Monday 30 August 2021

Readings, hymns and
sermon ideas for
Sunday 5 September 2021,
Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity

But she answered, ‘Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs’ (Mark 7: 28) (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Sunday next, 5 September 2021, is the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XIV). The readings in the Revised Common Lectionary, as adapted in the Church of Ireland, are:

The Continuous Readings: Proverbs 22: 1-2, 8-9, 22-23; Psalm 125; James 2: 1-10, (11-13,) 14-17; Mark 7: 24-37.

The Paired Readings: Isaiah 35: 4-7a; Psalm 146; James 2: 1-10, 11–13, 14-17; Mark 7: 24-37.

There is a link to the readings HERE.

Many churches are also observing Sunday 5 September as Climate Sunday, an initiative that has the support of the Church of Ireland.

There are links to resources for Climate Sunday in the latter part of this package of resources.

Liberty and Justice are themes connecting the lectionary readings … lettering by Eric Gill in Trumpington, near Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Introducing the readings:

The continuous readings in the lectionary for next Sunday move us on to the Book of Proverbs and we return to the readings in Year B in Saint Mark’s Gospel.

The emphasis in these readings is on justice, especially for the poor and the marginalised, and connecting the feeding and clothing of the poor and looking after their health and housing with faith and the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God.

The theme of climate justice and making connections between our responsibility for Creation and our vision of the Kingdom of God may also be appropriate themes to reflect on next Sunday.

‘Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity’ (Proverbs 22: 8) … Limerick courthouse (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Proverbs 22: 1-2, 8-9, 22-23:

Following last week’s brief exploration of the Song of Solomon, or the Song of Songs, next Sunday’s first reading is the first of three readings from the Book of Proverbs, a book we continue reading on Sundays and weekdays until Sunday 23 September.

A proverb is a pithy statement that expresses a ‘common sense’ truth in a striking, memorable way. This book is a collection such pithy sayings by a scholar to a student on leading a moral life that gives proper respect to God.

God shows no special favour to the rich, but is impartial between the rich and the poor. We are advised to value justice, to be generous and to attend to the needs of the poor – themes that are important in both the new Testament reading and the Gospel stories.

The ‘afflicted at the gate’ are the people at the margins who are waiting outside society for justice – which provides an important introduction to and context for the Gospel reading.

‘The burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water’ (Isaiah 35: 7) … pools in the sands at Beal, Co Kerry (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Isaiah 35: 4-7a

This chapter in the Book of Isaiah promises that all creation will see God's glory. The helpless prisoners and exiles, described as ‘weak hands’ and ‘feeble knees’ (verse 3), the ‘fearful’ (verse 4), the blind and the deaf (verse 5), the lame (verse 6) and the speechless (verse 6), are promised that will receive new courage and hope.

The weak and feeble shall made strong; the fearful will become strong and of good heart; the blind shall see and the deaf shall hear, the lame shall leap, and the speechless shall sing for joy.

But this is a promise not just to suffering humanity but to nature too: the wilderness and the desert shall be watered (verse 6), the burning sand shall become a pool (verse 7), and the thirsty ground shall be turned into springs of water (verse 7).

‘The just shall not put their hands to evil’ (Psalm 125: 3) … the courthouse in Skibbereen, Co Cork (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Psalm 125:

Psalm 125 is one of the ‘Songs of Ascent,’ sung by pilgrims travelling up to Jerusalem.

This psalm is a prayer espressing trust in God, likening Divine protection to the hills that surround Jerusalem.

It is not power and wealth that makes someone strong and firm like a mountain, but trust in God or faith. Those who have power and privilege may be wicked, but we are called to be good and ‘true of heart.’

‘Happy are those whose … hope is in the Lord their God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them’ (Psalm 146: 5-6) … the sky, sea, sand and earth on a beach in Corfu (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Psalm 146:

Psalm 146 offers a contrast between human and divine rule. Humans are mortal; we come from dust and return to dust. God is eternal, as are the values by which he governs human affirs. He brings justice to the oppressed, food to the hungry, freedom to captives and hope to those on the margins of society.

These principles of justice and compassion run through Biblical history as the governing ideals of a society uner the sovereignty of God.

In Psalm 146, the Psalmist recalls that that those who hope in God’s promises will know that God keeps his promise for ever.

These promises include justice for those who are wronged, seeing that the hungry are fed, those who imprisoned are freed, the blind see, the oppressed lifted up, the righteous exalted, the stranger, the orphan and the widow protected, and the wicked turned away.

The psalmist will praise God throughout his life. We should not look to powerful people for security and help because they are finite: when they die, so do their plans.

But God is to be trusted, for he is creator, and he keeps his promises forever. He loves those who follow his ways, cares for the stranger in the land, looks after the orphan and the widow, upsets the plans of the wicked.

This is the God who reigns for ever, throughout all generations.

‘Have you … become judges with evil thoughts?’ (James 2: 4) … the Four Courts by the banks of the River Liffey in Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

James 2: 1-10, (11-13,) 14-17:

Last Sunday [29 August 2021, Trinity XIII], we heard the author of this letter urge his readers to ‘be doers of the word, and not merely hearers’ (James 1: 22) of the Gospel, giving as an example care for widows and orphans.

In this reading, Saint James continues his discussion of the responsibilities we have as Christians to the disadvantaged. He challenges his readers to consider whether our favouritism and partiality is consistent with our belief in Christ, who in his glory makes nonsense of distinctions based on status.

If strangers come into church – the word translated here as ‘assembly’ is συναγωγή or synagogue – do we offer them better seats, more honour and respect, because they are well dressed, while we leave others standing?

Do we judge by appearances?

Do we discriminate?

He challenges us to recall that Christ’s preference is for the poor, who will have faith and inherit the kingdom.

We are reminded that the summary of the law is ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’ (verse 8; see Leviticus 19: 18, Matthew 22: 39, Mark 12: 31, Luke 10: 27).
It makes no sense to say we have faith if we do not show love by seeing that the hungry have food and through promoting peace. As we were challenged last Sunday, we are called to ‘be doers of the word, and not merely hearers.’

But she answered, ‘Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs’ (Mark 7: 28) … seen on the streets in Ballybunion, Co Kerry (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Mark 7: 24-37:

Last Sunday (Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23), we heard how Christ challenges official but non-Biblical traditions about ritual purity and shows how they are irrelevant.

This Sunday, Christ steps out of the area of the ritually pure and into the land of the ritually poor, visiting the Greek-speaking, gentile regions of Tyre, Sidon and the Decapolis, shares the table with, has physical contact with, and brings healing and wholeness to people who are on the margins and outside the boundaries, not only because of their ethnic and religious backgrounds, but because of their gender, their age and their disabilities.

There are two stories in this Gospel reading: one is set in Tyre, and recalls Christ’s meeting with the Greek-speaking Syro-Phoenician woman and the healing of her daughter (Mark 7: 24-30); the second is set in Sidon or in the Decapolis, and recalls the healing of a man who is deaf and hardly able to speak (Mark 7: 31-37).

Part 1, Mark 7: 24-30:

In the first part of this reading, Christ travels to Tyre, a coastal area north of Galilee, and a largely Gentile area. He is seeking some time on his own, away from the demands of the crowds and other people, and he stays in a house that must have been the home of a Jewish family.

The story is also told in Saint Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 15: 21-28), which also tell us that Christ is accompanied by the disciples (Matthew 15: 23), and the woman is described as a Canaanite woman.

