Today's sermon
Aug. 30th, 2009 01:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chrishansenhomeWell-received, thank goodness. I don't prefer to be asked to preach at short notice, but it's not always a problem.
August 30, 2009 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sermon delivered at St. John the Evangelist, 10 am.
Readings: Deut 4:1-2,6-8; Ps. 14; James 1:17-18,21-22, 27; Mark 7:1-8,14-15,21-23
In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN.
I’ve been spending a lot of time in the foot clinic at Kings College Hospital lately, I’m afraid. It’s a pleasant enough place, as such places go. One thing that you cannot escape in hospitals these days is cleanliness.
Doctors are no longer allowed to wear straight ties, for fear they will carry infection from patient to patient. Wristwatches and rings are similarly frowned upon, as their undersides can collect germs.
In the foot clinic, there is a dispenser at every door. In that dispenser is an alcohol rub that promises to disinfect your hands before entering the room. Using these dispensers and washing hands between every patient promises to cut down on the spread of infections from patient to patient—and statistics show that it seems to work.
I suppose that one reason to wash one’s hands before eating is simply that it’s not very nice to eat when your hands are dusty from the road or sweaty from the heat. Up until relatively modern times, the only table implements you got were knives—and you generally brought your own when invited to tea, even with the Queen. Spoons and forks weren’t necessary as when you ate a stew, you picked up the meat and potatoes with a piece of bread, and soaked up the gravy with more bread.
So cleanliness was important at that time for hygiene reasons. To the Pharisees, however, it was important for other reasons. The laws and customs taught to the Israelites by Moses had to be followed to the letter. When they weren’t, calamities such as the conquest of Palestine by the Romans occurred. Such events were God’s way of telling Israel that it was not sufficiently faithful.
We hear even today of people who say that natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes are God’s punishment on a society that is insufficiently faithful to God’s word. They even dare to say that disasters happening to individuals can be traced to that individual’s sin in the past. The Israelites declared that responsibility for disasters might be traced to a person’s parents, grandparents, or even further back—this to explain how bad things happen to good people. It must have been some failing of ancestry.
So the Pharisees were very keen to keep disaster from happening to Israel yet again. They participated in the religious government of the time in order to ensure that Israel kept to the straight and narrow path. And yet, these external observances of Mosaic Law had little or no effect on the interior life of the average Jew at that time.
The Pharisee was justified under the Law as long as all the external observances were strictly kept. There is a continual tension in the Gospels between external appearance and internal holiness. Jesus often ate with such scum as tax collectors and prostitutes—indeed, St. Mary Magdalen was thought to be one of the latter and St. Matthew was one of the former. The Pharisees were very keen on some of the same precepts that our own mothers kept: you’re known by the company you keep.
Externally, when Jesus and the apostles dropped by for lunch, they were probably pretty dusty. The roads throughout the region were only dirt roads, and as you walked down the lane horses and donkeys clopped by raising clouds of dust that covered you from head to toe. When you entered a house, you brought in a lot of the environment with you. Grimy hands were the norm.
The washings that were prescribed by the Law of Moses were quite time-consuming and intricate. You had to pray while you were washing; God forbid you forget a word or a phrase—if you did, you had to start all over again. God demanded exactitude in return for the privilege of belonging to the Chosen People.
When Jesus and his band of followers got to the place where they were going to eat, they didn’t wash right away—they tucked into the dinner set for them. This infuriated the Pharisees; didn’t this little group realise that every time they neglected the Law of Moses, they invited disaster upon themselves and upon the entire nation?
Now the temptation here is to continue and contrast the Law of Moses with Christ’s superceding of that law with his Law of Love. I hesitate to do that, simply because in and of itself following much of the Mosaic Law can be good. There is much good in ensuring that your hands are clean, that you don’t eat food that could be tainted, that you don’t sacrifice to and worship idols, and the like.
But following the precepts of the Law only is not enough. If, for example, you are scrupulous in washing your hands before meals and yet eat more than your fair share and do not help to feed the poor, what good does washing your hands do?
Outer observance of the laws of God (from whatever source) needs to be for us a symbol of an inner holiness. It has no meaning apart from that. Your hands can be clean, the alcohol rub rubbed in, but external cleanliness says nothing about how you will treat other people with those clean hands.
An external cleanliness does not mean that you are clean inside, nor does external uncleanliness necessarily mean you are unclean inside.
We’ve heard this Gospel many times before and, I hope, will hear it many times again in the future. But hearing this Gospel passage is not enough.
The message that Mark is trying to put across here is clear: external conformity to religion is not enough—there must be internal conformity as well. James says, “You must do what the word tells you, and not just listen to it and deceive yourselves.”
Are we continually deceiving ourselves about our own internal worthiness? Do we listen to the word of God and use it as an external cleanser, or do we take it in and resolve to clean our souls with it?
The next time you have to visit a hospital, look at the hand rub dispenser at the door—and be reminded of today’s Gospel, a soul-rub dispenser for your heart.
