We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness. Romans 12:6-8

What was Christmas morning like when you were a child? I’m sure there was excitement, anticipation, perhaps even frustration if you had to wait for sleepy parents to wake up and give you the okay to leave your room. Because my sister and I had bedrooms upstairs and my parents were downstairs, I remember several Christmas mornings knocking on the floor with a shoe to let our parents know we were up!

Of course, every family has their traditions, their way of doing things, but the quintessential image of Christmas morning (at least in American popular culture) is the children running into the living room and diving into a pile of presents left by Santa under the tree. Some time - and mountain of discarded wrapping paper and ribbon - later the children might get around to sharing with other family members what their gifts were. It’s quite an individualistic approach, and no surprise when we’re talking about children.

But maybe as you got older your family put in place a different way of opening Christmas presents – one that included the whole family. At some point in our family we developed the practice of everyone putting their gifts next to the place where we were each sitting. And then we go around the circle, each opening one gift while everyone else is watching, so we can all share in the joy, or the humor, or the appreciation of the gift. And there are often stories to be told about each gift - what caught the giver’s fancy, or how he or she hoped it would fit with the receiver’s most recent project, or whatever the story might be. Taking the time to open gifts this way helps the whole family to be part of the gift-giving.

In today’s Letter to the Romans St. Paul is reminding that community what it is to be a family of faith, and how they are to share their gifts – the gifts God has given them for the benefit of the whole Body of Christ. We hear this from Paul several times and in several places in his letters.

It was important to him for Christians in these new congregations and in communities widely separated from each other to be solidly grounded in the understanding that they were intimately connected with one another by faith, and interdependent with one another. That why he uses language about being a body and about being a new family – brothers and sisters.

We have two millennia of hearing that language, and so we may just gloss over it as standard Church language, but it was radical in its time. In neither Jewish culture nor pagan Gentile culture were people primed to think that someone outside their biological family, or ethnic group, or geographic area could be or should be their true family.

And yet, that is exactly what Paul is saying. And because Christians are one family, God has given us gifts that we are to share with one another for the benefit of the whole, in service to Christ’s mission in the world. Those gifts are given to us by God’s grace – whether they are gifts we have wanted, or not! – and they differ from each other. Everyone does not get the same gift.

So what were those gifts that Paul mentioned in this passage? He lists seven here, but in other letters he mentions other gifts. Perhaps these were the ones given to the Roman church specifically, or ones they needed to focus on.

He speaks of prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhortation, giving, leading, and compassion. Prophecy, remember, is a direct word from God to the community, not foretelling the future. Ministry has to do with serving others. Teaching refers to interpreting and applying the Hebrew Scriptures, the words of Jesus and the Spirit-led experience of Christian living. Exhortation is encouragement for acting and living as a Christian, almost like coaching. Giving supplies the community with what it needs materially and financially to function properly. Leading reminds us that even though we say that “Christ is the head of the church”, God knows us well enough to know that we need visible human leaders to steer the ship in a Godward direction. Compassionate action is the way we care for those who suffer – within the Church, but especially outside of it. These aren’t just functions, like an organizational chart of who does what, but God-given gifts that benefit and energize God’s mission through us, the Body of Christ.

What is one of the gifts God has given you? It may not be one of these that Paul mentions; there are plenty of others. What is a gift that God has given you that benefits others, that contributes to the life of the Church as it is incarnated at All Saints’? Maybe you know clearly what your gift is, and you are already exercising it – or finding news ways to make use of it.

I know, for instance, that there are many among us with the gift of compassion, and with the gift of serving. We are blessed with some teachers, and a good number of givers, people with artistic and musical gifts. Some of our Saints are gifted intercessors – praying for others; some of gits of skilled crafts or writing. And a gift that may not be unique to us, but is something we are strong in: creative resourcefulness – and the most recent example of that is the new Rummage Thrift Shop that is taking shape: using what we have on hand, looking at it in a different way, and putting it to good use for God’s benefit.

So think for a moment about what your gift or gifts may be. Perhaps there is even some gift that is only now starting to emerge, called forth from the last five months of living in our pandemic framework. Maybe you are just starting to notice it. Or maybe you have been exercising your gifts throughout these last months, but we haven’t been together to see or hear about it.

It would be wonderful to have a line or two in an email or on a postcard from each one of you that said something like: “One of my gifts from God is…. And I have been putting it to good use these last five months by….” If you do that, you can help us to see more clearly the gifts that God has given to us as a whole for the ministry of the Church. It will also help us to understand more clearly how God has been at work in our midst, even when we haven’t been able to be together. It’s like our family taking turns opening our Christmas gifts one at a time, so we can each enjoy and appreciate what everyone has received. Because the more you exercise the good gifts God has given you, the stronger they become, the more visible God's presence is, and the greater your joy will be.

Let us pray.
Almighty God our heavenly Father, you declare your glory and show forth your handiwork in the heavens and in the earth: Deliver us in our various occupations from the service of self alone, that we may do the work you give us to do in truth and beauty and for the common good; for the sake of him who came among us as one who serves, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. ~ BCP


Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
August 23, 2020

She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly. Matthew  15:27-28

This is one of those Gospel stories that tends to make us feel a little uncomfortable about Jesus. It doesn’t quite fit with the image a lot of people have of him – dispensing goodness and kindness and healing to all people wherever he goes, never being abrupt or losing his temper, almost like a flat, one-dimensional painting. So, let’s look at this story a little more closely, and maybe we’ll get a better understanding of what is going on.