In Saint Mark’s Gospel, in the NRSV translation, she is ‘a Gentile, a Syrophoenician origin’ (verse 26). But the original Greek text describes her as ‘a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth’ (ἦν Ἑλληνίς, Συροφοινίκισσα τῷ γένει).

The Clementine Homilies name this woman as Justa and her daughter as Bernice. But, like so many women in the Gospels, they are unnamed.

She is not of Jewish origin, but she is an example of a woman who is a righteous Gentile; Old Testament comparisons include Ruth the Moabite and Achior the Ammonite (Judith), or we might be reminded of the Gentiles healed by Elijah and Elisha (see I Kings 17: 8-16; II Kings 5: 1-14). She seeks healing for her daughter who is possessed by an ‘unclean spirit’ (verse 25) or a ‘demon’ (verse 26); she is at home, lying sick on bed – the phrasing, context and wording makes me wonder whether this girl is suffering from anorexia.

When Christ replies (verse 27), the children he refers to are not her children, but Jewish believers. Jewish writers sometimes referred to Gentiles as ‘dogs.’ Dogs were regarded as unclean (see Revelation 22: 15), but Christ’s intention may have been humorous when he uses this phrase to ask rhetorically whether the woman believes his ministry is principally to Jews, although in this scene both Jews and Gentiles are at or near the table.

If Christ’s retort is meant to be witty, then the woman is also witty in her reply, appearing to ask whether her daughter is a ‘little bitch’ (verse 28): κυνάριον (kinárion) in verse 28 is translated as ‘dog’ in the NRSV, but it is diminutive and could be more accurately rendered as ‘little dog’ … even ‘little bitch’!

This woman might all too easily have interpreted this response as rude if not racist. Instead, she engages with the same humour, showing she has a confident faith. She claims a place for non-Jews in God’s plan, Christ accepts her claim, and her daughter is cured completely.

Part 2, Mark 7: 31-37:

After a circuitous journey through Gentile territory, Christ now heads towards Galilee. Sidon is north of Tyre, half-way between Tyre and Beirut; the Decapolis was a Greek-speaking region that took its name (Δεκάπολις) from 10 cities east of Galilee, Damascus once being counted as the most northerly of these 10 cities.

The description of this journey is difficult to map or track. But Sidon may be a misreading for Saidan, another name for Bethsaida, east of the River Jordan. In either case, the location of this story, once again, is an area where the majority of the people are gentiles.

A man with hearing and speech impediments is brought to Jesus. The story is also told in Saint Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 15: 29-31).

Some rabbinic sources consider a deaf person heresh, similar to being a minor or mentally ill, and therefore not responsible for observing the law. For a strict and observant religious Jew at the time, he was not an appropriate person to have physical contact with – he ought to have been on the margins, on the edges of the people who came in contact with Jesus.

This man is kept on the margins, perhaps outside the town. But this man is brought for healing to Jesus, by his friends or his family.

In the Gospels, Jesus’ healings usually by word alone, as we see in the previous episode in this reading. But in this story, Jesus is asked to lay his hand on him, a form of healing known only in the Qumran literature from the Dead Sea and in the Church.

In healing this man, Christ uses two symbols, one for deafness and one for speech. He puts his fingers in the man’s ear and touches his tongue with spittle. Moved with compassion, Jesus sighs, prays, and the man is healed.

The cure is immediate and again complete, and although Jesus asks those present to tell no one, the good news spreads quickly. ‘He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak’ (verse 37) is a partial citation of a section in Isaiah on Israel’s glorious future:

‘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.
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert.’ (Isaiah 35: 5-16)

The kingdom of God is already breaking in.

A detail from the ‘Sarcophagus of the Crying Women,’ from Sidon, now in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum

A Reflection on the Gospel reading:
‘Pity distracts my aching heart, pity for a mother’s heart’


I am embarrassed at times when I am caught off-guard, caught with my compassion down. So often, I fail to respond to the needs of others, not just in giving, but in being their advocate, in speaking up for them, in being compassionate, in sharing their pain, in seeing who they truly are inside rather than how they appear to be on the outside.

But would any of us like to be seen behaving the way Christ behaves in the first part of our Gospel reading this morning, when he meets the Canaanite or Syro-Phoenician woman in the district of Tyre and Sidon?

On a first reading, the Gospel account of this meeting seems to show us Christ at first rejecting the pleas of a distressed woman, deeply worried about her daughter. One writer suggests that in this story Christ is caught with his compassion down. Even his disciples want to turn her away. They see her as a pest, a nuisance, a pushy woman breaking in to their closed space, their private area.

After a trying and busy time that included the beheading of John the Baptist, the feeding of the 5,000, the calming of the storm, and a major debate with leading Pharisees, Christ and his disciples have arrived in the coastal area of Tyre and Sidon, perhaps looking for a quiet break for a few days.

This is foreign territory, inhabited mainly by Canaanites or Phoenicians. In the Bible, Sidon was the city of Jezebel (I Kings 16: 31), and the area was associated with the Prophet Elijah, who raises the widow’s child from death (I Kings 17: 9-24), and who, in Father Kieran O’Mahony’s words, ‘was markedly, even offensively, open to foreigners.’

These were coastal, cultured cities, Hellenised and Greek-speaking since the days of Alexander the Great, and known for the arts and commerce. Sidon was the first city of the Phoenicians and the mother city of Tyre, known as its ‘Virgin Daughter’ (see Isaiah 23: 12). Mothers and daughters – one of the great archaeological finds from Sidon is the ‘Sarcophagus of the Crying Women,’ now in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum.

So, Christ could expect to find himself among a large number of Greek-speaking ‘gentiles’ in this area. Would the Disciples expect him to behave like Elijah and to break all the rules in being open to them, to take miraculous care of a lone mother and her child?

Or would they expect him to treat all Phoenician women like Jezebel and leave them to the dogs?

In Saint Matthew’s account, the woman who confronts Christ is a Canaanite woman; in Saint Mark’s telling (Mark 7: 24-31), she is a Greek or Syro-Phoenician woman (verse 26). Both mean the same thing, for Canaan in Hebrew and Phoenicia in Greek both mean the Land of Purple.

She was a gentile, a foreigner, a Greek-speaker and a woman.

What right had she to invade their privacy?

Could she not just accept life as it is?

In the classical world, Phoenician women were pushy women. About 400 years earlier, the Greek playwright Euripides wrote his tragic play The Phoenician Women (Φοίνισσαι, Phoenissae), rewriting a story told by Aeschylus in Seven Against Thebes, dealing with tragic events after the fall of Oedipus.

The title of the play, The Phoenician Women, refers to the chorus, composed of Phoenician women on their way to serve in the Temple of Apollo in Delphi but trapped in Thebes by the war. But the Phoenician Women in the chorus – and remember a Greek chorus was normally played by wizened old men – are mere bystanders, watching an unfolding tragedy that disrupts their plans.

The two key women in the play are Iocasta and her daughter Antigone, who have survived against all odds. These two women, mother and daughter, challenge the accepted concepts in the Classical world of fate and free-will. In the face of death, they refuse to accept what others would impose as their destiny; they refuse to be pushed aside, marginalised and dismissed while the men around them compete for power.

So, in the time of Christ, cultured, Greek-speaking people, including those in Tyre and Sidon, expected a Greek-speaking Phoenician woman and her daughter to be pushy when faced with what appeared to be a cruel fate – even if this involved confronting successful or ambitious men: they were prepared to stand up to kings and their retinues, to challenge them, and to risk rejection, exile and even death.

