Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, August 30, 2009
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Sermon for August 30, 2009

Pastor Sara Kay Olson-Smith

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Texts: Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9; Psalm 15; James 1:17-27; Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and from Christ Jesus.

As you may remember, Clark and I were blessed to be able to spend some time in India early this year. We were visiting my brother and his wife who were living there. I was reminded of our time there as I read this week’s gospel about washing hands. Most of the people in the southern part of India, where we were, eat most of their meals with their hands. They don’t use silverware, but rather use a much more efficient tool - their fingers. At our first meal with Brent and Connie they showed us where we would wash our hands, and then they showed us how to eat without silverware, just using our fingers. We were, of course, sloppy about it, but we slowly figured it out.

However, the other thing is that they only eat with their right hands, which are kept clean, while their left hand was used for other tasks. And so we, of course, had to try to figure this one out, too. It is amazing how often we forgot this. We had to be constantly reminded not to use our left hands to give money to our drivers or greet folks, only the right. We certainly broke all their rules. These rules, about hand washing and which hand to use to do what, didn’t always make a whole lot of sense, but they were set there, so that people would be safe and healthy and well, so that they could be community with each other.

It is for a similar purpose that the law was given to the Israelites so long ago. They had been living in the wilderness and were about to enter into the promised land. They were just about to cross over into this land of promise and hope, to settle in and make a life together, and as they did so, God gave to them the law, in order to help them be safe and healthy and well, so that they could be community together, so that they would live together in ways that made all the people flourish. The law, the commandments, were not just rules for their own sake, but ways of being together so that they could live abundantly and well, and also, so that God may be glorified through them.

Over time, of course, these rules became not just ways of being for the sake of all people to flourish, but also became either ignored or obsessively followed. They became, instead of ways to live well together, ways to both judge and be judged. Over time, just as everywhere, there were those who failed to do the right stuff and those who hypocritically held it over the heads of those who failed. In doing so they all forgot about the gift of the law, a gift which was there to help a community to live and flourish and to glorify God. In this they also forgot the God who gave this gift and led the people to promise.

It is this sort of conversation that we hear as Jesus encounters the Pharisees. Some of the disciples are eating with dirty hands. They are not following all the rules of hand-washing before meals and the Pharisees are not happy about it. In response, Jesus calls them hypocrites and points the community away from the dotted i’s and the crossed t’s of the law and points them to the God who gave it and the hope and life that comes from it – so that the community, each one, might flourish.

The funny thing is, Jesus did not tell the Pharisees to stop washing their hands. In fact, some of Jesus’ own disciples washed their hands, since only “some” did not. Instead, what Jesus objected to was making hand-washing a central concern. “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition. What comes out of your heart defiles you.” For Jesus, it is our self-righteousness that defiles us. All of us lift our own priorities to the level of God’s commandments. We judge ourselves by our own standards. “Listen to me, all of you, and understand,” Jesus said. “This law,” he seems to say, “is about you hearts, given to help you live together as community and so that God may be glorified through you. Forget about your priorities and traditions, and reorient your lives around God’s Word and God’s priorities.”

“Look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act,” James writes. We define hypocrites as people who say one thing and do another. But here scripture has another view. We will not be judged, says James, by what we say and do, but by what we hear and do. In other words, it doesn’t matter what we say, it matters what God says. And what does God say? James writes: this is true religion: “to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” The perfect law of liberty, is love, loving your neighbor as yourself, showing mercy to the poor and needy. The law is that which helps each one, especially the weakest and most vulnerable, to flourish so that God will be glorified.

“Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” From the giving of the law on the edge of the promised land through Jesus and to this very day, God’s priorities do not change. Love. Love your neighbor as yourself. Show mercy to the poor and needy. Give generously as God gives to you.

The law is not some blade above our head waiting to drop, some grip upon us which tightens each time we fail or some weapon to be used against others, but God gives us the law to help us, from our hearts on out, to love and to fully experience the love of God. It is about living in such a way that the whole community flourishes, each one, from the least to the greatest. We hear God’s commandments and we do them, not so that we can look good (look at these clean hands!) but so that the whole community will be able to live well, each one.

And so we have this law. Hearing God call us to and from this comes our human traditions, our ways of trying to figure out how to live out these commandments. Just like in Jesus’ day, there may be disagreements about how we do this, about how we live out the law and the love we hear from God. Some people may wash their hands and others may not think its necessary. Some may prefer the bread and others the wafers. Some like the King James and other the NRSV. Some may be hopeful about the ELCA’s recent change to open the way for the ordination of partnered gay and lesbian people in the church, and I confess that I am one of them, while there are faithful loving others who do not believe the same. Some in this place may want our legacy to go one way and others may be looking in another direction Some may feel at home in one place and other may want to worship somewhere else.

There will be differences, big and little, of how we see God working in and through tradition and the ways we hear the law and commandments of God calling us to live. However, at the center of this, all of us, I believe, are trying to listen to hear God’s voice through it all, to live the love that God is calling us to, for the flourishing of all God’s people. And all of us, I also believe, are often hypocrites and fail to live up to the calling Jesus and James give to us. Thanks be to God we are forgiven, and we are given one another so that we can learn and grow, so that through our differences we will hear God’s priorities for us, and be led in deeper love, so that all may flourish and God will be glorified.

When we were in India we were blessed to have a few meals in people’s homes. Each time, they set the tables with fork and spoons for us. They, of course, did not use the utensils but they put them out – may even have bought new ones – just for us. I don’t know whether they were there because they were unsure if our hands were clean enough to eat with, or knew we were still a bit clumsy with our fingers. I think, though, they set them out so that we could eat well, and enjoy the meal together – some with clean and others with dirty fingers. To this day, I am still not sure who had the clean hands and who had the dirty ones. All I do know is that we all ate well!

It is true here, too, at this table – all of us with dirty and clean hands, all hypocrites and all faithful followers of the word, and all forgiven, restored by the grace and mercy of Jesus, not just on the outside, but in our hearts. Here at this table we – in all our differences – are loved into being people who love, given mercy that we will be merciful, given new hears to hear God speak, made clean so that we can serve and ready to live so that all may flourish, so that our good and gracious God may be glorified.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.