To begin with, Jesus goes to the region of the cities Tyre and Sidon, on the Mediterranean coast, north-west of Galilee, in what is now modern-day Lebanon. This is not a Jewish area; it’s outside of the lands ruler by King Herod; the people who live there are called Canaanites, or Syro- Phonecians.

But there’s nothing to stop Jesus from traveling there, no border patrol. We don’t know why Jesus went to this area. Maybe he wanted to be anonymous for a bit. Maybe he wanted a break from all the people who had heard of the wonder-working rabbi and came to him seeking healing, and hope, and even confrontation.

The story tells us that a local, a Canaanite woman, sees Jesus and starts shouting at him from a distance, asking for Jesus to have pity on her and to     help her daughter who was possessed by a demon. This woman is not Jewish; how does she know who Jesus is, and what he can do? Even the title she uses for him, “Son of David”, is a term used for the Jewish Messiah. How does she know that?  In using the term, the Canaanite woman is proclaiming a truth about Jesus that the disciples have yet to really grasp (we’ll hear more about this next week); how did that happen? The text doesn’t give us any answers about these questions, but they are worth pondering, nevertheless.

The Canaanite woman doesn’t presume to approach Jesus directly, but she calls out, shouts at him, begging him for help for her daughter. And Jesus pays no attention to her whatsoever. But she must have been persistent, calling after him and the disciples, trying to get their attention. And who could blame her. She sees in Jesus the power to deliver her daughter and restore her to freedom and a sound mind. I think any of us would do the same.

But the disciples are bothered by the woman’s shouting, and they go to Jesus and ask him to send her away, to get rid of her so that they won’t be bothered. And how does Jesus respond?  He refuses; he says he’s sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel – meaning that he is Messiah for the Jewish people, not anyone else. On hearing this, the woman comes close and throws herself at Jesus’ feet. She calls him “Lord” and once again asks for his help.

Now things really get interesting. Jesus says to her, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Calling someone a dog in the ancient Middle East was just as much of an insult then as it is now. But the woman is not put off by Jesus’ characterization of her Gentile status, and his not wanting to waste God’s blessings on someone outside the Jewish community.

Instead, she accepts the metaphor and presses on with it to make her point: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Surely God’s abundance is so great, that there will be enough for me and my daughter, even just a scrap of mercy and grace. Jesus then immediately applauds her for her faith, for her persistence, and trust that he could and would heal her daughter.

So what is going on here? How are we to make sense of this story? This is one of those times when God’s purpose and future rushes forward – even before Jesus is quite ready for it.

If we look at the broad sweep of the Hebrew Scriptures we see that one of its major themes is that God will one day draw all nations and peoples together as one human family, blessed by God regardless of ethnicity or race or geography. We heard an echo of that in the reading from Isaiah when God says that “my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” This has been God’s plan all along, and the Israelites were chosen to be the stewards and custodians of God’s vision until the day came when this purpose could be fulfilled.

And this Canaanite woman – outside the official Jewish community – was an agent of bringing God’s future forward, all in a rush, and helping Jesus to be more aware of his vocation and God’s timing. Jesus is the Messiah, God’s Anointed, for all people, not just for the Jews.

And that’s often the way with really important changes and learning, isn’t it? We turn a corner and see a different perspective, realize that we have been missing important truth or parts of the picture, and at a very deep level things can never be the same again once we know – even if we don’t fully understand how this truth will unfold.

This summer we’ve had the opportunity to reflect on a time when God’s future came forward faster and sooner than many Americans thought we were ready for. The death of US Representative John Lewis has been the occasion to look back and reflect on the course and cause of civil rights in our country. From a distance of fifty-plus years it’s easy for the events of Topeka, Little Rock, Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma, Washington D.C. to be words on a page, a fait accompli.

But delving back into the stories and the television footage from the time has reminded me of the heartache, unjustified bloodshed, and persistence that helped to set in motion civil rights for African-Americans. John Lewis, Martin Luther King, C. T. Vivian (who also died this summer), Andrew Young, and so many others helped us to see the deepest and truest meaning of the words of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

And, of course, it was not only American values that the civil rights leaders were upholding, but Biblical values as well – the same vision of all people as part of God’s one human family that is referenced in Isaiah; a Beloved Community of all God’s people, where God’s desire is (as the prophet Amos declares) “[to] let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
And this is the reason that so many clergy, lay people, and religious community members heeded Dr. King’s call to join the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. Our own David St. George, then Rector of All Saints’. answered that call and went to Selma to support the march. This vision of God’s purpose and God’s future was rushing towards them and towards our country and our churches and faith communities.

But as so often happens, we make a change, we pass a law, we declare something to be true and then we think it’s over and done – only to realize later that there is a great deal more effort, work, and prayer that needs to happen. That is certainly the case with the progress of civil rights in our country and the backlash from some quarters against them.

We know that laws alone don’t change attitudes and open hearts, as vital as legal changes are. Changing hearts and minds is the work of prayer, and attention, and countless conversations with others who are both like us and unlike us, the work of listening to God and sharing what we know to be God’s truth.

We can be like the Canaanite woman in this morning’s Gospel. We can be persistent, we can publicly recognize and announce God’s vision of all people being made in God’s image, with dignity and worth, brothers and sisters sharing in the abundant blessings of God’s creation, a Beloved Community.

We can be conduits of God’s future and the fullness of God’s kingdom in our midst. May we be blessed in our prayer, our action, and our proclamation.

Let us pray.
O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. ~ BCP, p. 815

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
August 16, 2020