For their part, the disciples, probably, were not open to this cultural dimension, and would have dismissed the woman as a gentile, a stranger, a foreigner, a Greek-speaker and a woman. Her religion, language, nationality and gender place her beyond their compassion.

The NRSV says she bows down at Jesus’ feet. But the original Greek is more direct when it tells us she prostrates herself in homage and worship before him, perhaps touching her forehead to the ground: ἐλθοῦσα προσέπεσεν πρὸς τοὺς πόδας αὐτοῦ, she fell down, or prostrated herself, at his feet (verse 25).

In Saint Matthew’s account, the disciples are like the chorus staged by Euripides: they become wizened old men, obsessed only with their religious future and failing to have compassion for the outsiders who enter their lives, talking in asides at the side of the tragedy, but not actually engaging with it. In Saint Mark’s account, they are not even on the scene.

Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, Folio 164r - The Canaanite Woman (The Musée Condé, Chantilly)

Faced with her daughter’s needs, the woman ignores the disciples: she is direct and aggressive in demanding healing and justice. And in demanding justice and healing for her daughter, she is, of course, demanding the same for herself too.

Her dialogue with Christ must have sounded crude and aggressive to those who overhear the drama, who witness the tragedy. This pushy woman forces herself onto the stage, addresses Christ in Messianic terms, and makes no demands for herself but demands healing for her daughter.

At first, Christ appears to treat her with contempt. At first, in Saint Matthew’s Gospel, he does not even respond to her; instead, he turns away and tells his friends, the chorus, that he is only here for the lost sheep of Israel (verse 24). But she is persistent and – with a touch of melodrama – she throws herself at the feet of Christ.

Christ then describes his fellow Jews as ‘little children,’ and shockingly compares the Gentiles with dogs, little dogs (verse 26). Today, it sounds like he is calling this woman a bitch, and her daughter a little bitch. But there is something even more shocking here: at that time, dogs were regarded as unclean animals. They were kept outside the city gates, and in Saint Luke’s Gospel we see how low the beggar Lazarus has sunk that outside the gates of Dives the dogs lick his sores (Luke 16: 19-31, see especially verse 21).

Despite the title of Don Bluth’s animated movie, All Dogs go to Heaven (1989), it was held at the time of Christ that dogs must be kept outside the city gates, and that they were the only animals excluded with certainty from heaven (see Revelation 22: 15). And the disciples would have thought instantly of that other pushy Phoenician woman, Jezebel, who met her death by being thrown to the dogs in the streets.

All this makes Christ’s words and images deeply offensive, culturally and theologically, unless he is engaging in humorous banter with this woman.

For one moment, try to imagine the body language that accompanies this conversation. Imagine you are trying to stage this Gospel story as drama. You would have Christ talking face-to-face with this pleading, pushy woman. But the disciples are standing behind him, like wizened old men in a Greek chorus, or like the women in the chorus in the Phoenician Women … more distressed by the disruption to their religious careers than they are by the plight of a mother and her daughter and the tragedy that unfolds around them.

The disciples, as a chorus, can see the woman’s facial reactions to Christ … but they cannot see the face of Christ.

By now, he has engaged with this woman face-to-face. So, she now knows it is worth pushing her demands for mercy and help. So, who is Christ expecting a response from? The woman has already shown both her compassion and her faith. The question now is – can the disciples also show proof of their compassion and faith?

The woman not only has compassion and faith, but she also shows humour when, in her response to Christ she engages in banter with him. She tells him that even puppy dogs, when they are away from adult view, play under the table.

Could Christ, when he is away from the view of Jewish crowds, not engage with those he does not sit to table with, but who nevertheless are in his presence, those he had dismissed as dogs?

Christ appreciates this encounter: her insistence on meeting him face-to-face, her refusal to be oppressed on the grounds of ethnicity, history, religion, language or gender, her forthright way of speaking and her subliminal but humorous comparisons are all part of the drama. They all combine to show that she is a woman of faith. The NRSV translation has her address Jesus as ‘Sir,’ which sounds like civility, if not servility, today. But in the original Greek she addresses him in the vocative as Κύριε (Kyrie).

The word Κύριος (kyrios) or ‘Lord’ was a title of honour, respect and reverence, used by servants to greet their master. The word Kyrios appears about 740 times in the New Testament, usually referring to Jesus. The use of kyrios in the New Testament is the subject of debate.

Many scholars, drawing on the Septuagint usage, says the designation is intended to assign to Jesus the Old Testament attributes of God. At the time the Septuagint was translated, Jews when reading aloud Jews pronounced Adonai, the Hebrew word for ‘Lord,’ when they came across the name of God, ‘YHWH,’ and so this was translated into Greek in each instance as kyrios. Early Christians were familiar with the Septuagint.

Saint John’s Gospel seldom uses kyrios to refer to Jesus during his ministry, but uses it after the Resurrection, although the vocative kyrie appears frequently.

Saint Mark never applies the term kyrios as a direct reference to Jesus, unlike Saint Paul, who uses it 163 times. When Saint Mark uses the word kyrios (see Mark 1: 3, 11: 9, 12: 11, &c), he does so in reference to YHWH/God. He also uses the word in places where it is unclear whether it applies to God or Jesus (see Mark 5: 19, 11: 3). In any case, the title kyrios for Jesus is central to the development of New Testament Christology.

The faith the woman shows here now produces results. In Saint Mark’s Gospel, Christ responds to her demands, and she returns home to find her child has been healed (Mark 7: 30). Saint Matthew has Christ go further – he commends her for her faith … and her daughter is healed instantly (verses 29-30).

Nothing is said about the response of the disciples, who are not in Saint Mark’s account, but in Saint Matthew’s account have been trying to push her away, despite her crying, her tears, her distress, her plight over her daughter. Nothing is said about the response of the disciples … perhaps because we are the disciples. How do you and I respond to encounters like this?

As a social response, for example, we might consider that the confrontation is an illustration of how we might respond to the needs of strangers and foreigners. Do we find them pushy and demanding?

How do we respond to the foreign woman who wants the same treatment in hospital for her child as Irish-born children get?

How do we respond when foreigners who are more open and joyful in conversation appear to encroach on our privacy on the bus, on the street, in the shops?

Are we like the Disciples, and want to send them away?

Or are we like Christ, and engage in conversation with them?

Do we think we have some privileges that should not be shared with the outsider and the stranger?

Do we remain silent when they plead for their children but are deported against their will?

How do we respond to people who are pushy and continue to demand care for their children in the face of society’s decision to say no?

The parents who want teaching support for children with learning disabilities? The parents who want to know why children’s hospitals are so badly funded they have to raise funds with charity events while their children wait for treatment?

Or could we say, as the ‘Phoenician Women’ in the Chorus say, after hearing the distress of Iocasta and Antigone: ‘Pity distracts my aching heart, pity for a mother’s heart’?

But this Gospel story also raises questions at a personal, spiritual level too, when it comes to matters of faith.

How many people do you know who give up when they turn to God in prayer and find those who are supposed to represent Christ appear to turn them away?

How many times have I dismissed the needs and prayers of others because they appear to be outside the community of faith as I understand it?

And, at a personal level, how many times have I gone to God in prayer, and given up at what appears to be the first refusal?

