we, choose well.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Tom Willadsen:Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23
The Bible’s Bumper Sticker Archive
The three passages from Proverbs this week are bits of wisdom connected to one another only because they mention “the rich” and “the poor.” Tradition has it that Solomon is the author of Proverbs, but the book is mostly likely a compendium of wise sayings that have accumulated through the ages.
While generosity to the poor, and a recognition of the rich and the poor sharing a common creator, are attested, inequality is also accepted. In the book of Ecclesiastes and the book of Job, a kind of counter testimony is present — sometimes the wicked do prosper.
I was in Northwestern University’s Marching Band four decades ago, when NU was in the throes of the longest losing streak in NCAA history. When the other team committed a penalty the band would chant, “Cheaters never prosper!” but they did, frequently routing the Wildcats by 60 or more points. There could be no better preparation for Christian ministry than four years in the Wildcat band.
* * *
Psalm 125
An Interesting Metaphor
The first three verses of today’s psalm concern Mount Zion’s inviolability. Mount Zion is a sign of the eternal strength and presence of the Lord. Though other, higher, mountains surround Mount Zion, it is still considered the connection between heaven and earth. In later Judaism, Mount Zion was considered the center of the universe, or even the universe’s navel. That’ll preach.
* * *
Mark 7:24-37
Location, location, location
When the seventh chapter of Mark’s gospel started, Jesus and his disciples were in Gennesaret, up on the Sea of Galilee. Some Pharisees and scribes had traveled from Jerusalem, a walk of about 70 miles, because they had heard that Jesus’ disciples did not wash their hands according to tradition. This took place in last week’s gospel portion.
At the start of today’s gospel lesson, Jesus and his disciples have traveled to the region of Tyre, a distance of around 35 miles. Even there, Jesus wanted to avoid the crowds. He was outside the kingdom of Herod in the Province of Syria, not on Jewish ground at all. There he was approached by the mother of a child with an unclean spirit.
From Tyre, they moved through Sidon, back to the Sea of Galilee and the region of Decapolis, Jesus’ home turf. This was hardly the most direct route. Sidon is about 25 miles north of Tyre. The Sea of Galilee is southeast of Tyre and Sidon. We can only guess why Jesus took this circuitous route. Perhaps Mark simply didn’t know the terrain. Or he wanted his readers to know that Jesus’ ministry ignored political and social divisions.
* * *
Mark 7:24-37
“You people are dogs.”
There is no getting around it, Jesus insulted Syrophoenicians when he said, “…it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” It was a highly insulting term. Dogs “were regarded as shameless and unclean.” [The Jewish Annotated Bible, Edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, New York: Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 75n.]
* * * * * *
From team member Chris Keating:Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23
Those who are generous are blessed
It’s best to avoid turning this verse into a proof text prosperity gospel. Instead, Proverbs 22:9 offers an opportunity to explore the ways practicing generosity leads one to the experience of feeling blessed. Columbia University medical school professor Kelli Harding suggests that generosity is an act that benefits the giver and the receiver. “What is so remarkable about giving,” writes Harding, “is it benefits both the recipient and the giver. Just think of the last time you gave someone a gift, expecting nothing in return, and how good it made you feel to do so. Maybe it was giving a toy to a child during the holidays or an act of service like making dinner for a neighbor who lives alone. The joy is really in the giving.”
She continues:
When it comes to giving, we’re hardwired for reciprocity. Even a small gift, like a cookie, activates our desire to respond in kind. What’s so lovely about giving is your kindness can inspire others to be kind, too. And generosity impacts our health and well-being in so many positive ways. It boosts mood, self-esteem, and our immune system. It also reduces stress, anxiety, and blood pressure.
* * *
Psalm 125
Peace be upon Israel
As the one-year anniversary of the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas, thousands of Israeli citizens staged massive demonstrations last week. The uprisings followed the killing of six hostages held by Hamas in Gaza and expressed widespread anger among those who are growing dissatisfied with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership.
As mourners buried the hostages, a general strike paralyzed commerce, Netanyahu defended his actions. “What message would it send to Hamas,” the prime minister said during a news conference. “Slay hostages and you’ll get concessions?” When asked when he would end the war, Netanyahu said that would happen “when Hamas no longer rules Gaza.”
