Scripture: Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
What it is all about? Why do we actually come here nearly every Sunday to worship and praise God? At times each of us wonders about this, especially when we are irritated by someone else. One of the greatest issues that people have against the church is that those inside the church are a bunch of hypocrites. You know what, they are right. The church is filled with people that say one thing and live a totally different way. I would even venture to say that some of us are just as guilty of these actions. I can confess to each of you that even I have been hypocritical at times. I would like to think that I am not but if we are to become more like Christ the first step is to confess where we are wrong.
The second largest issue to many is that they are not good enough to be in the church. I am actually face with this issue more often. This second group is probably the group that you have more conversations with also. The first group is tense and argumentative. They do not want to listen but instead they want to accuse. Which means we probably avoid them as much as possible. Individuals in the first group in most cases have been injured in some way by the church and they want you to take responsibility. The second group is slightly different. They too have been harmed in some way by the church, in most cases they made choices in their life that has caused them to turn from the church. The main difference is that this group is more open. They are not as argumentative and are willing to be loved.
The two greatest issues keeping people from the church have a common problem. A community that is supposed to love has wounded both. These communities have often caused these wounds by the rules that have been applied.
I know at this point you might be nervous as to what might come out of my mouth right now. The rules we live by are important to our community. The rules set us apart from other communities and cultures. These ideas we believe are based on scripture. There are certain things that our culture has found as being beneficial. We have applied these rules to our lives and the lives of others because when applied life seems to work better.
I am not saying that rules are not good. We must have rules. Without rules a classroom would not be a place of education but chaos. Without rules or order we would not be able to have a discussion, debate, meeting, or even this meeting of worship. Rules are necessary, so necessary that people have written books expressing the importance of rules. Most of these rules that we apply to our lives are not law, but manners. When I mention manners, where does your mind go? For some your mind immediately goes to places around the table, why, because this is a place that manners become important to us. Our parents did not want us to embarrass them in public, so words like no elbows on the table became engrained in our mind. In a classroom it is just good manners to raise your hand, wait for the teacher to acknowledge you, and then speak. Manners however are not the same as a law. If someone does not raise their hand in class the world will not end. It may make the situation a little more difficult, but let’s be honest if a child does not raise their hand school will still be in session tomorrow.
Manners are different everywhere you go. Every teacher at a school has a different set of manners that was the rule of their classroom. Every household has a different set of manners or rules that allow their home to function. We as humans are amazing creatures we adapt quickly to these rules of mannerisms. In some cases the manners are similar to what we are used so we adjust quickly. There are other times where the manners are foreign to our way of thinking. For example if I were to invite everyone here to a fine art opening in a downtown gallery, most of you would be introduced to something completely foreign. For one you many not know how to dress, or how to act. If you showed up dressed in an incorrect manner most of us would feel uncomfortable probably wanting to leave immediately. If you received some insider knowledge and was dressed accordingly then many of you would still be uncomfortable, but eventually you would begin to mingle in some way, eventually someone would engage you, and draw you into the community.
I bring this up because there is a difference in law and manners. A law is something important. If a law were not observed it would run the risk of breaking the entire community apart. Laws are mainly based on respecting others bodies or property. Often communities lift manners up as equal status as a law; this is where emotional trauma occurs. For those that committed the offenses as well as those that have been offended.
In this passage, we are faced with this sort of activity. The Pharisees are getting worked up about what? Washing of hands? Now I will grant that this rule has some very important social benefits, but whom are they really harming? In our society we know all about germs so we can answer my question by saying that they could be transmitting potentially harmful diseases. As a whole most of us have not been mortally wounded from someone forgetting to wash before they eat, in fact the greatest harm is actually to their own bodies.
We read this passage from Christian eyes and we can quickly pass judgment on this community. They were willing to cast out of the community all of Jesus’ disciples because they failed to wash their hands before they ate. I agree that it is kind of gross, but is it really that important? We almost laugh at the entire situation. Of all the problems in their community like the constant threat of bandits in the county side, or the political tension between the Jewish and Roman world, these people are going to draw the line at washing hands. We laugh but I ask; did you wash your hands before you came to worship? What do I mean by that questions, have you obeyed all the manners and customs of this Meeting before you came in?
The Christian community has over 500 denominations based on manners. These manners are keeping some people away from our community because they do not know what to expect, or in some cases another community were so focused on the manners that they actually drove spiritually hungry people out of their community because they failed to conform to the manners. There is a term for this legalism. It is a community based on adhering to the rules of order instead of focusing on the deeper meanings of life.