This woman is rebuffed, but she is insistent. She refuses to accept what other people regarded as her fate and destiny. She receives the mercy and help she asks for, and because of her faith her daughter is healed, healed instantly.

We do not have to accept misery in our family life, even if others see it as our fate or our destiny. And in simple prayers we may find more in the answer than we ever ask for.

In the small miniature below Jean Colombe’s painting of the story of the Syro-Phoenician woman, the Disciples, gathered like a Greek chorus, can see her but cannot see the body language and facial reaction of Christ

Mark 7: 24-37 (NRSVA):

24 From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, 25 but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. 26 Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27 He said to her, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ 28 But she answered him, ‘Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.’ 29 Then he said to her, ‘For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.’ 30 So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

31 Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. 32 They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. 33He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. 34 Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, ‘Ephphatha’, that is, ‘Be opened.’ 35 And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 36 Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. 37 They were astounded beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.’

Green is the liturgical colour in Ordinary Time (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Liturgical Resources:

Liturgical Colour: Green

The Collect:

Almighty God,
whose only Son has opened for us
a new and living way into your presence:
Give us pure hearts and steadfast wills
to worship you in spirit and in truth,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Collect of the Word:

O God,
whose word is life,
and whose delight is to answer our cry:
give us faith like that of the woman
who refused to remain an outsider,
so that we too may have the wisdom to argue
and demand that our children be made whole,
through Jesus Christ.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Lord God,
the source of truth and love:
Keep us faithful to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship,
united in prayer and the breaking of bread,
and one in joy and simplicity of heart,
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

‘For judgement will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy’ (James 2: 13) … the museum in the old courthouse in Adare, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Suggested Hymns:

Proverbs 22: 1-2, 8-9, 22-23:

494, Beauty for brokenness
523, Help us to help each other, Lord
432, Love is his word, love is his way

Psalm 125:

3, God is love: let heaven adore him
34, O worship the King all-glorious above
595, Safe in the shadow of the Lord

Isaiah 35: 4-7a:

231, My song is love unknown (verses 1, 2, 4, 7)
166, Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
104, O for a thousand tongues to sing
113, There is singing in the desert

Psalm 146:

4, God, who made the earth
125, Hail to the Lord’s anointed
92, How sweet the name of Jesus sounds
357, I’ll praise my maker while I’ve breath
97, Jesus shall reign where’er the sun
99, Jesus, the name high over all
535, Judge eternal, throned in splendour
363, O Lord of heaven and earth and sea
708, O praise ye the Lord! Praise him in the height
712, Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord
8, The Lord is King! Lift up your voice
376, Ye holy angels bright

James 2: 1-10 (11-13), 14-17:

494, Beauty for brokenness
402, Before I take the body of my Lord
317, Father all–loving, you rule us in majesty
39, For the fruits of his creation
352, Give thanks with a grateful heart
649, Happy are they, they that love God
495, Jesu, Jesu, fill us with your love
44, Praise and thanksgiving
527, Son of God, eternal Saviour
497, The Church of Christ in every age

Mark 7: 24-37:

65, At evening when the sun had set
511, Father of mercy, God of consolation
512, From you all skill and science flow
614, Great Shepherd of your people, hear
211, Immortal love for ever full
513, O Christ, the healer, we have come
104, O for a thousand tongues to sing
514, We cannot measure how you heal

Christ in conversation with the Syro-Phoenician woman … a modern icon

Climate Sunday

On Sunday 5 September 2021, churches from across Ireland and Britain are coming together online and in Glasgow Cathedral to celebrate, challenge and commit ahead of COP26 in an event organised by Climate Sunday, part of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland.

The service will be broadcast live from Glasgow Cathedral - at the heart of the city where the UN climate talks will take place in November – with contributions from Christians around the nations.

More than 1,600 churches across Ireland and Britain have registered their Climate Sunday services. It is an amazing testimony to churches’ desire to show love for God and neighbour by caring for creation and acting on climate change.

Has your church held a Climate Sunday?

Why not gather together to watch the Nations’ Climate Sunday Service, and see how your commitment is part of the bigger picture?

Find out more and register for details of how to join online HERE

The video produced by the Church of Ireland in preparation for Climate Sunday is available HERE



Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

The hymn suggestions are provided in Sing to the Word (2000), edited by Bishop Edward Darling. The hymn numbers refer to the Church of Ireland’s Church Hymnal (5th edition, Oxford: OUP, 2000)

Material from the Book of Common Prayer is copyright © 2004, Representative Body of the Church of Ireland.

‘The tongue of the speechless [shall] sing for joy’ (Isaiah 35: 6) … ‘O for a thousand tongues to sing’ (Hymn 104) … street art at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Monday 23 August 2021

Readings, hymns and
sermon ideas for
Sunday 29 August 2021,
Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity

Classical masks on sale near the Acropolis in Athens … the word ‘hypocrite’ comes from the Greek word for an actor who masked or hid his face (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Next Sunday [29 August 2021] is the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity (Proper 17B). The readings in the Revised Common Lectionary, as adapted for use in the Church of Ireland, are:

The Continuous Readings: Song of Solomon 2: 8-13; Psalm 45: 1-2, 6-9; James 1: 17-27; Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23.

The Paired Readings: Deuteronomy 4: 1-2, 6-9; Psalm 15; James 1: 17-27; Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23.

There is a link to the continuous readings HERE.

A T-shirt on sale in the Plaka in Athens … as Christians, we are challenged to bring together our needs ‘to be’ and ‘to do’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Introduction:

The Season of Creation beings on 1 September and continues until 4 October. The first reading next Sunday in the continuous readings reading gives a unique opportunity, with a rare reading from the Song of Solomon, to prepare for reflections on the beauty of creation and to link this to the love of God.

On Sunday next, we also begin a series of readings from the Letter of Saint James, and, after a long set of readings from the ‘Bread of Life’ discourse in Saint John’s Gospel, the Gospel reading returns to Saint Mark’s Gospel, which is the thematic Gospel reading for Year B in the Lectionary.

The Epistle and Gospel readings challenge us to think about the meaning of true religion, and how we should act and respond to it.

Some years, I bought a T-shirt in Athens that I had long admired. It says:

To do is to be – Socrates
To be is to do – Plato
Do be do be do – Sinatra


Our reading from the Letter of Saint James next Sunday challenges us to reflect not on being ‘doers’ of religion. He reminds us that it is not just enough to think about religion, we must also put into practice.

Our reading from Saint Mark’s Gospel challenges us to think how it is not just what we do, but the real values behind what we do, that matters.

To say one thing but to be a very different person in life is at the very heart of the meaning of the word hypocrite, a word with its roots in Greek drama and a word that is used strongly by Christ in this Gospel reading. As Christians, we are challenged to bring together our needs ‘to be’ and ‘to do.’

‘Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone’ (Song of Solomon 2: 10-11) (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Song of Solomon 2: 8-13:

The Song of Solomon is usually regarded in one of two ways: either it is an allegory about God’s love, or it is erotic poetry about human love. It is, of course, the only really sex-positive text in the Bible.

But to approach it with an either/or approach undervalues the complexity of the poetry in this book. Indeed, the Song of Solomon is not so much a book as a collection of love songs; dialogues between a man (identified as a shepherd in 1: 7, and as a king in 1: 4 and 12) and a woman.

