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SERMONS

The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 3, 2006

There is something that works almost like a law of physics in the Gospels; like every action having an equal and opposite reaction. It is a constant that no one who comes into contact with Jesus remains unchanged, unmoved.
Folks either move closer to, or away from, him. And there really is no "standing still" around him. Jesus causes and creates movement, of the body and soul. Transformation just seems to walk around with him. The world is either being unraveled and coming together in his midst.

In today's Gospel Jesus meets an immovable object. For most Pharisees, tradition, custom, ritual, these are things that keep the heart and mind fixed on life's appropriate goal, following Torah. Remaining fixed on the Torah, the Law, for the Pharisee, is the key to a meaningful and fruitful life with God.

The Pharisees take Moses at his word from Deuteronomy this morning:

"Israel, give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe, so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you."

For the faithful Pharisee these are far more than "helpful hints for happy living." Keeping the Law, keeping custom and tradition, for the Pharisee, is a matter of life itself. These are not suggestions or options, this is more than God as "good idea;" it is the very essence of being human and being a child of Israel.

Through the history of Israel, generation after generation of venerated rabbis developed a continuous chain of teaching and traditions. These comprise what the Pharisees called Torah, or the Law. Following the Law, living by the Law, gave these Jews a living bond, a kind of umbilical chord, reaching back to Moses, back to the declarations of Deuteronomy, back to Mount Sinai, and essentially back to the initial "point of contact," the moment when God gave Moses the Ten Commandments.

The Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner explains, "human beings achieve sainthood through study of Torah and imitation of conduct of the masters . . . if the masters and disciples obey the divine teaching of Moses, the supreme rabbi, then their society, their school, replicates on earth the heavenly academy, just as the disciple incarnates the heavenly model of Moses, the supreme rabbi".

Washing the hands in a ritual fashion, so as not to eat unclean food, and all of the 600 or so rules and rituals, provided the faithful Pharisee a divine path leading back to Sinai, back to Moses, back to the moment when God's finger instructed human beings with laws written in stone.

To break tradition is to break the umbilical chord, and to end the living tie that binds one to God. Right practice is right belief. Correct practice is correct faith.

And so Jesus, "why do your disciples not live according to the traditions of the elders but eat with defiled hands?"

Wrong practice - wrong belief - Jesus.

Jesus is willing to split hairs with the Pharisees, but hairs of a different kind. Jesus turns their own criticism upon themselves. Perceiving that their motives are less than holy and charitable, Jesus draws the sword of the prophet 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 doctrine."

Rather than debating points of practice, Jesus goes to the heart of the matter, literally to the heart of the matter. Jesus calls into question the Pharisees' motivations. Whose kingdom are they building? Is their behavior and offering given for righteousness' sake, or is it simply a means by which to hold the yardstick of righteousness over others?

The essence of Jesus' rebuke is that in seeking to be found and favored by God through their right practices, these Pharisees have lost themselves and God in the process. Jesus is making a truth claim: the emphasis of Jesus' rebuke is NOT that washing one's hands is necessarily bad . . . but that washing one's hand's without also looking beyond the ritual and the practice, is only making half the journey.

It is a very old religious dilemma; the problem of self-justification. It is the problem of performing acst of self-offering, but finding their most convenient use is in judging the inadequacy of others. The problem of doing the right thing for the wrong reason. Jesus has a word for such - hupocretes - hypocrite. The Pharisees are hypocrites because they are really only playing at religion. They are pretenders, poseurs, who may act the part of honoring God, but who only end up judging others.

Jesus' primary concern is not simply with right practice equaling right belief. Jesus seeks the intention of the Law, that right belief inspires, equals, right practice. Jesus is always pointing here, to the human heart.
This is what must be washed and cleansed and set in order, before we would go about setting the world and others about us in order.

"The things that come out are what defile . . . for it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly."

Do you feel left out? Did we leave anyone out? I doubt that there is a human heart in this room who remains untouched by this list; I doubt there is a human heart in history who remains untouched. Doing the right thing for the wrong reason was not only a temptation faced by these Pharisees in Jesus' day; we know this temptation.

Pretending that wickedness and deceit are not resting coiled in our intentions is an option for each of us. Clear, orderly, and logical means of denial are an option for each of us. It is a way of being religious so that we may say the Lord's prayer without having to mean what we say. A way where we might be and sure to take the blessings and grace of the Lord's supper into our bodies and soul's, for solace only and not for strength.

Opportunities for religious activity, and avoiding the opportunity to confront and cleanse the hearts for whom we become religious. For some us, the transforming love of Christ will actually call us to do less than more.

Jesus is interested in actions which flow from a whole heart, a heart motivated by love of God, not love of self. The first order of our energy, of our intentions, the first order of our self-offering is within, is within the heart; that is, if we are to have any life beyond self-indulgence and self-justification.

It is sometimes helpful to remember in our daily lives that Jesus came not simply to begin a new religion; he did not come to replace one set of religious rituals for another. He came that we might first have life, and have life more abundantly. He came that we might discover the great joy in this life of honoring God by doing the right thing for the right reason.