I like to think that our denomination has been freed from this, but we too are a denomination. We broke off from our parent church because the values that we held, the manners we wanted to live by, differed from theirs. We had good reasons to develop our traditions of worship, but the basic beliefs are the same as our spiritual ancestors. The largest protestant denomination in the United States is the Baptist church; this church also has the greatest number of sub-denominations that are based on manners. The Catholic Church is the largest denomination in the world, but they too broke off from the rest of the ancient Christian community because they had a different view of manners.
Manners are important within a community but they are not the law. Most everyone here has come out of a different faith tradition. If we were to ask everyone to recite their spiritual journey we would find that manners and the misuse of manners are probably a large part of why we left one community and found a home here. Manners can divide. If you do not conform to manners you become unwelcome in a community. Legal action can actually be taken against people that continuously refuse to conform to the manners of a community.
The divisiveness of manners is what Jesus is calling out in the community that he was speaking with. What defiles a man? What makes someone unclean? We tend to look at the outward expression, the manners. These are not the most important things. We can teach manners over time. The lack of manners actually point to a much deeper problem, the problem of sin. To treat manners only, is like giving antibiotics to a person with a viral infection, you are not helping anything and could be making the problem worse.
Jesus said that it is from the human heart where evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice (or greed), wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, and folly. These things go deeper than manners. These dip into lack of respect and love for another person and God. Greed is not love and will never be. It is taking unfair advantage of another. Teaching manners will not change greed, it will only teach a greedy person to be nice as they over charge a customer.
Sinful people are selfish people. They do not care about others. If you approach them with a band-aid of manners they resent you, because manners do not satisfy unless there is personal gain. They do not understand the reason behind the manners unless they are shown a different way. This is what Jesus was getting at. These people were honoring God with their mouths but they did not love. They embrace the manners of the culture but fail to observe the command of love.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians, “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”
The Law of God is Love. Love God with all your heart, with all your strength, and with all your mind. And the second command is to Love your neighbor as yourself. Sin is cured by love. It is easy to say, “I love the sinner but hate the sin,” but to actually love the sinner is difficult. To spend time with them, patiently answering their questions. To not take offense when they ridicule our faith and to in turn answer with kindness is almost more than we can handle. Yet that is what we are asked to do. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
The sinner does not need us to preach them a sermon telling them that they are going to hell. They already know it. They need us to love them. They need us to break their hearts of greed by our generosity. They need us to show them acceptance without taking advantage of their bodies. They need us to combat their pride with tactful honesty. When we live our lives loving God, embracing the Holy Spirit, and Living Christ’s love with others; we do not have to have the best arguments to win the debate. We only have to say God loves you and wants you to have a life filled with love.
Am I just being idealistic? Maybe, but I have seen people that have been living lives of sin, slowly turn. I have seen people living in adulterous lifestyles say that they are engaged, when just a few weeks prior they were opposed to marriage. All that I spoke to them about was the incredible mystery of marriage and how that union to me is more then just a physical activity but an act of worship. They looked at me with their eyebrows twisted because they know who I am and what I do. They expected me to condemn their lifestyle but instead they received love.
We can change the world around us. A world caught in the bondage of sin. But that change comes from the heart. It comes through each of us who have been loved by God sharing that love with someone else. It comes with us leaving our comfort zones and engaging those people, caught in bondage, where they are and walking with them into the light of life that is only found through the death and resurrection of Jesus. Change comes from us living lives of Love.
As we enter this time of Holy expectancy let us ask some questions of ourselves. Are we too focused on ourselves to love? Are we too focused on our manners to love? And finally do you love?
Scripture: James 1:17-27
Why do we do what we do? Why do good people do rotten things? Why do some people that are basically rotten en up doing something good?
One of the greatest images I have read comes from CS Lewis his book The Last Battle, it speaks of a very devoted and honarable man from a land that worships Tash instead of the Great Lion. Those that entered the barn where it was believed to be the dwelling place of Aslan three things happened. For those that believed in Tash were met by the demon and either scared witless or eaten. If they rejected the demon and Aslan found themselves sitting in a dark barn with only dirty water and donkey feed to eat. Yet those that devoted their lives to Aslan found themselves in the most remarkable place, they were in Narnia but in a better Narnia. What is intresting in this story is that there was this one man who devoted his entire life to Tash yet there he was walking in Narnia. They were all confused because to everyone involved it should not have happened.
The answer Lewis gave was that this man who thought he was devoted to Tash was actually worshiping Aslan because he was doing good, one cannot do good without having a spark of Aslan in their life. On the flip side those that do evil in the name of Aslan were actually worshiping Tash, the evil vulture demon.
Lewis wrote in such a creative way, a way that speaks deeply to children and adults alike, a truth that theologians still struggle with today. Who is good and who is evil? And how do we know what and why we are doing things?