Jewish tradition has seen these songs as having another level of meaning: the love between God and his people; the man and woman are then the Lord and Israel. Christians have also allegorised this as the mutual love between Christ and the Church. However, the basic meaning is literal: love, including sexual love based on human instincts, is blessed, a part of God’s creation, to be valued and enjoyed.

The Song of Songs is the Hebrew title, while the name ‘Song of Solomon’ derives from the superscription, ‘The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s.’ The latter suggests that the Song was associated with Solomon, or perhaps part of a larger collection of materials gathered under Solomon’s name. It does not mean Solomon wrote it.

Perhaps calling the book ‘The Song of Solomon’ may help to perpetuate the problem of rendering women invisible in the biblical texts. Yet this book is a very woman-centred text, and women’s voices predominate.

The entire lectionary text next Sunday, for example, is cast in the voice of the woman. When the male lover speaks, it is reported to us in the woman’s words, ‘My beloved speaks and says to me…’ In this way, the woman’s voice is the centre of the poem’s action and meaning.

This point could be emphasised next Sunday, given the continuing debate about the place of women in the Church and the Churches, and the continuing struggle of women to have their voices heard in society.

In Sunday’s reading, the woman or the bride speaks first. She sees and hears her beloved approaching, coming powerfully, swiftly and gracefully, like a gazelle, until he reaches ‘our wall,’ the enclosure where we find the ‘daughters of Jerusalem’ – a title used by Jesus for the weeping women he meets while carrying his cross to Mount Calvary and his Crucifixion.

The ‘Daughters of Jerusalem’ are mentioned several times in the Song of Solomon (see 1: 5, 2: 7, 3: 10-11, 5: 8, 5: 16). For example: ‘O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, tell him this: I am faint with love’ (Song of Solomon 5: 8). As the muse of the Beloved, the Daughters of Jerusalem help her choose rightly between the flashy wealth of the king and the ardent true love of the Shepherd.

When he arrives, the beloved peers into the enclosure and speaks to the woman (verses 10-13), addressing her as his love, or, as in some translations, his darling (NIV, NASB).

It is Spring; he celebrates creation and nature. He invites her to come away with him (2: 13) with him, as can be deduced from the sexual symbols in the book, to enjoy sexual intercourse.

Later, the bridegroom beseeches her, as ‘my dove’ (verse 14), to let him see her and to hear her voice. She responds that she is not as inaccessible as he thinks (verse 15). In verses 16-17, she invites him to be with her ‘on the cleft mountains.’

When Christ meets the weeping women of Jerusalem along the Via Dolorosa, on his way to Mount Calvary, and calls them the Daughters of Jerusalem (Luke 23: 26), we should expect the scene to be filled with the love of God, we should expect these women to realise they have met their shepherd and their king.

‘What other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today?’ (Deuteronomy 4: 8) … Moses holding the Ten Commandments at the courts in Perpignan (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Deuteronomy 4: 1-2, 6-9:

The paired first reading is directly linked to Christ’s sayings in the Gospel reading, and his warnings against ‘teaching human precepts as doctrines’ (Mark 7: 7). People are warned not only to observe the law, but also not to add to it with their own rules and regulations as through they were God-given.

The reason they are asked to keep the commands of the Lord, and to hand them on to the generations that follow is so that they will show their ‘wisdom and understanding to the nations,’ so that other people understand who God is, and so that the people themselves remember the great things God has done for them.

‘My tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe’ … old letters in a collection of family papers (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Psalm 45: 1-2, 7-10:

The psalmist is a court scribe and a skilled writer – ‘a ready scribe’ – who feels inspired to write an ode for a royal wedding.

God has made the king greater than the kings of other nations. His robes are perfumed with fragrance – with myrrh, aloes and cassia. Stringed instruments play music in his palace, which is richly decorated with ivory.

The ladies of the court include the daughters of kings. The bride’s dress is ornamented with gold from Arabia or east Africa. She is a foreigner, but she is to forget her people, to please and honour the king, her master. The rich seek her favour with expensive gifts.

‘Who may dwell on your holy hill?’ (Psalm 15: 1) … the cathedral ruins on the top of the Rock of Cashel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Psalm 15:

Psalm 15 was probably used in a liturgy of admission to the Temple. A pilgrim to Jerusalem asks God: who may come to Mount Zion, the holy hill, to worship in the Temple, ‘your tent’? Who is acceptable in God’s presence?

The answer is the then provided by a priest in the Temple in verses 2-5a. He answers that those who are acceptable in the presence of God are:

● those who ‘walk blamelessly’ or are ethical their words and deeds;
● those who do not wrong friends or neighbours by what they say and do (verse 3);
● those who despise evil-doers and honour those who hold God in awe (verse 4);
● those who charge no interest on loans to the needy and who accept no bribes (verse 5).

People such as these forever find themselves in the presence of God.

A statue of Saint James the Less on the west façade of Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

James 1: 17-27:

For the next five Sundays (until 26 September, the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity, Trinity XVII), the Lectionary readings take us through the Letter of Saint James, one of the 21 epistles in the New Testament.

The author of this epistle identifies himself as ‘James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,’ who is writing to ‘the twelve tribes in the Dispersion’ (James 1: 1), or the 12 tribes in the Diaspora or ‘scattered abroad.’ This epistle is traditionally attributed to James the brother of Jesus. He is not numbered among the Twelve, unless he is identified as James the Less. James is, nonetheless, an important figure, and is described elsewhere as ‘the brother of the Lord’ (see Matthew 13: 55; Mark 6: 3; Acts 12: 17, 15: 13-21; Galatians 1: 19).

From the middle of the third century, patristic writers said this Epistle was written by James, the brother of Jesus and a leader of the Church in Jerusalem.

Within the New Testament canon, the Epistle of James is unusual in that it makes no reference to the death, resurrection, or divine sonship of Jesus. It refers to him twice, as ‘the Lord Jesus Christ’ and as ‘our glorious Lord Jesus Christ’ (1: 1, 2: 1). The intended readers are believed to be Jewish Christians who were dispersed beyond Palestine, perhaps still worshipping in synagogue communities in the Diaspora.

The epistle is written in excellent Greek, but is often compared to the style of the Wisdom literature in the Old Testament (which includes the Song of Solomon), and has been compared also with moral sermons in the Talmud and rabbinic literature. It is framed within an overall theme of patient perseverance during trials and temptations.

James writes to encourage believers to live consistently with what they have learned in Christ. He wants his readers to mature in their faith in Christ by living what they say they believe. He condemns various sins, including pride, hypocrisy, favouritism and slander. He encourages believers to humbly live by godly rather than worldly wisdom and to pray in all situations.

At the Reformation, many reformers, most notably Martin Luther, argued that this epistle should not be part of the canonical New Testament. Luther famously dismissed it, saying, ‘Saint James’ Epistle is really an epistle of straw, for it has nothing of the nature of the Gospel about it.’

In some places, Luther argues that it was not written by an apostle, while in others he describes James as the work of an apostle, and even cites it as authoritative teaching from God.

This passage, rather than dealing with one single argument, contains at least three arguments, one of which begins far earlier than 1:17. Each of these arguments in James 1 introduces later portions of the letter. James 1 serves both as a precursor to the rest of the letter, and as a succinct exposition of what James calls ‘pure and undefiled religion.’

Saint James begins by contrasting children of desire with children of God (James 1: 12-18) an argument that ends in 1: 17-18, the first two verses of Sunday’s reading. This theme will recur at the end of James 3, and through most of James 4. Following this, he contrasts human sharp-tongued hot-headedness with God’s justice (James 1:19-21, 26), the focus of most of James 3. Finally, he differentiates between those who hear and those who do God’s word (James 1: 22-25), the primary subject of James 2.

