Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity 2021
We’re driving (well, Jo is doing the driving
part) back Up North from Down South, where we have been celebrating my uncle S
& aunt P’s golden wedding anniversary. And once again I’m writing a sermon
on my phone (another uncle asked, can’t you stay another night and do your
sermon by Zoom?).
S & P are the most gracious of hosts, and
were in their element welcoming their guests, family and friends from far and
wide, after so many months of restrictions. Their garden was set out with
chairs around small tables, each one furnished with an assortment of glasses
and bottles of wine. Between them, aunt P and my cousins H and B laid on the
most amazing spread, a buffet table to return to again and again, and somehow
never running out.
It was a lovely, relaxed gathering, and we so
appreciated both seeing relatives we don’t get to see often enough and meeting
others for the first time, including cousins’ children and my cousin’s dog,
Megan, an adorable springador (springer spaniel - black labrador cross) who sat
under a chair and occasionally risked a sneaky inching forward towards a
discarded plate. “She’s very good, so long as you keep an eye on her.” “Your
dog, or your daughter?” “Hah! Both.”
In our Gospel reading this Sunday, from Mark
chapter 7, we hear an account of Jesus in conversation with a culturally Greek,
ethnically Syrophoenician, woman. Her daughter is afflicted by a demon, and she
asks Jesus to help her. Jesus responds, it is not fair to take the children’s
food before they have eaten their fill, and throw it to the dogs. The woman
replies, yes Lord, but even the dogs beneath the table get to eat the crumbs
that fall from it. For this, Jesus does as she asks. When she returns home, she
finds the demon gone.
It is an exchange that centres on the imagery
of food shared, of children and dogs, against a background of undeserved,
unwelcome pain.
In the culture of the time, dogs were not
pets, like Megan, but scavengers. There’s a verse in the Law of Moses that
instructs that any meat come upon in a field mauled by wild animals should not
be taken up for human consumption but given to the dogs. What the lion leaves
behind, the dogs clean up. That scenario, however, is in almost every detail
the opposite of Jesus’ scenario. But there is a book in the Hebrew Bible, one
that would be familiar to Greeks, that includes a memorable image of dogs and
shared food.
Ecclesiastes
chapter 9 opens by observing that time and chance impact upon the righteous and
the unrighteous, the clean and the unclean, without distinction. This is vexing
(evil, though not in a moral sense). The end of all is death. ‘But whoever is
joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead
lion.’ (9:4) This being so, the best advice is ‘Go, eat your bread with
enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago
approved what you do.’ (9:7)
Time and chance impact us all. That was clear
as we gathered together, to celebrate fifty years of marriage, the joys of
having girls and raising them to become strong and compassionate women, the joy
of grandchildren. But alongside that, coming out in conversations around the
garden and across the afternoon, the weight of time and chance. The impact of a
pandemic on our children. The impact of Brexit and the pandemic on the
provision of care support for the elderly. Memories of relationships that had
broken down; and affirmations of new beginnings, second chances. Family members
in hospital, under investigation, awaiting a diagnosis that itself may be
unwelcome. Time and chance.
And in the face of all that, how precious to
join together, to attend to the making and mending of connection with all the
living; for whoever is connected to all the living has hope. Some days—months,
years—you’re living a dog’s life, scavenging what you can get. Living off the
memories of the last time I saw uncle S and aunt P, at my parents’ golden
wedding anniversary, the weekend before the first lockdown. But a living dog is
better than a dead lion. Because, hope. We come through the ravages of time and
chance, not unscathed, but carried by hope. By the knowledge that life goes on,
fleeting but good, so much gift, so much worthy of celebration. Yes, there we
acknowledged the challenges of life, but we shared warmth and laughter, so much
laughter.
This weekend, I have eaten bread—and salads
and quiche and vegetarian coronation and lemon and lime cheesecake and banoffee
pie—with enjoyment; and drunk wine—and Pimms and vintage port—with a merry
heart. And today, simpler fare, bread and wine. Both occasions, a celebration
of life; a grateful participation in the sheer gift of life; a renewing of
hope, empowering us to face time and chance. Even the crumbs, communion wafers,
are enough, bringing us from our scattered and at times troubled lives, back to
wholeness.
I’m thankful for the sermons of scripture, and
the sermons of life. Thankful for the sacrament of Communion, and for the
sacrament of Marriage, for how they gather lives together and refuse to
distinguish between ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ spaces, between churches and
gardens. Between the religious, and those who aren’t. This is the wisdom of
God, who from long ago approves of you.
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