13 PENTECOST, PROPER 17, YEAR B

SERMON PREACHED AT CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NORWAY, MAINE

THE REV. ANNE G. STANLEY

30 AUGUST 2009

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Song of Solomon 2:8-13; Ps. 45:1-2, 7-10; James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

In schools, nowadays, in hospitals and all health-care centers, hand-washing is a big deal. Wash for as long as it takes to sing Happy Birthday, we are told. Make sure you clean your thumbs; people often overlook their thumbs. Wash underneath your rings, do your wrists. And in case you can’t find soap and water, or in between soap and water washing, use hand sanitizer. Carry it with you or, if you’re in a hospital or a nursing home, go to one of the dispensers on the wall.

Did you know that there’s even a machine now to check to see how well you’ve washed? Stephen’s Memorial Hospital here in Norway has one. We chaplains had to test ourselves one day recently. First you wash and then you put your hands into the contraption and look to see if there’s any purple showing. Everybody stands around peering intently to see how well you’ve done. When purple shows---that’s where you’ve missed.

I wonder if that machine would have been a thrill for the Pharisees. Did we get clean enough?

Well, of course not. The Pharisees have gotten such a bad rap. Chastised so often by Jesus. An easy target for us as we look back at them.

But the Pharisees were not the bad guys we love to think they were. In fact they were more virtuous and righteous than most people. Diligent in their faith.

Jesus knew that, of course. It’s not that the washing of hands and dishes was a waste of time.  Rather, it’s the motive behind the washing ritual that is important. “Why are you Pharisees doing those things?” Jesus was asking. “Have you not heard the Good News I have come to proclaim? I have come to bring the gospel. Let your rituals reflect this new thing!”

Jesus wasn’t criticizing sanitation. Jesus didn’t pooh-pooh clean hands…. What Jesus was after was clean hearts. New hearts.

What comes out of our hearts is what counts, our motivation. Our integrity in everything we do. Making sure that what we do is in line with the nice words we hear and say and claim to believe. And making sure that we actually DO things to match the nice words. “Be doers of the word,” says the Letter of James, “and not merely hearers…” 

Some churches post little sayings on the signs out front, have you noticed? I think you can subscribe to a sign-sayings list and then pick ones that match your Sunday or seasonal theme. I read them. Some of them are silly, some I take great umbrage at. But sometimes one catches my eye. Like the one this week at a local church: “The best message of all is the example we set.” I might have worded it a little bit differently. But basically it’s not bad. Because what I assume the writer is getting at is what all our readings today are getting at: that what we DO is vital, that if we believe what Jesus taught us, then we’d better act as if we believe what he taught us. It’s about incarnation. That just as Jesus was the incarnation of God because God dwelt in him, because he WAS God, so we are the incarnation of Jesus-God because Jesus lives in us. How can anybody possibly know that Jesus lives in us if we don’t show it by what we do? As the sign says, we deliver a message to everyone who sees us by how we operate.

It’s as simple as that. (As hard, sometimes, as that).

The reading from the Song of Solomon sings about human love. It’s love song.  The love these two people share is demonstrated and acted on and shown to all who see it. “My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, there he is…!” This poem shows that human love is a gift and is a wonderful part of life. It is a gift from God and is meant to be celebrated and savored in thanksgiving, not hidden but love in action, that it may give purpose and meaning to the lovers’ lives and to the lives of all who share in their joy.

In the Letter of James, known as a manual for human conduct, Christians are likewise instructed to make their lives acts of thanksgiving for God’s gifts to them. “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights….God”  Our response is shown by what we do, our actions, the way we live---do we respond through sordid, angry, wicked lives, as James puts it, or by actually becoming the word of God which has been, says James, implanted in us?  So that our faith is made visible and concrete?  As someone has written: Action without prayer is self-serving; prayer without action is self-centered.

And in the gospel, Jesus makes plain that the righteous Pharisees seem to have allowed the rituals they slavishly followed ignore the new thing that Jesus had come to proclaim. To shut out the word of God. They let their rituals obliterate Jesus. They were worshiping the rituals, not God. It seems that prayer and the word of God was not motivating the things they were doing.

When we pray we do not inform God of the needs of the world. God knows the world’s needs already! We pray that we might become the prayers we pray. Pray for peace and become a peacemaker. Pray for someone’s health and we may become healers ourselves. Our prayer guides our actions.

In all the testimonials and speeches in the past few days about Senator Ted Kennedy, no matter what one’s political affiliation may be, it is clear that the goal of whatever efforts and legislation he supported was responding to human need. Relieving human need and suffering motivated his public life. “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress…” Senator Kennedy tried to become the prayers he prayed. He tried to make his actions reflect the dream he dreamed.  

Our Christian calling is nothing less, I believe, than to pray that we might incarnate and live the gospel of justice and peace.  And if that is our prayer, may we then become the prayer we pray by what we do in our lives.