In this reading, Saint James argues that the very act of giving (verse 17) is what matters, not the size of the gift. God, ‘the Father of lights,’ gives the ‘perfect gift.’ But God’s love and goodness to us are never diminished. He created according to his own intent. He now gives us the new creation, Baptism or birth into the Gospel or word of truth, his saving revelation fully expressed in Christ.

This is so that we may be forerunners or the first fruits of all humans in offering ourselves to God. So, we must cast aside worldliness, and welcome the faith received at Baptism, a faith that can save you from the evil in the world.

The word is not just to be heard but also to be done: Baptism makes ethical demands on us. To be a hearer but not a doer is like looking in a mirror: it reveals blemishes; the hearer sees them, and then ignores or forgets them, doing nothing to correct the deficiencies. But those who look into and persevere with the Gospel, the perfect law, the law of liberty, are doers, and are blessed for following God’s ways.

The writer describes three characteristics of ‘doers’: they are quick to listen, so do not deceive themselves; they are slow to speak and they are slow to anger.

The final verses in this reading (James 1: 26-27) encapsulates the spirit of the entire chapter, by pointing out the primary characteristics of ‘true religion.’ When it comes to people whose religion is all talk and no action, ‘their religion is worthless.’ Pure religion guards its speech and acts out its faith by caring for the marginalised in society, represented here in the practical example of ‘widows and orphans.’

Religion must include caring actively for others, and he offers practical examples of how to live out the Christian life, such as caring for orphans and widows.

Classical masks from the theatre in Athens on display in the Acropolis Museum … the word ‘hypocrite’ comes from the Greek word for an actor who masked or hid his face (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23:

After a series of readings from the Bread of Life discourse in Saint John’s Gospel, we now return to Saint mark’s Gospel, which provides the principal Gospel readings through Year B.

Saint Mark has told us that Christ has gained an audience among the common people, who have sought sustenance and have responded to his compassion in healing.

Now we hear of his opposition to the legalism and pickiness of the Pharisees. They are from Jerusalem, so represent official Judaism. Mark’s note (verses 3-4), written for Gentile readers, explains that the Pharisees consider the ‘tradition of the elders’ to be binding, as are the laws of Moses.

At first the laws of ritual purity applied only to priests. The Pharisees wished to extend these laws to all Jews at first not because they had hang-ups about how and when people could eat, but because they wanted to show that all people are priestly and holy. The original intention was broad and embracing, and not narrow and controlling in its intent. Which approach do you think Jesus would identify with?

But rather than answer the question or becoming entangled in the detail of the argument (verse 5), Jesus calls these particular Pharisees hypocrites.

In Greek, the word, ὑποκριτής (hypokrités) was used for an actor who masked or hid his face. The word ὑποκρίνομαι (hypokrínomai) means ‘to play a part on stage,’ and the word ῠ̔ποκρῐτής (hypokrités) meaning one who answers, an interpreter, an expounder or a stage actor, eventually came to mean figuratively a pretender, dissembler, or a hypocrite.

Christ quotes Isaiah 29: 13 when he says their religion is empty. They ‘hold to human tradition’ (verse 8) rather than the Law.

Then in verses 14-15, Christ says that what you eat, what is ‘going in,’ is immaterial, but what comes out does matter: it is from the very being of a person that ‘evil intentions’ (verse 21) and actions come. The heart was seen as the source of the will and not just of emotions.

Have you noticed how the lectionary editing of the text delicately skips over Jesus’ graphic statement in verse 19 that what enters into the belly passes out into the sewer?

In the Gospels, it seems Christ saves his sharpest words, his most pointed criticism, for the most religious. It is not the tax collectors and notorious sinners who are reproached by him, but the Pharisees and scribes, the experts in God’s law, the high achievers in religious piety.

In Sunday’s Gospel reading, Christ calls them hypocrites and says they abandon the commandment of God for the sake of human tradition.

We have been taught to view the Pharisees and scribes as self-righteous hypocrites and to distance ourselves from them, and passages like this one tend to reinforce that perception. But it may be important on Sunday to debunk the popular misconception that the Pharisees and scribes thought they were earning salvation by their obedience to the law.

I have heard many irresponsible caricatures about the Pharisees from pulpits, and many more of them may be drheard from pulpits next Sunday.

In fact, the Pharisees understood that God’s choosing and calling of Israel as a gift. They also understood that God gave them the law as a gift, to order their lives as God’s people. Their observance of the law was meant to be a witness to the nations around them, to give glory to God.

The Pharisees took seriously the call to be a priestly kingdom and holy nation (see Exodus 19: 6), and so saw the laws concerning priests serving in the temple as applying to all God’s people in all aspects of life. As priests serving in the temple were required to wash their hands before entering the holy place or offering a sacrifice, the Pharisees believed that all people should wash their hands before meals as a way of making mealtime sacred, bringing every aspect of life under the canopy of God’s law.

These ‘traditions of the elders’ were seen as a way to ‘build a fence around the law,’ to preserve the Jewish faith and way of life, especially under Roman occupation. When the Pharisees and scribes when see the disciples eating without washing their hands, they see this as something more serious than proper hygiene. They suspect that the carelessness about the traditions threaten to undermine respect for God’s law.

These are legitimate concerns. Why, then, do they receive such a harsh response from Jesus? There is a clue in the verses Christ quotes from Isaiah: ‘This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines’ (verses 6-7).

He sees the problem with the Pharisees and scribes is that they have become so focused on the externals of faithfulness that they neglect to examine their own hearts. Their efforts to live faithfully were putting up walls of alienation instead of drawing them closer to God and to their neighbours. The rituals they observed created a spiritual hierarchy between the clean and the unclean. Instead of expressing the holiness of God, ritual purity became a means of excluding people who are considered dirty or contaminated.

‘It’s better to sin by love than by strictness’ … Father Tikhon Murtazov

Some closing reflections:

An important question to ask after reading Sunday’s Gospel might be: who do we consider the dirty or unclean today? Who do we keep at a safe distance?

Perhaps we have more in common with the Scribes and Pharisees than we think.

Like the Pharisees, perhaps we think that being called by God is a gift. In response to God’s grace, we want to live in the ways God would want us to live, and we try to discern what that means in the concrete circumstances of our daily lives. But in attempting to live faithfully, there is always the temptation to judge those who do not live in the same way and to set ourselves above others.

Christ tells us to beware when piety gets in the way of fulfilling the heart of the law: loving God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and loving your neighbour as yourself. He warns us to beware when our piety separates us from others, for then it is also separating us from God.

Jewish chaplaincies on college campuses in the US are called ‘Hillel House’ after the most famous Pharisee – apart from Saint Paul, who constantly calls himself a Pharisee.

All branches of modern Judaism derive from the tradition of the Pharisees. The recipients of the Letter of James, who are worshipping in synagogues in the Diaspora, must have still been comfortable in identifying with the tradition of the Pharisees. So, when we use the word Pharisee as a synonym for hypocrite or speak of Pharisees practising a religion of empty ceremonies and heartless enforcement of rules, we are insulting today’s Jews and Judaism, and we know the consequences of continuing with threads like this. Such rhetoric is not only insulting, but also profoundly misleading.

