Readings
Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9
Psalm 15
James 1:17-27
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
I want to start with a story that I have shared with some of you in different contexts that strikes me as especially appropriate for today’s Gospel.
Once there was an Episcopal Church with a priest who had been with them for over 20 years. He was well loved, and people were especially fond of how he conducted the Sunday morning service. They saw themselves as a high church congregation. Well eventually he retired, and the congregation searched diligently for a new priest to take his place. They made clear that they were a high church congregation and wanted the liturgy to reflect their Anglo-Catholic sensibilities.
After a while they called a middle-aged priest with good experience in Anglo-Catholic congregations to be their rector. Even so, after having been there several months he began to hear people making comments about how he conducted worship. Again and again, he heard that the overwhelming majority of the service was lovely, but that he consistently forgot to say the “secret prayers” before the Holy Communion part of the service. He was baffled as he did everything that was required for the service, including all the added ritual that a high church service demanded. Eventually he found out that the previous priest would face the wall after having washed his hands and say prayers that no one could hear.
Aha, now he was on to something. He visited the previous rector and inquired about the “secret prayers.” The old priest was as baffled as the new one. He had no idea what the people were talking about. Finally, the new rector described the scene as it had been described to him. “Aah. Now I know what you’re talking about” said the old priest with a chuckle, “except it isn’t secret and it isn’t prayer.” Turns out the old priest had arthritis in his hands and after washing them in the cold water they would stiffen. He would then go over to the radiator with his back to the congregation and warm his hands before going to the altar. But, in the absence of seeing what he was doing the congregation had assumed what was going on and had taken a very mundane thing and made it sacred.
In today’s Gospel we have something similar going on. The story starts with the religious authorities being bothered that Jesus’ disciples had not washed ritually their hands before eating.
They challenge Jesus on this point, and he comes back calling them hypocrites and quoting Isaiah. ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ And he ends by saying “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”
Now to be fair. In ancient Israel, the issue of defilement was a big deal. If you are defiled then you cannot go to the temple, you cannot make sacrifice. In short, you are outside of God’s grace and salvation.
Jesus is responding to this assumption about unclean hands. For Jesus, the cleanliness of one’s hands is not at the heart of the Torah and is, in fact, to be seen as a human tradition rather than a matter of doctrine.
He then goes on, speaking not only to the pharisees and scribes but to the whole gathering that it is what comes out of a person that defiles them, not what goes in. He says that it is what comes from the heart that is really important and then he lists a whole raft of things that, from his perspective, defile a person. Fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, and folly.
Now that’s a list of sins. But do you know what they all have in common? Every single one of them is something that ultimately harms another person. All of these “evil intentions” are self-centered and destructive. All of these sins care little for the wellbeing of those around you.
You may be surprised to hear this, but if we are to take Jesus’ words seriously, then one thing is clear. Jesus cared less about religious practice than he did about the state of our heart. His redefining of what it means to be clean moves us away from ritual and towards relationship.
Like the people in the story this morning who mistook a therapeutic gesture for something sacred, we too can lead ourselves down the primrose path of mistaking piety for righteousness. In other words, we can mistake our religious practices for what it takes to live in right relationship to God.
What about that list of sins that Jesus says defiles us? How many of them have each of us engaged in?
For most of us the big ones at the beginning are probably not in our history. But some of the others we may have participated in. Like deceit, who hasn’t lied in their lifetime? Or envy, which of us hasn’t found ourselves wanting what someone else has? Or slander? I’m guilty of that one every time someone cuts me off on the freeway. And what about pride, which is less about having a big ego than inflating one’s ego by over seeking the affirmation of others? And finally, folly. How many of us have at some point made light of another person’s story or minimized the seriousness of a situation because it made us uncomfortable?
In the end, Jesus is making clear that our relationships and how we treat one another is what defines our relationship to God. Jesus is inviting us to set aside a practice of religion that is all about ritual gestures and embrace one in which we worship God primarily through how we treat one another.
This doesn’t make worship and the church unnecessary or unimportant. It just puts it in its place. When we gather as the church, at its best, we are practicing with one another how to be in relationship. This prepares us for how we are to behave in our everyday lives.
So, what exactly is it we are being called to do and be? Well, the scriptures are replete with teachings and examples for that. In short, we are being called to care for those in need. We are being called to practice genuine empathy and compassion. We are being called to be agents of peace and reconciliation. In summary, we are being called to be the manifestation of Christ in the present age.
We can’t get there overnight. It is a lifetime journey. And the first step on the journey is recognizing what will not get us there. May we be attentive to the intentions of our hearts. May we find ourselves undefiled for the sake of those we meet every day. And may we, in our own time, manifest Christ to the world in which we live.