AMEN.
August 30, 2009 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sermon delivered at St. John the Evangelist, 10 am.
Readings: Deut 4:1-2,6-8; Ps. 14; James 1:17-18,21-22, 27; Mark 7:1-8,14-15,21-23
In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN.
I’ve been spending a lot of time in the foot clinic at Kings College Hospital lately, I’m afraid. It’s a pleasant enough place, as such places go. One thing that you cannot escape in hospitals these days is cleanliness.
Doctors are no longer allowed to wear straight ties, for fear they will carry infection from patient to patient. Wristwatches and rings are similarly frowned upon, as their undersides can collect germs.
In the foot clinic, there is a dispenser at every door. In that dispenser is an alcohol rub that promises to disinfect your hands before entering the room. Using these dispensers and washing hands between every patient promises to cut down on the spread of infections from patient to patient—and statistics show that it seems to work.
I suppose that one reason to wash one’s hands before eating is simply that it’s not very nice to eat when your hands are dusty from the road or sweaty from the heat. Up until relatively modern times, the only table implements you got were knives—and you generally brought your own when invited to tea, even with the Queen. Spoons and forks weren’t necessary as when you ate a stew, you picked up the meat and potatoes with a piece of bread, and soaked up the gravy with more bread.
So cleanliness was important at that time for hygiene reasons. To the Pharisees, however, it was important for other reasons. The laws and customs taught to the Israelites by Moses had to be followed to the letter. When they weren’t, calamities such as the conquest of Palestine by the Romans occurred. Such events were God’s way of telling Israel that it was not sufficiently faithful.
We hear even today of people who say that natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes are God’s punishment on a society that is insufficiently faithful to God’s word. They even dare to say that disasters happening to individuals can be traced to that individual’s sin in the past. The Israelites declared that responsibility for disasters might be traced to a person’s parents, grandparents, or even further back—this to explain how bad things happen to good people. It must have been some failing of ancestry.
So the Pharisees were very keen to keep disaster from happening to Israel yet again. They participated in the religious government of the time in order to ensure that Israel kept to the straight and narrow path. And yet, these external observances of Mosaic Law had little or no effect on the interior life of the average Jew at that time.
The Pharisee was justified under the Law as long as all the external observances were strictly kept. There is a continual tension in the Gospels between external appearance and internal holiness. Jesus often ate with such scum as tax collectors and prostitutes—indeed, St. Mary Magdalen was thought to be one of the latter and St. Matthew was one of the former. The Pharisees were very keen on some of the same precepts that our own mothers kept: you’re known by the company you keep.
Externally, when Jesus and the apostles dropped by for lunch, they were probably pretty dusty. The roads throughout the region were only dirt roads, and as you walked down the lane horses and donkeys clopped by raising clouds of dust that covered you from head to toe. When you entered a house, you brought in a lot of the environment with you. Grimy hands were the norm.
The washings that were prescribed by the Law of Moses were quite time-consuming and intricate. You had to pray while you were washing; God forbid you forget a word or a phrase—if you did, you had to start all over again. God demanded exactitude in return for the privilege of belonging to the Chosen People.
When Jesus and his band of followers got to the place where they were going to eat, they didn’t wash right away—they tucked into the dinner set for them. This infuriated the Pharisees; didn’t this little group realise that every time they neglected the Law of Moses, they invited disaster upon themselves and upon the entire nation?
Now the temptation here is to continue and contrast the Law of Moses with Christ’s superceding of that law with his Law of Love. I hesitate to do that, simply because in and of itself following much of the Mosaic Law can be good. There is much good in ensuring that your hands are clean, that you don’t eat food that could be tainted, that you don’t sacrifice to and worship idols, and the like.
But following the precepts of the Law only is not enough. If, for example, you are scrupulous in washing your hands before meals and yet eat more than your fair share and do not help to feed the poor, what good does washing your hands do?
Outer observance of the laws of God (from whatever source) needs to be for us a symbol of an inner holiness. It has no meaning apart from that. Your hands can be clean, the alcohol rub rubbed in, but external cleanliness says nothing about how you will treat other people with those clean hands.
An external cleanliness does not mean that you are clean inside, nor does external uncleanliness necessarily mean you are unclean inside.
We’ve heard this Gospel many times before and, I hope, will hear it many times again in the future. But hearing this Gospel passage is not enough.
The message that Mark is trying to put across here is clear: external conformity to religion is not enough—there must be internal conformity as well. James says, “You must do what the word tells you, and not just listen to it and deceive yourselves.”
Are we continually deceiving ourselves about our own internal worthiness? Do we listen to the word of God and use it as an external cleanser, or do we take it in and resolve to clean our souls with it?
The next time you have to visit a hospital, look at the hand rub dispenser at the door—and be reminded of today’s Gospel, a soul-rub dispenser for your heart.
AMEN.