In Jesus’ day, Pharisees did not hold to a religion that said that God was more distant or less loving or merciful than the God we proclaim. Indeed, the Pharisees taught that God is ‘merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,’ and ‘forgiving iniquity and sin.’ Neither did the Pharisees teach that God is distant or that human beings cannot have an intimate relationship.

Indeed, the Pharisees, unlike the Sadducees, taught that God could be present in anyone’s kitchen, workplace, and bedroom as God is present in the Temple. Nor did they confine God’s love to Jews or suggest that one had to be born Jewish to know or follow God.

Jesus criticises Pharisees, but even when he is doing so harshly, he acknowledges their zeal in evangelism, in letting Gentiles everywhere know that the God of Israel would receive them gladly (see Matthew 23: 15). They too were the people who lobbied longest and hardest for prophetic books such Isaiah to be counted as scripture.

Christ criticises particular Pharisees because in so many ways their thinking is so close to his thinking. His quarrel with the Pharisees is like a quarrel between brothers.

The disagreement is about what it is that makes a place holy, and what it is that constitutes purity. It is not that purity does not matter, for we all have our own private and family views about domestic ritual and purity. For example, we all grew up being taught not to eat or leave the bathroom without washing our hands, and we know it is unacceptable to prepare food outside the kitchen.

It is said, half-jokingly but whole in earnest, that one of the greatest causes of domestic arguments in the kitchen is the way we stack the dishwasher … should knives be put in the basket blade up or handle up? Which is more important … how easy it is to take them out afterwards, or which way do they get the best rinse?

We have an another illustration of ritual purity at the table and the needs of people in the Gospel reading the following Sunday (Mark 7: 24-37, Sunday 5 September 2021, Trinity XIV), when the Syrophoenician woman begs Jesus to heal her daughter and reminds him, ‘Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs’ (Mark 7: 28).

In Sunday’s Gospel reading, Christ does not say that purity does not matter. But he redefines purity in terms of ‘what comes out of a person,’ the qualities we demonstrate in relationships.

Father Tikhon (Murtazov), who died some years ago [9 June 2018], was a much-loved Russian spiritual guide. Sister Olga Schemanun, a nun of Snetogorsk Monastery, recalled how Father Tikhon welcomed everyone who came to visit him and who asked for his guidance and prayers.

Amazed at his kindness, she asked him one day: ‘Why don’t you refuse anyone? You bless whatever they ask of you.’

‘We’re in difficult times now,’ he said. ‘It’s better to sin by love than by strictness.’

We should worry as much about making careless wounding remarks as much as we would worry about preparing food unhygienically.

Can you imagine how much more positively people at large would view the churches if every parish and church put as much care into seeing that our children are not abused or infected with racism or discrimination or hate as much as we put care into seeing that the cups are clean for the tea and coffee after church on Sunday morning, or even as much as we attend to the cleanliness of the sacred vessels used for the Eucharist or Holy Communion?

How we stack the dishwasher can be a domestic ritual of cleanliness … and the cause of many domestic arguments (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23 (NRSVA):

1 Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, 2 they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. 3 (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; 4 and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) 5 So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?’ 6 He said to them, ‘Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,

“This people honours me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
7 in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.”

8 You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.’

14 Then he called the crowd again and said to them, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand: 15 there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.’

21 For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, 22 adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.’

‘There are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles’ (Mark 7: 4) … pots and pans in the kitchen in Bryce House on Garinish Island, Glengarriff, Co Cork (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Liturgical Resources:

Liturgical Colour: Green (Ordinary Time, Year B).

The Collect:

Almighty God, who called your Church to bear witness
that you were in Christ reconciling the world to yourself:
Help us to proclaim the good news of your love,
that all who hear it may be drawn to you;
through him who was lifted up on the cross,
and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Collect of the Word:

Cleanse our consciences, O Lord,
and enlighten our hearts
through the daily presence of your Son Jesus Christ,
that when he comes in glory to be our judge
we may be found undefiled and acceptable in his sight;
who lives and reigns with you
and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post-Communion Prayer:

God our creator,
you feed your children with the true manna,
the living bread from heaven.
Let this holy food sustain us through our earthly pilgrimage
until we come to that place
where hunger and thirst are no more;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

‘Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?’ (Mark 7: 5) (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Suggested Hymns:

Song of Solomon 2: 8-13:

262, Come, ye faithful, raise the strain

Psalm 45: 1-2, 6-9:

88, Fairest Lord Jesus
125, Hail to the Lord’s anointed
597, Take my life, and let it be
73, The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended

Deuteronomy 4: 1-2, 6-9:

8, The Lord is King! Lift up your voice

Psalm 15:

631, God, be in my head

James 1: 17-27:

62, Abide with me, fast falls the eventide
63, All praise to thee, my God, this night
25, All things bright and beautiful
494, Beauty for brokenness
566, Fight the good fight with all thy might
350, For the beauty of the earth
512, From you all skill and science flow
80, Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father
382, Help us, O Lord, to learn
6, Immortal, invisible, God only wise
362, O God, beyond all praising
363, O Lord of heaven and earth and sea
601, Teach me my God and King
47, We plough the fields and scatter
374, When all thy mercies, O my God
499, When I needed a neighbour, were you there?

Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23:

630, Blessed are the pure in heart
131, Lift up your heads, you mighty gates
75, Lord, dismiss us with your blessing

‘Why do your disciples … eat with defiled hands?’ (Mark 7: 5) … preparing to eat lunch at a restaurant in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

The hymn suggestions are provided in Sing to the Word (2000), edited by Bishop Edward Darling. The hymn numbers refer to the Church of Ireland’s Church Hymnal (5th edition, Oxford: OUP, 2000)

Material from the Book of Common Prayer is copyright © 2004, Representative Body of the Church of Ireland.

‘There are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles’ (Mark 7: 4) … cups in the Avoca Café in Citywest, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Tuesday 17 August 2021

Readings, hymns and
sermon ideas for
24 August 2021,
Saint Bartholomew

Saint Bartholomew depicted in an icon in Saint Columba’s retreat house in Woking, Surrey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Next Tuesday, 24 August 2021, is the feast of Saint Bartholomew.

The readings in the Revised Common Lectionary, as adapted for use in the Church of Ireland, are:

The Readings: Isaiah 43: 8-13; Psalm 145: 1-7; Acts 5: 12-16; Luke 22: 24-30.

There is a hyperlink to each of the readings cited.

The calling of Saint Nathanael, also identified with Saint Bartholomew … a window in Saint Bartholomew’s Church, Ballsbridge, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Saint Bartholomew is one of the 12 Disciples in the Gospels. Eastern Christianity honours him on 11 June 11 and the Western traditions remember him on 24 August.

The name Bartholomew is derived from the Greek Bartholomaios (Βαρθολομαῖος), which, in turn, comes from the Aramaic and Hebrew בר-תולמי‎ (bar-Tolmay), ‘Son of Talmai’, ‘Son of Farmer’ or ‘Son of the Furrows.’

Saint Bartholomew is listed among the 12 Disciples in the three synoptic gospels: Matthew 10: 1–4; Mark 3: 13-19 and Luke 6: 12-16. He is also one of the witnesses of the Ascension (see Acts 1:4, 12, 13). On each occasion, he is named in the company of Philip.

However, he is not mentioned by the name ‘Bartholomew’ in Saint John’s Gospel. Tradition identifies with Saint Bartholomew with Nathanael or Nathaniel, who is named only in Saint John’s Gospel, where he is introduced to Jesus by Saint Philip (see John 1: 43-51). Many modern commentators reject this identification.