* * *
James 2:1-10, 11-17
Do not claim faith while showing partiality
Many years ago, I had the privilege of visiting with an elderly couple who were members of a church where I was on staff. They lived in a small house in an older part of town, and rarely missed worship. They would arrive shortly before worship began, parking their older sedan on the periphery of the church parking lot. It was among the least expensive of the cars in the church parking lot on Sundays. In fact, based on their demeanor and dress, one might have figured they had lived lives of hard work with little gain.
During one of my visits, the wife remarked that they had made provisions for the church in their estate planning. I was surprised, especially since the house was a bit run down and the living room carpet worn. But they insisted that I share this with the head of staff, and I made a mental note to pass along the information.
The woman soon fell sick and was hospitalized. As I visited with her, I could tell things were not going well. She asked if I had relayed their message about their will to the pastor. I told her I had mentioned it, which was true. But I didn’t share his reaction with her. He’d laughed a bit when I reported on my visit, shaking his head. “They drive an old Ford and she wears a worn-out coat,” he said. “How much money could we be talking?” Regardless, he said, his schedule would not permit him the chance to visit right away.
Not long afterward, the woman died. Tragically, her husband died soon, as well. Within a few weeks, we had a letter from their attorney informing us that the church was the beneficiary of a rather large bequest from them. Apparently, this childless couple had been buying government bonds with every paycheck and earmarked it all for the church.
Sometimes I wonder how much the church might have received if the pastor had taken the time to visit. Instead, partiality for those with more outward trappings of wealth had captured his attention first.
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James 2:1-10 (11-13) 14-17, Mark 7:24-37
Showing partiality
James advises his church leaders to avoid showing partiality to the wealthy who participate in their community, while Mark offers an image of Jesus overcoming racial and gender biases. Jesus’ words to the Syrophoenician woman are offensive and crude, yet he comes to see this “outsider” as having great faith, and thus overcomes his struggles with partiality. A 2013 interview in the Christian Century by Amy Frykolm reveals some of the ways Jesus’ bias remain with the contemporary church.
Frykolm interviewed sociologist Susan Crawford Sullivan, author of Living Faith: Everyday Religion and Mothers in Poverty. Sullivan had studied the lives of women living in poverty, exploring their challenges with parenting, poverty, and experiences of faith. She found that many of the women identified as having no religious preferences. Despite this, more than 80% religion played some sort of role in their lives. While many of the women enrolled their children in church programs and events, few of them actually participated. Frykolm asks Sullivan why she thought so few of these mothers participated in church themselves:
The women felt unwanted. It was hard to know how much of this was their perception and how much was being communicated by church members. One pastor told me he had the sense that these women thought the opportunity for a church-oriented life had already passed them by; they had made too many mistakes. The women largely felt that they didn’t have a “church lifestyle.” They would say, “I swear” or “I smoke” or “I sin.”
About a third of the women in my study felt stigmatized by churches. Some mentioned not having nice clothes. Some were ashamed of being on welfare, even though no one would know. One woman was terribly ashamed of having gone to jail for selling drugs and having lost her children. She hadn’t gone back to church since getting out of jail. I asked, “Would the people not welcome you back?” “Oh, no, no,” she said. “They would be glad to see me, but I just don’t feel right about it.” African-American women were more likely to say that they would be welcome in church; white women were more likely to express feeling stigmatized. But overall, it was much more of a subtle feeling of being excluded that they expressed, rather than that a church had said, “You are not welcome.”
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WORSHIPby George Reed
Call to Worship
One: Those who trust in God are like Mount Zion, which abides forever.
All: As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so God surrounds the people.
One: Do not let the scepter of wickedness rest on our land.
All: Do not let the righteous stretch out their hands to do wrong.
One: Do good, O God, to those who are good
All: and to those who are upright in their hearts.
OR
One: Come and worship the God who created us in love.
All: We bow our hearts before the God who loves us.
One: To believe in God is to become like God.
All: We invite God to transform us into loving beings.
One: The God who loves us loves all of God’s children.
All: As God’s people, we will love our neighbors and our enemies.