In the passage above James, who most believe was the brother of Jesus, says to the readers, “every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming from the Father of lights, with whom there is no varitaton or shadow do to change.” Basically James and Lewis are saying the same thing if you do good thing you are doing them because the spark of God with in you is speaking through your actions. Now that may make some of you very upset because some very bad groups have done some good things. I am saying that even those people are acting in accordance to some direction from God.
Now not everyone knows this. The will take credit for the good deed and receive the honor to themselves. Sometimes they do the good deed to get a tax break, or a more positive public image. They believe that they are doing good appart from any divine being, some even refuse to believe in the existance of a divine being. But good is done: poor children get libraries, schools receive computers, medical care is given to the sick.
Then there are those that do terrible things in the name of their God. Many of us in American hear stories of religous groups that are sending people to their death bombing trains and busses and are shocked to hear that there are willing people lining up for the their chance. Why do they line up, because they are told that they are doing something good. After the terroist attack on New York and Washington DC many young people joined the military freely because they thought they were doing good. And in their minds they are doing good, but the result of their devotion is evil.
One cannot say that the killing of humanity is good, we can justify it in many ways, but in every case to kill is wrong, it is evil, it removes from life a son, daughter, mother, brother, father and sister. In that removal there is the loss of a parent or child, the loss of income, and hatred. There is much evil even in the most justifiable war. Those that are involved have emotional, physical, and spiritual issues that they may never be able to over come.
James tells us to be slow to anger, because anger does not produce rightousness. Those devoted to anger are not honored by God. Hate is not a rightious activity. Just as the doing of good is not ever demonic.
This is a very difficult thing. To know the truth you have to wade through layers of lies. Often the worst offenders are also the most generous, and some of the groups that talk the loudest about generosity are the least likely to give.
How do we not get caught in this web? We need to know who we are, who we serve, and why we do it. If all good gifts, come from God, ad everything else is from other places, I want the good stuff. I also want to be a conduit of good. To do this one must be able to discern evil in all areas, especially in oneself. As you pray today, I pray that the shadows of evil will come over you and that you will be able to be conduits of good.
Scripture: John 6:56-69
An American hero is gone. The death of Neil Armstrong is the closing of an era. For years I would spend my Saturday morning just before the cartoons started, that’s right kids there was a time when cartoons were only on one day a week, and on that day it was only on from 8-12, well before the cartoons started I would often sit on the floor in the living room watching videos of Apollo 11. I would eagerly watch as the shadow of lunar module neared the surface of the moon, and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end as I heard the voice of Neil Armstrong say, “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
I can only imagine if I were to have been watching live. I heard the stories, watched the videos, and stood in amazement while I viewed the relics of an era that passed before my birth. The last great pioneers, the last explorers, the men and eventually women that inspired me to do my homework are slowly passing on into the mystery of death. They pursued a mystery that inspired science fiction writers for centuries. These explorers that inspired the past generations pass on, yet what do they leave behind?
Do we still dream or are our dreams silenced by the stresses and obligations of life? I used to imagine as a child of being the first man to land on Mars, I would run tests to see if during the season after the dust storms when the skies of mars were clear if there were high amounts of carbon dioxide in the air do to the dry ice at the poles. It is funny how plans and dreams change. I never even tried to go out into space. The era of space exploration is nearly over, at least the era that we have known in the past. It is no longer a realm of exploration but entering into the era of profiteers.
With the changing of time come new adventures. For my generation it is not space that holds the world in awe but areas of genetics. I moved from being the first man on Mars to dreaming of becoming a genetic engineer. To be able to manipulate genetic codes to increase the potential of food, or even to unlock the possibility of biological computers became the next great frontier. Of course there is many different opinion in this area but I was excited by the possibilities.
Plans change, and dreams evolve. I do not know if you noticed but not only am I not sitting in a Mars rover, I am not engineering crops either. Something grabbed hold of my adventurous spirit that again moved my life.
An enigma often drives the human mind into action. For the artist they may see something that inspires them to make an attempt to create. To a writer they get a news story or a bit of research that grows into a novel. A mystery or a challenge is presented before them and they cannot rest until they have mastered it. For others it may be a new technological advance like the smart phone or an Ipod that inspires something greater. They are challenged to make programs or apps to improve life or at least make it more entertaining.
Imagine just for a moment the disciples of Jesus. They know that they are living in a time where things are about to change all around them. They can nearly feel, taste, and smell the emergence of a new age. For centuries the teachers of their culture have said that God will send a messiah, an anointed person that would lead the nation of Israel into greatness. Everyone in the nation was eagerly anticipating the advent of this person. Some of these people feared the coming of this great man; they lived in fear because they had a life built upon the current systems. If this man came in their lifetime everything would change and their livelihoods would be threatened. They invested their time and energy in keeping things the same. Then there is the other side, those that anticipate the advent of the Christ as the hopeful future and fulfillment of the nation and culture.
