Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 17) – Year B (RCL) 2009
Deuteronomy 4: 1 – 2; 6 – 9; Psalm 15; James 1: 17 – 27; Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish, Portland, OR
Sunday, August 30, 2009

OF ALL THAT IS, CLEAN AND UNCLEAN

Let us pray: Fill our hearts, oh God with a sense of true religion; the root of that word which is a proper conduct toward others. Help us to learn that through your law we are set free to be a people ruled by love and not by law. Plant your law deep into our hearts that we might proclaim your love and justice to all who have neither. All these things we pray in your holy and life giving name. Amen.

(SUNG) BE THOU MY VISION, O LORD OF MY HEART;
ALL ELSE BE NAUGHT TO ME, SAVE THAT THOU ART –
THOU MY BEST THOUGHT BY DAY OR BY NIGHT,
WAKING OR SLEEPING THY PRESENCE MY LIGHT.

I find it incredibly ironic. As you are by now well aware, in the great majority of Christian Churches the scripture readings assigned for each Sunday are taken from the Revised Common Lectionary. Now not all churches use this lectionary (and, in fact there are different and separate Lectionaries for the Roman Catholic Church and Episcopal Churches by order of General Convention have until the year 2010 to completely switch). In the RCL for this Sunday the reading from the Hebrew Scriptures in the book of Deuteronomy the second verse reads “you must neither add anything to what I command you nor take anything from it” and then the RCL jumps to verse 6 omitting verses 3 through 5! What’s up with that?

In this Hebrew book (literally meaning “second law” – as it repeats in the 12th through 26th Chapters much of the legal code found in the books of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers) Moses addresses the people of Judah in 3 distinct discourses; in the first person for the first 2 discourses and then in the third person for the final or “farewell” discourse to the people of Y—WEH just prior to their entrance into the promised land. Much of the detail of the first six books of Hebrew Scripture or Torah deals with the “legalism” of the proscriptions of the Jewish faith and tradition. It is this “legalism” that Isaiah Chapter 29 v. 13 and later Jesus in the author of Mark’s account of the Gospel decries. “Because this people worship me with empty words and pay me lip-service while their hearts are far from me, and their religion is but a human precept, learnt by rote.” Now this good Irish Catholic boy certainly has rote religion in his head. The words of the Baltimore Catechism are still emblazoned in my brain: Question, “Who made you?” Answer, “God made me.” Question, “Who is God?” Answer “God is the Supreme Being who made all things and keeps them in existence.” Question, “Why did God make you?” Answer, “God made me to show forth His goodness and to share with me His everlasting happiness in heaven.” And I could go on and on – these things just live in my brain, I don’t know why.

So, I find myself this morning reflecting on several questions that have been ruminating in my brain since I first started to prepare this sermon. The first is what we remember and how we remember. The author of Deuteronomy has Moses speak to the people of Judah these words: “But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life;” an interesting command since we might admit that it is just that tendency – to forget the things that our eyes have seen – and rather concentrate on those things which others have seen and report back to us that can lead us into the trap of living a dead faith. This is always the tendency of religion; to shroud ourselves in the ritual and tradition of our faith as it has been handed down to us and neglect the living out of that faith in our own time. This is the proscription that can lead us to a religion that bases itself on “tradition” to the exclusion of “experience” which the Caroline founder’s of Anglicanism, our spiritual ancestors called “reason”. Scripture, Tradition and Reason (relying no more heavily on one to the exclusion of the others) form the famous “three legged stool” of Anglican thought. Jaroslov Pelikan, Sterling Professor of History at Yale University is quoted as saying, “Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition is the living faith of the dead.” The writer of the deuteronomic text, addresses Moses remarks to the gathered people, we should note, in the present tense: “…so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you.” I would suggest that this technique is used so that the hearers of these words into millennia beyond their writing might vision the law as a living entity, which still feeds and nourishes their hearts and souls.

(SUNG) BE THOU MY WISDOM, AND THOU MY TRUE WORD;
I EVER WITH THEE AND THOU WITH ME, LORD;
THOU MY CREATOR; THINE OWN MAY I BE;
THOU IN ME DWELLING, AND I ONE WITH THEE.

