240908 Pentecost 16 year B – Welcome Sunday
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23 – PSALM 125 – James 2:1-17
– Mark 7:24-37

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Students are back in town for a new year of learning, children have gone back to school. Some people have got new jobs and have just moved to Montreal. For others, we put the summer season behind and are getting back to life as usual.

One way or another, whether this is your first time at Christ Church Cathedral or whether you have been coming here for years and returning after the summer, you are all warmly welcome. We hope to connect and reconnect with one another over the coming term, and today on this Welcome Sunday, we have provided name badges so that we might just start to learn one another’s names. Just to break the ice, I am going to invite you now to turn to someone near you, preferably someone you don’t know, and introduce yourselves to one another, and say a little something about who you are.

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Well, I hope you had a good introduction, and that you will join us after the service on the forecourt of the cathedral to continue the conversation over a scrumptious selection of cupcakes, ice-cream sandwiches, coffee and cold refreshments. Also if it is your first time here, please take Welcome fliers and fill in one of the Welcome Cards or follow the QR code so we can provide you with information. We are planning a newcomers lunch in two weeks, and we would love to send you details.

Today, we are all here for all sorts of reasons. Perhaps you love the music tradition of the Cathedral and have come for the fabulous choir restarting today. Perhaps you come from an Anglican family, and you headed for the nearest Anglican cathedral. Perhaps you love the beauty of holiness expressed in our neo-Gothic architecture, which helps you to feel closer to God. Perhaps you looked for an inclusive, multicultural, engaged and LGBTQ2S+ affirming church and you hope that we can provide you with a supportive community.

For all of us, though, we come because we want to continue to learn to be followers of Jesus, the son of God. Jesus, who provides for us a pattern of life as we continue to grow in faith, be amazed at what the love of God can do in our lives and, as part of the church, embody the living Christ in the world today.

The Gospel set for today may not at first hand be the most inspiring as we specially think about welcome.
The first half of the story Mark tells speaks of a tired Jesus who goes to find rest after a very heavy few days of teaching, healing and mixing with the crowds. He is trying to find space with friends, to reconnect with himself, reconnect to God his father, relax and rest.
Perhaps a bit like what we feel when we come into this place. Because here we are able to let go of some of the things that occupy our minds away from the daily grind.

And yet, even in his retreat, a woman who has heard of his power and desperate for the health of her child walks in to reach out to him.

Now, we need to think about the culture of the time – not only is she a woman on her own who should not speak to a stranger, she is also a Syrophoenician – a foreigner and definitely not a jew – what can she expect from a meeting with Jesus, who so far has been the blue eyed boy of the crowds.

And the way the story unfolds is rather shocking.

After she makes her request to Jesus for him to help heal her daughter of a demon, he responds in a very unexpected way– a way that does not feel like the Jesus we have come to know at all.

‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dog’.
This reponse sends preachers and commentators into a spin – have we really heard Jesus compare this woman’s child to a dog? What is Jesus doing?

And so some suggest that Jesus – perhaps out of tiredness – is restating what he sees as his core purpose – to focus on teaching the Children of the house of Israel, rather than spread the resources too thinly by spreading them around to non-Jews. It could be a fair point for a Jesus who – as well as being divine was also fully human, and therefore will have like us experienced times of discouragement, depletion with a need to refocussing.

Others suggest that perhaps Jesus knew what he was doing by being provocative in order to test the resolve of the woman and to see how she would respond – a test of her faith.

And her response comes quickly, she is not deterred in her determination to do something for her daughter: ‘Even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs’.

That image tells it all – we all know how messy the floor can be after feeding young children, and how happy our pets can be at finding some unexpected juicy morsels.

And that’s all it takes for her. In her challenging response to Jesus, she manages to change his mind – and he grants her the miracle she came for – her daughter is healed.

We don’t know whether what she says is a wakeup call to Jesus in his own faith journey, as he grows as a preacher, teacher, healer, as he tests the boundaries of his message of God’s unconditional love for all. Or whether it is simply the woman’s absolute faith in Jesus that is enough for him to act. Or a blend of both. But something changes in him.

In the previous two chapters of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus was ministering in Jewish territory, including a well-known passage when he feeds the five thousand. And in the following chapters 7 and 8, he is now travelling through mostly non-Jewish territory, continuing essentially the same ministry and eventually feeding four thousand.

His encounter with this woman is one that marks a turning point in Jesus’ ministry, and from then on his approach is even more inclusive even to non-Jews.

The subsequent healing of the deaf man amplifies this message further. In an uncharacteristically very practical way – fingers in ears, spit – Jesus heals a deaf mute. And with the word ‘Ephphatha’ – ‘be opened’ – the man can hear and speak again – starting another buzz about Jesus in the region.

The Welsh theologian Jeffrey John reminds us that for Mark, this particularly passage points to the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy (Isaiah 35.5-6):

‘Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
then the lame shall leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.’

An openness to the good news and to Jesus is a marker of the advent of the Kingdom of God in the here and now.

James, in his Epistle also reminds us to ‘be open’ to the presence of God among us and warns us against any kind of favouritism or judgment. We are all equally welcome by God.

He reiterates the preferential option of Jesus for the poor, and is clear about the judgment for those who would use their position of wealth to oppress others. We are mandated to love our neighbour, that is all those around us – as ourself, anything short of that is not of God – however difficult that might be.

And prayers alone are not enough, we are to supply for their bodily needs too.

The book of Proverbs similarly points to the blessings received by those who are generous and share their bread with the poor.

At the Cathedral, we are a community that continues to learn how to be more faithful as we strive to take many of these points to heart – in our welcome, in our worship, in our service of others.

As a community, we aim to support and strengthen one another on our faith journey, that as we consider the beauty of God’s creation and the needs of the world, we may continue to grow in love for God, to live our lives in the way of Jesus, and embody a community of hope in the Good News of the Gospel.

As we embark on this new term, I hope that you will want to be a part of it, and look forward to journeying together in the coming year and that we might all find our souls ‘Be Opened’.
Amen