August 29, 2021 – 14th Sunday after Pentecost
The priority of God’s call to us to love must take precedence over many of our much-loved traditions
Let us bow our heads in prayer. Holy and gracious God, we give you thanks for your presence in this time and place and within each one of us gathered here and in many places in our homes. Help us now to open our minds, our hearts, our whole lives, to receive the gift of your living Word for us this day; and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
Last week, in the sermon, we used Jesus’ challenging teaching about him being the bread of life, and his command that we “eat his flesh and drink his blood” from John’s Gospel, Chapter 6, and that he is both the source and giver of God’s bread of life. Now that’s not so difficult for us to listen to after 2,000 years of Christian practice celebrating the Holy Eucharist. But it definitely was difficult for Jesus’ fellow-Jewish disciples, who in all of their teaching, and in their lives, have focused on Moses and the Law that God gave Moses as the ultimate source and sustenance from God. So Jesus’ followers had to let go of, or at least ‘loosen up’, some of their strongly held beliefs and religious practices, to take up and embrace the call of God’s love and truth in their day.
So today’s readings, prayers, and hymns continue this same focus on the this gift of God’s love that God gives us, and it’s dynamic and living love – just like genuine human love. It’s not a sort of static plateau of love that one reaches. But rather it is alive and fresh and always evolving. Look at the very first part of the Collect Prayer that we used at the beginning of the service. We prayed, “Graft in our hearts the love of your name.” Now it’s not just “help us to love you, God.” Think of the place that, say, your spouse’s or your lover’s name holds in your heart. It’s special isn’t it? It’s not just anybody’s name. And when you hear it, it evokes a certain focus and attention in you doesn’t it? This is what we’re asking and praying for with respect to God, and God’s name. And we don’t have it naturally. We don’t have that love of God’s name naturally and that’s because of our sin – because of our separateness from God. But God’s Spirit can graft it into us, and cause it to grow within us. It’s a dynamic, ever-evolving kind of love, just as your thoughts and feelings and actions associated with your partner’s name have evolved and transformed over the years. It is still your love for them but now you might express it a little differently than in the past. Some of the words and actions that you counted on as being good and loving and proper towards that person are no longer. Other words and actions have taken their place as you express that love toward them.
So this prioritizing of what is ultimately important in loving God plays out in the Gospel reading today from Mark. We have a selection of verses from the 7th Chapter. It’s a little unfortunate because a key piece of Jesus’ teaching is missing. I’ll fill that in for you. In our reading today, in the opening verses, the religious establishment of Jesus’ day – the Pharisees and scribes – you might think in our day of the bishops, priests, deacons and lifelong Anglicans would represent that group – and they criticize Jesus because of these relatively new disciples that don’t hold and treasure the religious traditions of the day. This is how Mark describes it: “Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them … So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” Now in today’s Gospel verses Jesus immediately reprimands the scribes and Pharisees, but in the portions of Chapter 7 that we didn’t read, Jesus uses another example. He explains how the religious establishment’s zealous following of some of its ritual practices actually blinds them and prevents them from doing some of the more important aspects of God’s call to them - to actually love as God commands us to love. They focus on some of the less important details and they miss the really foundational pieces.
Then, in the final verses of today’s reading, Jesus shows how the attitudes, words, and actions that come out of us are far more important than the external religious practices that we may have adopted.
Now I suspect that most – maybe all – of us would agree with this and within our hearts and our minds we would agree with Jesus. But then we would just continue practising our faith and carrying out our ritual actions the way we’ve always done it before. But this is where the Second Reading from the Letter of James “nails” us. Here’s what James confronts us with in today’s Epistle: “But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.” In other words, it’s not enough for us to acknowledge what God’s love is calling us to become – to acknowledge new and diverse ways of practising our faith. We have to act on those new ways. We have to allow ourselves to be stretched – to change – to let go of some behaviours and take up new ones in order to love God and be a dynamic channel for God’s love to reach others.
Let me give you a simple example in my life from a few years ago. This comes from Saint Margaret’s parish here in Winnipeg. Nancy and I were parishioners that morning. We were going to the Good Friday service. Now it’s not the three-hour service but it feels like that. It’s about two and a quarter hours but it’s a series of very solemn meditations, very gorgeous music, prayers – it’s very somber. And one is very much focused on one’s needs of God’s grace. So that’s the kind of atmosphere. The Church is hushed when you first go in. There’s no prelude or anything, and people are really intent on focusing prayerfully. So Nancy and I took our places in our pew, and then a couple of 20-somethings stroll down the side aisle, plop themselves down in the pew ahead of us – each carrying a medium-sized cup of Tim Horton’s coffee. They get themselves comfortable in their pew, have a little drink, and they’re waiting for the service to begin. I found it really jarring for me - such a dissonance with the ritual and atmosphere, at least for me. Now did I say something to them? Of course not! I probably could have being the bishop – but I didn’t. But as I considered it more and reflected on it, these were my ‘images of disciples eating with defiled hands’– not observing the tradition of the elders.’ What they were actually doing was answering the deeper call of God to be present in the assembly and to receive and to respond to God’s love and truth – which they were doing! Now – do I want to bring coffee into the Good Friday service? No! But do I care if those other two do? No, I don’t. Because I’ve had my priorities challenged and I’ve been stretched to change them.
As we heard in last week’s sermon – why we spoke to you these words, “Much of what we’ve come to expect as “okay” about the way we are as church – our priorities, our openness to and involvement with people outside our walls, other churches, other groups in need – who are looking for us to experience God’s gift of love, will no longer do! God’s love is calling for more from us – to let go of some of the things that may be near and dear to us, and to open ourselves to the living presence of God – to what God wants us to become together as disciples of Jesus Christ. We need to realize that Christ is continually pushing us more deeply into the love and truth of God for us today. What was a priority in our life, in our ministry, our worship – 30 years ago – 10 years ago – maybe even two years ago – may no longer be. You see – being grasped by the dynamic love of God and putting that love into action is the beginning and the end of how we “do church” and practice our discipleship. This putting of God’s love into action must be our “measuring stick” against all of our traditions and our past practices.
Be reminded of this today when we pray the Prayer Over the Gifts – these words – “Give us grace to love one another that your love may be made perfect in us.” And again – in the Prayer After Communion – “May your holy food strengthen us in love and help us to serve you in each other.” We are all in this together. It is the call and response to God’s love in Jesus Christ that makes us who we are. Thanks be to God!
Amen.