The second of the questions that I mentioned previously has to do with the message of Jesus that is addressed to the Pharisees in this morning’s Gospel reading – and for me it is difficult question. How do we respect the tradition of the faith, those things which have been handed down to us through the Church – and yet avoid the very things, which Jesus seems to be addressing to his detractors? I was less than thrilled to discover that the word which we translate “hypocrites” is from the Greek hypokritēs which is actually the Greek work for “actor”, having spent the better years of my youth in that profession. How do I avoid letting the “rituals” of my religion – becoming the rote actions of my childhood memories? The ritual prayers and actions of our liturgy are comforting and familiar and are a piece of what allows us to connect our hearts and minds to God. AND – they are not and cannot be the end all of our religious expression. One of the ways that we avoid this danger is to occasionally revise the way we pray. This may help us to call ourselves up short and re-focus our hearts and minds to the God who lives beyond our rituals – and who longs to live in our hearts as well as our churches. As a leader in ritual prayer and action for the Church – in my priesthood and sacramental ministry, I search for ways to keep myself mindful of this pitfall of my ritual becoming my prayer. One of the ways that we can do this is to remind our brains that the rote prayer and familiar wording of our liturgical expression is not the only way that we can address God in prayer. By substituting the language of the Holy Eucharist from our Book of Common Prayer with the Supplemental Liturgical Materials from Enriching Our Worship, which we do during the summer months – we have the opportunity to hear with “new ears” the ancient prayers of our sacred mysteries. I give thanks to God and to this place for that opportunity as I continue to live out my ministry among you.

Part of what the author of Mark’s Gospel has Jesus convey to the people addressed in this morning’s story is the “nuts and bolts” of the washing of hands and cups, pots and bronze kettle’s; the “purification” rituals of the Jewish people. The author who was addressing a primarily Gentile audience uses the story to illustrate the danger of allowing our ritual to become our religion. The Episcopal Church like our sisters and brothers from other “liturgical” traditions face this danger. Allow me to illustrate with a story which I found recounted by Anthony deMello, the story of the guru's cat: it seems there was a guru who would have meditation services every evening and his cat would always run in the middle of those meditating. So every evening before the service, the guru would tie the cat to the tree outside. Then the guru died and the new guru also had the cat tied to the tree every evening in the same way. When the cat died, the new guru had an assistant immediately go out and buy a new cat to tie to the tree in the same way. The new guru even wrote a manual on the correct way to tie the cat to the tree before meditation services.

I invite you to notice that the debated “hand washing” ritual purification continues in our own liturgical tradition. Before approaching God’s Holy Table, the presider participates in what is called “the lavabo” (from the Latin for “I will wash”). Water is poured over the fingers in a symbolic ritual cleansing of the priest who will participate on behalf of God’s people to offer sacrificial gifts of bread and wine in remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice. As a reminder around our ritual, though, Jesus tells us that it is NOT what comes from outside a person that defiles, but rather that which comes from within. During that lavabo time a silent prayer is suggested from Psalm 51 and often whispered, “Create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me.” We might note, however, that the words translated as “wash” and “washing” which the author has the narrator use in verse 4 of our reading this morning are “baptizo” and “baptizmos” which, as you may guess are generally translated as baptize and baptism. We must be careful not to demonize and totally dismiss the ministry of the Pharisees which can be an easy temptation in the Gospels of the synoptic author’s. These men were the teachers and protector’s of not only the “law” or “Torah” but also of the interpretation of that law, or what would become known as the “Mishnah” so that it could be moved out of the temple restrictions and lived in the everyday lives of an occupied people to remind them who and whose they were. Jesus, in the events depicted in our story from the author of Mark’s retelling, simply calls them to realize that the beauty of the law lies in its spirit rather than its letter. Jesus comes, we will be told later, not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. Jesus calls these religious leaders to task because they are living out Isaiah’s prophecy when they are told; “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” Therefore, we might surmise that all of the ritual hand washing and purification rites and laws will not make us clean. This does not mean that we can come to the table and eat dinner without washing our hands (me sainted Irish mither may she rest in peace would be horrified), but rather that the spiritual waters with which we are cleansed in birth and baptism have purified us before God to live as God’s chosen people, still bound by the law – but no longer slaves to it. Blind obedience to “ritual laws” will not suffice in the new Covenant – but the law written deep within our hearts, by God will set us free.

(SUNG) High ruler of heaven, when victory is won;
may I reach heaven’s joys, bright heaven’s sun!
heart of my heart, -- whatever be fall,
still be my vision, o ruler of all.

We’ve reached another turning point in our lives as community. Summer is ending and we will soon return to the familiar routines of fall – school will start and vacation times will end. Life will return to its yearly patterns in our homes and our church. As we slip back into the rhythms of soccer practice and car pools, grocery shopping and choir practices on Wednesday evenings – let us not forget what our eyes have seen and our ears have heard; God is calling us to new places in our ministries in the Church and in the world and there is much work to be done. God’s promise is to be with us in the journey wherever it may take us – if we are conscious of God in the ritual of our lives then we will have blessing in all of our comings and goings.

Amen