Pentecost 13

The Reverend Martha Frances

Year B, Pentecost 13, Proper 17

30 August 2009 

Text:  Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Others: Song of Solomon 2: 8-13; Psalm 45: 1-2, 7-10; James 1: 17-27 

      When I first studied the lessons for today, I was delighted to find the passage from the Song of Solomon which has only become part of the Sunday lectionary with the new Revised Common Lectionary.  Preaching was the first class I took in seminary, & my first sermon was to preach a wedding sermon.  Since my son was engaged at the time, I chose to write a sermon as if it were for their wedding, based on this scripture, & when they heard the sermon, they asked me to preach it at the wedding, so it became my first public sermon. 

      The poem quoted here is the bride's voice describing her groom's arrival as he woos her, both full of first unbridled love as the springtime bursts forth with the ripeness of new life.  The Israelites saw the Song of Songs describing God's joy in a loving relationship with the Hebrew people who were beloved & cherished.  This allegorical interpretation allowed this unabashed love poetry to be acceptable as Holy Scripture, & early Christian commentators believed the overflowing expressions of love  represented Christ's love for the Church, yet the abundant joy of this poetry also celebrates human love at its onset with the accompanying anticipation of a full, rich married life.

      Psalm 45 follows along these same lines as early court singers celebrate a royal wedding, singing to the groom, "You are the fairest of me; grace flows from your lips, because God has blessed you for ever."  How appropriate it is for us at the beginning of our school year, the day of the Ministry Fair, to praise God's faithfulness & eternal love for God's people, the utter joy of new beginnings.  I pray we join in this celebratory spirit as we move into our fall schedule & begin again with new & renewed commitments in our parish life!

      The other 2 lessons for today help us recognize again Jesus' encouragement to focus on the two great commandments:  love of God & love of neighbor.  One of the skills we develop as we grow in discipleship is our ability to relate our own story to The Story, the Gospel Story which defines us as Christians.  I think back to my own childhood as I hear of Jesus' encounter with the Pharisees & scribes.

      As a young girl, I liked to play outside, & that meant I got very dirty.  Mother would make me wash my feet & knees before dinner after I had dug in the dirt & gone barefoot.  Even as a teen, I had a hard time keeping my fingernails clean, & I can remember looking down at my hands in horror more than once at the dinner table because my nails were black underneath.  If my father noticed, he was likely to fly into a rage, causing the whole suppertime to be unpleasant.  I would sit with my hands curled in a ball like this (*), hoping he wouldn't notice.  Now it's not easy to hold silverware with your hands like this (*).  So my father almost always noticed, & I was in for a stern lecture or worse.

      Now my father's rage was uncalled for, but he had a point about sanitation.  Expecting his daughter to wash her hands before a meal so her fingernails were clean wasn't unreasonable in itself; it was a matter of good health.  But in today's passage from Mark, the issue is not one of sanitation but of ritual defilement.  The Jewish law required the priests to go through an elaborate ceremony of handwashing before meals, & the Pharisees extended that law to lay people.  They called it "a fence around the law," going beyond the Law itself just to make sure to show they were holy enough.  It was sort of like thinking if one aspirin is good for you, two must be better.  Such ritual washing had become a burden which had nothing to do with how clean people were.

      The Pharisees were anxious to discredit Jesus & his disciples by showing they weren't good Jews because they didn't keep all the ritual laws.  Jesus was clear throughout the Gospels that he & his disciples observed laws which guided people to love God & each other with all their heart, mind, soul, & strength, but they didn't feel bound by those laws which created problems for the common people.

      Who made the decisions?  Jesus did, & that's what infuriated the Pharisees.  Jesus quoted Isaiah in reminding the Pharisees & scribes that God wants the people to worship & honor God in their hearts & not just in their outward actions.  Jesus made the same distinction that Isaiah had: God's commandments often got neglected in order for people to follow all the traditions the elders had developed as a "fence around the law."  The danger, Jesus said, is when people separate religious observance from the rest of life.  Jesus' emphasis is on how people treat each other.

