Who we are
Mission Statement: St. Mark's is a welcoming, caring, affirming and inclusive community. We come together to worship Jesus Christ whose loving example and teachings call us to love God and our neighbors without exception and to serve our communities wherever there is need.
We are a diverse and active parish, located in the heart of downtown Mt. Kisco, drawing our congregation from across Northern Westchester. We invite you to learn more about us here and we hope that you will visit us in person as well.
We seek to serve all persons who may have unanswered spiritual needs; religious questions; major life events; a hunger for a fresh sense of community; or who want to learn more about God, Jesus, the Church, or a Life of Faith. We recognize that the spiritual life is a unique journey for each person. It would be a privilege to have you come and journey with us.
Our weekly Sunday service is a 9:30 am celebration of the Holy Eucharist in the form of Rite II, which uses contemporary language, for most Sundays, and the more Traditional, Rite I, service on a Sunday during each season. We also have a service on Thursday mornings at 9:00 am followed by our Bible/Book Study.
9:30 am Eucharistic Service
85 East Main Street
Mt. Kisco, NY 10549
This Week's E-Blast Message from the Rector
“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” [Matthew 15-NRSV]
This Sunday we meet a woman who has no name in the Gospel, no standing in the crowd, and no business, as far as anyone standing there is concerned, asking Jesus for anything at all. She is a Canaanite, and in Matthew's world that single word is supposed to answer every question about her before she opens her mouth. She opens it anyway.
What follows is one of the most uncomfortable exchanges in the New Testament. Jesus ignores her and the disciples ask him to make her go away. And then he says the line most of us have been quietly taught to explain away: "it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." We're not going to explain it away. We're going to stand in it, with the help of the Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney, Episcopal priest and womanist biblical scholar, who reminds us that Jesus was "fully but not generically human," a man shaped by a particular people, a particular history, and a particular set of inherited assumptions.
And then we're going to watch a mother refuse to leave. She doesn't even argue with the insult; she stands inside it and turns it into an argument for her daughter's life. By the end of the scene the daughter is healed, the woman is praised, and a ministry that had a fence around it has begun taking the fence down, until the last words of Matthew's Gospel are "go therefore and make disciples of all nations." That means the outsiders, it means the Gentiles, my friends, it means us. Come hear how one woman who wouldn't go away made room at the table for everyone who came after her.
May Peace live in your heart,
Rev. Kyle