Although he seems initially a somewhat cynical man, he recognises Jesus for who he is and proclaims him as the Son of God.

In his Ecclesiastical History (5:10), Eusebius of Caesarea says that after the Ascension, Bartholomew went on a missionary tour to India, where he left behind a copy of Saint Matthew’s Gospel. Other traditions say he was a missionary in Ethiopia, Mesopotamia, Parthia and Lycaonia, or that he preached the Gospel in India and then went to Greater Armenia.

Both Saint Bartholomew and his fellow apostle Jude or Thaddeus are considered the patron saints of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Popular legend says Saint Bartholomew was martyred for having converted Polymius, King of Armenia, to Christianity. The king’s brother, Prince Astyages, was enraged by the monarch’s conversion. Fearing a Roman backlash, he ordered Bartholomew’s torture and execution.

Saint Bartholomew’s Monastery was a prominent Armenian monastery, built in the 13th century on the supposed site of his martyrdom in Vaspurakan, Greater Armenia, now in south-east Turkey.

In art, Saint Bartholomew is commonly depicted with a beard and curly hair at the time of his martyrdom. According to legends, he was skinned alive and beheaded so is often depicted holding his flayed skin or the curved flensing knife with which he was skinned.

Because of the form of his traditional martyrdom, Saint Bartholomew became the patron saint of leather makers.

The Basilica of San Bartolomeo all'Isola in Rome was founded on the temple of Asclepius, an important Roman medical centre. This association with medicine linked Saint Bartholomew with medicine and hospitals. Some of his relics were said to be held in Frankfurt Cathedral and Canterbury Cathedral.

Saint Bartholomew is the patron saint of tanners, plasterers, tailors, leatherworkers, bookbinders, farmers, housepainters, butchers and glove makers. In Tuscany, he also came to be associated with salt, oil and cheese merchants. His feast day in August was a traditional occasion for markets and fairs, such as the Bartholomew Fair, held in Smithfield, London, from the Middle Ages.

The Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre in 1572 was a targeted group of assassinations and a wave of Catholic mob violence, directed against the Huguenots during the French Wars of Religion. Tradition says it was instigated by Queen Catherine de' Medici, the mother of King Charles IX. The massacre took place a few days after the wedding on 18 August of the king’s sister Margaret to the Protestant Henry of Navarre, the future Henry IV of France.

The massacre began on the night of 23-24 August 1572, two days after the attempted assassination of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, the military and political leader of the Huguenots. The massacre lasted for several weeks, and the estimates for the number of dead across France vary widely, from 5,000 to 30,000. The Huguenot movement lost many of its prominent aristocratic leaders, and many Huguenots were forcibly converted.

Saint Bartholomew is not a particularly happy apostle to have to preach about, and it is difficult to find appropriate illustrations for a sermon about a saint who was martyred by being skinned to death, or who is day is associated with a sectarian massacre. The symbol used for him in Saint Bartholomew’s Church in Wednesbury in the Diocese of Lichfield is three flaying knives, and there is a gruesome, skeletal statue of him in the Duomo in Milan, holding his own skin.

But is good to be reminded that we are part of the Communion of Saints – not just one part of it, but part of the whole Communion of Saints, heirs to the full apostolic legacy of the Church.

The readings for this day tell us in different ways how the Church and the Communion of Saints are one.

In the reading from the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 5: 12-16), it may appear first of all to be yet another miracle story. But it is also a story about the Communion of Saints: ‘Yet more than ever believers were added to the Lord, great numbers of both men and women’ (Acts 5: 14). In life and in death, the Communion of Saints are bound together in faith, love and hope, and this bond is never broken.

If you were to pick your own modern saints, the saints who had influenced you in your faith journey, modern exemplars of Christian faith and discipleship, who would you name?

The glass panels in Saint Bartholomew’s Church, Dromcollogher, Co Limerick, depict scenes from the life of Saint Bartholomew, including the calling of Saint Nathaniel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 22: 24-30 (NRSVA):

24 A dispute also arose among them as to which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest. 25 But he said to them, ‘The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. 26 But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. 27 For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.

28 ‘You are those who have stood by me in my trials; 29 and I confer on you, just as my Father has conferred on me, a kingdom, 30 so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.’

A 17th century poem by Daibhi O Bruadair (1625-1698) celebrating the life of Saint Bartholomew … windows by Kevin Kelly and the Abbey Stained Glass Studios in Saint Bartholomew’s Church, Dromcollogher (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Liturgical resources:

Liturgical colour: Red

Penitential Kyries:

Lord, you are gracious and compassionate.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

You are loving to all,
and your mercy is over all your creation.
Christ, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

Your faithful servants bless your name,
and speak of the glory of your kingdom.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

The Collect of the Day:

Almighty and everlasting God,
who gave to your apostle Bartholomew
grace truly to believe and to preach your word:
Grant that your Church may love that word which he believed
and may faithfully preach and receive the same;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Introduction to the Peace:

We are fellow citizens with the saints
and the household of God,
through Christ our Lord,
who came and preached peace to those who were far off
and those who were near (Ephesians 2: 19, 17).

The Preface:

In the saints
you have given us an example of godly living,
that rejoicing in their fellowship,
we may run with perseverance the race that is set before us,
and with them receive the unfading crown of glory …

Post Communion Prayer:

God of our salvation,
you have fed us at the table of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
Lead us in his way of service,
that your kingdom may be known on earth,
your saving power among all nations.
Grant this for his name’s sake.

Blessing:

God give you grace
to share the inheritance of Saint Bartholomew and all his saints in glory …

Inside Saint Batholomew’s Church, Ballsbridge, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Suggested Hymns:

Isaiah 43: 8-13:

122, Drop down, ye heavens, from above
321, Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty
557, Rock of ages, cleft for me
323, The God of Abraham praise

Psalm 145: 1-7:

24, All creatures of our God and King
349, Fill thou my life, O Lord my God
697, Great and wonderful your deeds
80, Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father
358, King of glory, King of peace
360, Let all the world in every corner sing
655, Loving Shepherd of your sheep
601, Teach me, my God and King

Acts 5: 12-16:

511, Father of mercy, God of consolation
697, Great and wonderful your deeds
513, O Christ, the Healer, we have come

Luke 22: 24-30:

259, Christ triumphant, ever reigning
219, From heav’n you came, helpless babe
417, He gave his life in selfless love
418, Here, O my Lord, I see thee face to face
228, Meekness and majesty
531, Where love and loving-kindness dwell

Also suitable:

459, For all the saints, who from their labours rest
461, For all thy saints, O Lord
471, Rejoice in God’s saints, today and all days!
527, Son of God, etrnal Saviour

A scene from the life of Saint Bartholomew or Saint Nathaniel in the windows in Saint Bartholomew’s Church, Dromcollogher, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

The hymn suggestions are provided in Sing to the Word (2000), edited by Bishop Edward Darling. The hymn numbers refer to the Church of Ireland’s Church Hymnal (5th edition, Oxford: OUP, 2000)

Material from the Book of Common Prayer is copyright © 2004, Representative Body of the Church of Ireland.

Saint Bartholomew’s Church in Farewell, north of Lichfield, dates back to a small Benedictine nunnery founded ca 1140 … it was a stopping point on the pilgrim route between Lichfield Cathedral and Chester Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)