This is a setting that we find these men and women. Last week and this week we meet Jesus in one of His most difficult teachings. He tells them to gain the ultimate dream that they must eat His flesh and drink His blood. The very saying is so crazy to our rational ears that it is even 2000 years later hard to even imagine how they could have been received on the day that they were spoken. We know that they said it was hard to understand and who could accept it. To these those listening Jesus is either telling them to participate in the most un-kosher of meals or He was saying that He was the mother of life.
Jesus asks, “Does this offend you?” Does it offend us? Every Christian denomination has an interpretation as to what Jesus exactly means when He says these words. For some they believe that Bread and Wine become the actual blood and flesh of Jesus that the believers would then consume, and in doing so Christ is literally in them. Some believe that the Spirit hovers around the bread and wine and by eating and drinking we are allowing the Spirit to enter. Others believe that it is a symbolic statement where we remember the words spoken and through the memory we are inspired to reflect more deeply on Christ. Which is the truth? Could it be that all are correct?
It is one of the greatest mysteries of the Christian faith, what is the truth of the Lord’s Supper? This conversation occurred just prior to the Passover Feast, the time where the Hebrew people remembered that God preserved them while allowing the first born of all the Egyptians to die. The angel of death passed over their houses because they painted on the frames of their doorways the blood of a lamb. Their salvation was shared with everyone in the house; those that ate were ready to be called into action at a moment. What saved the people from the threat of death? Was it the blood, the meal or the trust in the declaration of God?
Some would say that the blood saved them, and they would be right. Others would say they were saved by their faith, and they too are correct. But what if I were to say that the Angel of Death could not affect them because they had inside of them the Spirit of Life? They ate and drank in the name of God. They shared the meal with their friends and their families; there was an intimacy between God and the people. What does this say, where is the spark of life?
Jesus goes on to mystify His followers by suggesting that the spirit is greater than the physical. That there is something greater at work, something that fills the body, that inspires and grants true life.
I ask what is it that drives you? What excites you, inspires you, gives you a reason to go beyond? This is the mystery of intimacy with God. We are both body and spirit. We cannot separate these aspects of our lives. We can, however, starve one. Through the lens of history we have observed what happens when a culture starves one aspect of humanity. The Soviet and Nazi cultures both tried to focus all the attention to the body, or the physical aspect of humanity. They devoted themselves to nationalism, science, and social experiments. In the process of focusing their full attention to the physical they lost the humanity, the culture became inhumane. On the other end of the spectrum there are societies that focus all their energies on the spiritual or religious. The golden age of the church, history often refers to as the dark ages. This era gave us witch trials, the inquisition, and the crusades. In all the spirituality they too lost sight of the humanity, and became inhumane.
We may be quick to think that Jesus is embracing the spiritual focus. The culture of the Hebrews was a theocratic culture, a culture under the rule of God. It would be easy to assume that theirs was a culture that focused on the spirit above all else. The problem is that they were looking not for God but a king. Their minds were stuck in the physical. They had lost sight of the true spirit that gave the power, this is why Jesus stormed into the temple over turning the tables and driving out the sacrifical animals. They no longer focused on the worship of God but on the worship of the status quo. There must be a fusion between the body and spirit. There needs to be a balance between the religious and the scientific. Without this balance we lose intimacy with God and ourselves, we lose our humanity and we fail to treat others as people loved by God.
Jesus in His ministry feed the body and the soul. He healed the body and the soul. Jesus says I am the true bread; those that eat of me gain life. They gain food for the body and more. Those that ate of the bread of Christ were inspired to do more, to boldly go to the ends of the earth preaching the Gospel that the kingdom of God was at hand. Those that neglect the true intimacy of Christ begin to fade into darkness. They begin to lash out, responding to many like a caged animal if any of their life choices are questioned. They seek honor and status. But what do they truly gain?
When Neil Armstrong was asked about his mission to the moon, it was not uncommon for him to simply say that he was just doing his job. He never regarded himself as a national hero, but always as an engineer complete with white socks and a pocket protector. A man that inspired me and countless others to try harder ultimately led me to the very feet of Christ. A man of science in some way assisted my journey to become a man of the spirit. I know nothing of Neil Armstrong’s faith, but I do understand his passion. He lived by spirit. As Friends that is really all we urge. We gather together to encourage one another to live the life God leads within you, to strive to follow the dreams, find your ministry wherever that leads, and to embrace the light burning within you. That light has a name, Jesus, and in Him we have life. Not only life in this physical realm but life everlasting. As we enter this time of open worship let us look at our lives, our passions and our fears. And let us enter into a new era where we embrace the fullness of life in ourselves and in those around us through that intimacy of Humanity and God.