This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.
My parish secretary and I, some years back, got tired of hearing all the little complaints we heard about the worship booklet we printed each week. So, we put this in the bulletin:
You will most likely find several mistakes in this bulletin. You will also notice that our priest and the attendants will make a few mistakes from time to time. These are not accidental, but actually a planned part of our service today. In an effort to provide something for everyone, we have added these mistakes for those who come looking for them.
That’s what happened to Jesus in today’s Gospel. The Pharisees and the scribes traveled a long way looking for a mistake. They were really good at it. It didn’t take any time at all before they had noticed that some of the disciples were eating with unwashed hands.
Now Jesus gets a little testy here, and I think it is perhaps understandable. He has concluded a huge teaching ministry among the people; he’s fed all five thousand of them; he’s just finished stilling the storm on the way across the Sea of Galilee to the other side.
St. Mark tells us that all Jesus really needs at this moment in his life is to let his soul catch up with his body, but the crowds came looking for him once again. These Pharisees and Scribes could have gathered around Jesus, with all the people whom they serve, for the opportunity of a lifetime. But the first thing they notice. . . even before Jesus utters a single word. . . is that the disciples didn’t properly wash their hands.
Now this isn’t hand washing for sanitation as we normally think. They were concerned that Jesus’ disciples didn’t take the time to wash their hands in the ceremonial manner. This would be similar to a Sunday celebration during which the organist dazzles us on the keyboard, and where everything else was executed in such a way that love and joy filled the air. Picture a celebration to remember, and then right after the dismissal followed by a powerful, Thanks be to God Alleluia, Alleluia and a resounding postlude. . . someone leans over to you and says, You know, I think the acolyte forgot to wash the priest’s hands when he set the altar.
After many years of celebrating at Sunday services, let me tell you, that just a very few words at the end of a service can really put a dent in your fender.
I can tell you from personal experience that there really are people who can actually tell if one of your socks is inside out from across the room, and who won’t hesitate to pass that information on to you!
Jesus probably had the cleanest hands of anyone present in today’s Gospel, just from wringing them over and over again in sheer frustration. Still, Jesus answers them by quoting the prophet, Isaiah:
This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
You see, Jesus understood that unless a tradition mirrors the absolute love of God, and truly edifies God’s people, it is at best, to use Cranmerian phrasing, a fond tradition, vainly invented and repugnant to the Word of God.
During a service at an old synagogue in Eastern Europe, when the Shema prayer was said, half the people would stand up and half remained seated. As you can imagine, eventually the two groups began to fight with each other. The rabbi was new and didn’t know what the tradition was in that synagogue.
The congregation suggested that he consult a house-bound ninety-eight-year-old man who was one of the original founders of their synagogue. The rabbi shared their hope that the elderly man would be able to tell him which was the actual and authentic tradition. So, he went to the nursing home with a representative of each faction of the congregation.
The one whose followers stood during Shema said to the old man, Is the tradition to stand during this great prayer? The old man answered, No, that is not the tradition.
Then the one whose followers remained seated during the Shema asked, Then we were right, the tradition is to sit during Shema? The old man answered, No, you are wrong, that is not the tradition.
But, the Rabbi interjected, the congregation fights all the time, yelling at each over this matter.
The old man interrupted: THAT is the tradition!
One of the things that used to astound me when I taught Religion on the college level, was how there seemed to be a growing distrust among my students of what people like you and me do in churches each week. I remember one of my students who wrote the following in our online discussion:
I went to church as a child. I never really felt like I was worthy to be there. As I got older, I became a more spiritual person as opposed to being affiliated with any religion.
This one statement has stuck in my mind because it is such a reflection of what so many young people are thinking today. I have to tell you that my first reaction is to argue with them. I want to say, Look you just don’t get it! You’ve missed the point!
I want to wave a finger in their faces and tell them that religion literally means to re-ligament, to tie down, to set one’s sails on a hopeful journey, an arousing adventure of discovery.
I want to convince them that our religion isn’t about the destination as much as it is about joining hands as we trek through real life together in search of the living Christ!
The opposite of Spiritual isn’t Religion!
The reason that Jesus so often gets angry with the Pharisees and the Scribes is because they tended to believe that they had fully arrived.
I read the same kind of sentiment in the world of social media, and I have to tell you, I find myself wondering how these folks have come to feel the way they do. I’m an institutional church guy, and so I wonder what we Christians, in particular, have done to perpetuate this impression that religion and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive?
I don’t think we ever meant to give that impression, nor do I think that it’s too late to change it. But if we look just in the last thirty or forty years at some of the ecclesiastical fights in which we have engaged, fights that certainly aren’t indigenous to the Episcopal Church, we can begin to see how we might have subtly given the message to people looking to join our team that we already have the game in the bag, so much so that we have time for all kinds of petty distractions.
How many sermons or Bible studies over the years have centered around the theme of salvation for the well-behaved or redemption for the triumphantly correct in doctrine? And with all due respect, how many of our hymns and even our prayers and collects sneak in just a suggestion here and there that maybe this feeling of unworthiness felt by my student was justified?
Never underestimate the power of liturgical language nor the fact that liturgical reform is almost always a little pastorally behind the times. At our baptisms, we were not commissioned to sell that Old Time Religion to people. We were commissioned to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ and to respect the dignity of every human being.
We need to get the message out to all people that they have been declared worthy by virtue of their birth, and that we gather to celebrate a God who wants nothing more than to have them seated at the banquet.
Any ceremony or tradition that doesn’t send that message loudly and clearly is not worth fighting over and should probably have the burial office read over it.
We need to get the message out that we have don’t have time for pettiness in our churches because our religion keeps us too busy helping others to find their dignity and self-worth before a God who couldn’t love them anymore than God already does.
I long for the day when people like my student will stand up and say, You know, I went to church on Sunday, and those people not only honor God with their lips, but their hearts were close to God as well!
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