      Jesus continues by saying people aren't going to be made unholy by germs which come in on unclean hands.  They may get sick from the germs, but that's not going to make them unholy.  We can't use the old excuse of "the devil made me do it," for whatever inappropriate behavior we're trying to justify.  For what comes out of ourselves, we have to take personal responsibility. Certainly if people drink too much alcohol or do too many drugs, it's going to mess up their lives, but Jesus' emphasis is on the evil thoughts & actions that come out of a person which create the problems.  Now I deal very well with some of this list because I haven't murdered anyone & I'm pretty straightforward so I'm not deceitful. But I can be pretty envious of others' good fortune, & I can really get off on telling you about someone whose actions I don't like, especially if that person has treated me or others unkindly.  Yet who am I to judge them?  Which of the evil thoughts or actions listed in the Gospel defile you? 

      Remember, I told you my father had quite a temper?  Even when he wasn't drinking, he could blow up without warning, & I lived in fear most of my childhood & teen years that I wouldn't do things just right & then he would explode.  You know what?  I could never do everything just right, because the problem wasn't about my behavior.  It was about those things within him that he hated & couldn't deal with, so he would blow up at others.  I hated him when I was a teenager, & I felt ashamed because I knew I was supposed to honor my father yet I was scared to death of him.  He was a preacher, too, so I couldn't figure out how God could let him be so frightening at home yet be so honored & loved by the church members out in public. 

      It took me a lot of years & work with my spiritual director & sponsors to forgive my father, to understand what a troubled, sick man he was, to realize he had been treated just as abusively as a child as he treated us.  By that time, I had passed on some of that sick, abusive behavior to my own children.  But I was luckier than my father.  I learned a different way of living while my children were still fairly young, & I was able to make amends to them.  Part of the way I continue to make living amends is to treat them today with the dignity they deserve.  Another way is to pass that love & grace I have received on to others.  I've learned there are spiritual disciplines that help me live a moral life, to love & honor myself as well as my neighbors.

      The epistle reading today is from James, a book that urges us to continual conversion throughout our Christian lives, behaving as Easter people, redeemed human beings.  Notice that the passage begins by reminding us that all we have & all we are comes from God, the God of lights, from whom we receive the truth that allows us to bear first fruits of the Spirit.  When we talk about Christian stewardship, we speak of returning to God a portion of the abundance God has lavished on us.  It is just such stewardship of life which James encourages us to honor God by passing on to others. 

      James gives guidelines for people who live in community, very important for us as we deepen our community life at Hope.  He tells everyone to be quick to listen, slow to speak, & slow to anger.  It is not by accident that we are created with 2 ears & only one mouth.  Not only do we grow from what we can learn from others, but we also honor the dignity of others when we truly listen to them.  James recognizes that we will feel anger, yet if we are slow to express our anger, it can be balanced by our being made in the image of God.  Thus, it is God's word implanted in us which allows our anger to energize us to work for justice & peace for all God's people. 

      James urges all of us to move from being hearers of God's word to behaving as Christ would have us act.  The most famous line in the book admonishes us to "be doers of the word, & not merely hearers who deceive themselves."  As we all know from experience, we learn how to behave as Christians by acting as redeemed Easter people.  James encourages us to care for ourselves & each other:  watching after the orphans & widows—those who are most vulnerable in society—as well as keeping ourselves unstained by the world.  As part of the faith community at Hope, I join James in encouraging you to attend the Ministry Fair today, prayerfully considering how you will help strengthen Hope parish in the next several months as we continue in hope to grow in mission & ministry this year.  Hope needs each of us; we need each other to respond to the generous gifts which God has given us.  God who has provided abundant life also gives us the strength & joy of returning some of that abundance to God, in many cases by passing it on to others.  How will you be a doer of the word this year?