The PCUSA website is up. And the reading today is about bending the brief for mercy. Hence a second lectionary post in one day.
And to explain that, I need to unpack a bit. One of the things that we teach trainees is how to set up services and manage them. The first question — in any task like this — from talking to a school that is grieving to setting up an early intervention service — is what is my brief?. What am I called to do? What is my mission?
Jesus’ mission was to Israel. It was not to the gentiles: Paul is the apostle for them as Peter was for the Jews, but Jesus did not refuse to work with those who were in need.
21Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. 22Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” 23But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” 24He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 25But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” 26He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” 27She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” 28Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.
A quick update on the Typhoon, from today’s paper: there is a large expatriate community and they will be worried about their relatives back home, so think o fthem, and pray for theM.
Dunedin’s Philippine community has mobilised in support of its battered homeland.
An appeal fund and missing person information service has been set up by the Dunedin Philippine Club in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan cutting a deadly swathe through the country on Friday.
”So many people have been affected,” club president Marilou Scott said yesterday.
”Quite a few Dunedin people have family and friends in affected areas, where all the electricity is down and there are no telephones. It’s so worrying,” Mrs Scott said.
”We have started a typhoon appeal and there has been money trickling in since it happened. We want to extend our help first to members in Dunedin whose families have been affected.
”We’re also helping if anyone is looking for relatives. It can be very difficult to get hold of relatives in the Philippines, so people have been travelling from non-affected areas to check up on people.”
An estimated 4.5 million people in 36 provinces in the nation of 96 million people are reported to have been affected by Typhoon Haiyan.
”We’re very resilient people and we’ll just dust ourselves off and get back up again,” Mrs Scott said.
The Leyte capital of Tacloban and its 220,000 population bore the brunt when Typhoon Haiyan hit the eastern coast on Friday, with settlements up to a kilometre inland being devastated and fears of more than 10,000 deaths.
”Tacloban is a dead city,” Alicia Howden said yesterday.
The South Island was home to many Philippines expatriates, Christchurch Migrants Centre manager Rex Gibson said.
”There is a large Filipino community in the South Island. There are a lot working in the dairy industry, nursing and in rest-homes.”
DairyNZ people team leader Jane Muir said from Hamilton yesterday it was important for employers to recognise and respond to the fact that Filipino people worldwide were hurting.
For we can estimate the quality of our community by the care of those who do not fit into anybodies brief, into no person’s mission, the foreigner, the stranger, the person on the margins.