Hymns and Songs
Praise, My Soul, the King (God) of Heaven
UMH: 66
H82: 410
PH: 620
GTG: 619
CH: 23
LBW: 549
ELW: 864/865
W&P: 82
AMEC: 70
Renew: 53
For the Beauty of the Earth
UMH: 92
H82: 416
PH: 473
GTG: 14
NNBH: 8
NCH: 28
CH: 56
LBW: 561
ELW: 897
W&P: 40
AMEC: 578
STLT: 21
Hope of the World
UMH: 178
H82: 472
PH: 360
GTG: 734
NCH: 46
CH: 538
LBW: 493
W&P: 404
O Jesus, I Have Promised
UMH: 396
H82: 655
PH: 388/389
GTG: 724/725
NCH: 493
CH: 612
LBW: 503
ELW: 810
W&P: 458
AMEC: 280
Jesus Calls Us
UMH: 398
H82: 549/550
GTG: 720
NNBH: 183
NCH: 171/172
CH: 337
LBW: 494
ELW: 696
W&P: 345
AMEC: 238
O Master, Let Me Walk with Thee
UMH: 430
H82: 659/660
PH: 357
GTG: 738
NNBH: 445
NCH: 503
CH: 602
LBW: 492
ELW: 818
W&P: 589
AMEC: 299
Cuando El Pobre (When the Poor Ones)
UMH: 434
PH: 407
GTG: 762
CH: 662
ELW: 725
W&P: 624
Lord, Whose Love Through Humble Service
UMH: 581
H82: 610
PH: 427
CH: 461
LBW: 423
ELW: 712
W&P: 575
Renew: 286
We Are His Hands
CCB: 85
God, You Are My God
CCB: 60
Music Resources Key
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
GTG: Glory to God, The Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African American Heritage Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
ELW: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
W&P: Worship & Praise
AMEC: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal
STLT: Singing the Living Tradition
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day/Collect
O God who invites us into relationship with you and with one another:
Grant us the wisdom to know that our human relationships
reflect the quality of our relationship with you;
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise you, O God, because you invite us come into relationship with you as you also invite into relationship with one another. Draw us closer into your heart so that our hearts will draw others closer to us and to you. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
One: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially our treatment of others does not reflect the close relationship we claim to have with God.
All: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We wear our relationship with you as a badge of honor and yet we withhold our love from others. We rejoice that you forgive us our sins, but we refuse to forgive others. We talk about being disciples of Jesus, but we do act like him. Forgive us our hypocritical ways and open our hearts to others so that we can open them to you. Amen.
One: God desires us to be whole even as God is whole. Allow the love God offers you to cleanse you and send you into the world to love and care for others.
Prayers of the People
Praise and glory to you, O Holy One whose love is shown in the way you care for your creatures. Because you are holy you are also whole and your love is not divided.
(The following paragraph may be used if a separate prayer of confession has not been used.)
We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We wear our relationship with you as a badge of honor and yet we withhold our love from others. We rejoice that you forgive us our sins, but we refuse to forgive others. We talk about being disciples of Jesus, but we do act like him. Forgive us our hypocritical ways and open our hearts to others so that we can open them to you.
We give you thanks for those who have shown us your love in the ways they have loved and cared for us. We thank you for the life and teachings of Jesus who did not just talk about your love but poured our love on others.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for the needs of all your children. We pray for those who find it hard to believe in your love because those who talk about you are so unloving. We pray for wisdom and courage for your Church that it may truly reflect the faith we talk about.
(Other intercessions may be offered.)
Hear us as we pray for others: (Time for silent or spoken prayer.)
All these things we ask in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ who taught us to pray saying:
Our Father....Amen.
(Or if the Our Father is not used at this point in the service.)
All this we ask in the name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. Amen.
* * * * * *
CHILDREN'S SERMONNo Debating God’s Grace
by Katy Stenta
Mark 7:24-37
In this story Jesus is very busy.
I am sure you have had the experience where someone is very busy and not paying attention to what it is you are telling them.
In this story a woman had a daughter possessed by a demon, which meant she was ill in some kind of way.
Jesus says to this woman, “I am tending to my own people, it is not fair that you take my attention from the children of God, let me attend to them — for you are Syrophoenician, you are secondary, like the pets who come after.”
And the woman remind Jesus, “But even the pets, or dogs, get the scraps after the children are finished being fed,” Jesus is won over and says, “Because of what you said, your daughter is healed.”
The woman went home and her daughter was healed.
Here, Jesus does not seem very nice. He has to be reminded to care for those who are not Jewish or from Jerusalem, but, once he is reminded, he does heal.
We may never know if Jesus was testing the woman, or if Jesus changed his mind. Did you know biblical scholars are still debating that today?
But what we do know is that God’s grace is extended, proving that God’s grace is for everyone no matter what.
And that persistence is important to reach God.
Prayer
God
We are thankful
That you hear us
Even when
It seems
You don’t
And that
No one
Is outside
Your love.
Amen.
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The Immediate Word, September 8, 2024 issue.
Copyright 2024 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
