August 2009

Sermons: August 2009

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 14)

August 9, 2009

1 Kings 19:4-8    Psalm 34:1-8

Ephesians 4:25-5:2    John 6:35, 41-51

Yesterday, the annual Jonathan Myrick Daniels pilgrimage took place in Hayneville, Alabama. Daniels, an Episcopal seminarian, was murdered August 13, 1965, as he worked for civil rights in Alabama.

This Friday the Episcopal Church will celebrate his feast day. I noted his feast day in Grace at Midweek this past week.

Why does Jonathan Daniels matter?

He matters because in our baptismal vows we promise

To persevere in resisting evil;
to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ;
To seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves;
and to strive for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being.

He matters because Bakersfield is almost as segregated today by sexual orientation as Alabama was by race in 1965.

Remember the line “The most segregated time in America is 10 a.m. on Sunday.” It’s still true.

Jonathan matters because the Episcopal Church just voted at General Convention to end that segregation.

He matters because this week I read several angry letters in Episcopal Life from people who said they are leaving the Episcopal Church because, they say, we’ve abandoned the Bible.

Jonathan Myrick Daniels matters. The Greek word “martyr” means “witness”: Jonathan Daniels bore witness to the Gospel. He still bears witness to the Gospel.

In March 1965 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., asked students and others to join him in Selma, Alabama, for a march to the state capital in Montgomery demonstrating support for his civil rights program.

In Selma, many proposed marches were blocked by rows of policemen. Jon describes one such meeting with youthful bravado, yes, but also with humor and self-reflective insight:

After a week-long, rain-soaked vigil, we still stood face to face with the Selma police. I stood, for a change, in the front rank, ankle-deep in an enormous puddle. To my immediate right were high school students, for the most part, and further to the right were a swarm of clergymen.

My end of the line surged forward at one point, led by a militant Episcopal priest whose temper (as usual) was at combustion-point. Thus I found myself only inches from a young policeman. The air crackled with tension and open hostility.

Emma Jean, a sophomore in the Negro high school, called my name from behind. I reached back for her hand to bring her up to the front rank, but she did not see my hand. Again she asked me to come back. My determination had become infectiously savage, and I insisted that she come forward--I would not retreat!

Again I reached for her hand and pulled her forward. The young policeman spoke: "You're dragging her through the puddle. You ought to be ashamed for treating a girl like that." Flushing—I had forgotten the puddle—I snarled something at him about whose-fault-it-really-was. With that, I managed to be both defensive and self-righteous at the same time. We matched baleful glances and then both looked away.

And then came a moment of shattering internal quiet, in which I felt shame, indeed, and a kind of reluctant love for the young policeman. I apologized to Emma Jean. And then it occurred to me to apologize to HIM and to thank him.

Though he looked away in contempt—I was not altogether sure I blamed him—I had received a blessing I would not forget. Before long the kids were singing. One of my friends asked [the young policeman] for his name. His name was Charlie. When we sang for him, he blushed and then smiled in a truly sacramental mixture of embarrassment and pleasure and shyness.

Soon the young policeman looked relaxed, we all lit cigarettes (in a couple of instances, from a common match, and small groups of kids and policemen clustered to joke or talk cautiously about the situation. It was thus a shock later to look across the rank at the clergymen and their opposites, who glared across a still unbroken "Wall" in what appeared to be silent hatred.

Jon devoted many of his Sundays in Selma to bringing small groups of African-Americans, mostly high school students, to church with him in an effort to integrate the local Episcopal Church. Daniels believed churches should be the first to reach out to people of all races. His efforts met with stubborn resistance from white churchgoers and ministers. He and his students were seated but were scowled at. Many parishioners openly resented their presence.

On Friday, August 13, Jon and others went to the town of Fort Deposit to join in picketing three local businesses. On Saturday they were arrested and held in the county jail in Hayneville for six days until they were bailed out. (They had agreed that none would accept bail until there was bail money for all.)

On Saturday, August 14, black teenagers in Fort Deposit, Alabama, gathered to picket white stores that discriminated. Daniels and two fellow ministers joined in the protest. There were threats of white mob violence and police had already informed the marchers they would be arrested for their own protection. As the group approached downtown, the police kept their word and Jon Daniels and Father Richard Morrisroe were among the 30 marchers taken to the jail in Hayneville.

Daniels, with three others—a white Roman Catholic priest and two black protesters—went down the street to get a soft drink at Varner's Grocery Store, one of the few local stores that would serve nonwhites. They were met at the front by Tom Coleman, who wielded a shotgun.

The man threatened the group, and finally leveled his gun at seventeen-year-old Ruby Sales. Daniels pushed Sales down to the ground and caught the full blast of the gun. He was killed instantly. Fr. Morrisroe grabbed Ruby and ran. Coleman shot Morrisroe, wounding him in the lower back.

Not long before his death Jon wrote:

In the south I lost my fear when I began to know in my bones and sinews that I had been truly baptized into the Lord's death and Resurrection, that in the only sense that really matters I am already dead, and my life is hid with Christ in God.

I began to lose self-righteousness when I discovered the extent to which my behavior was motivated by worldly desires and by the self-seeking messianic desires to be a Yankee deliverer! The point is simply, of course, that one's motives are usually mixed, and one had better know it.

As I said the daily offices day by day, we became more and more aware of the living reality of the invisible "communion of saints" who voices blend with our faltering songs of prayer and praise. With them, with black men and white men, with all of life, in Him Whose Name is above all the names that the races and nations shout, whose Name is Itself the Song Which fulfils and "ends" all songs, we are indelibly, unspeakably, ONE.

In 1991, Jonathan Myrick Daniels was designated a martyr of the Episcopal Church, one of fifteen modern-day martyrs, and August 14 was designated as a day of remembrance for the sacrifice of Daniels and all the martyrs of the civil rights movement.

Ruby Sales, the teenager whose life Daniels saved, went on herself to attend Episcopal Divinity School, and has gone on to work as a human rights advocate in Washington, D.C.: she has founded an inner-city mission dedicated to Daniels.

Let us pray.

O God of justice and compassion, you put down the proud and mighty from their place, and lift up the poor and the afflicted: we give you thanks for your faithful witness Jonathan Myrick Daniels, who, in the midst of injustice and violence, risked and gave his life for another; and we pray that we, following his example, may make no peace with oppression; through Jesus Christ the just one, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Collect for the feast day of Jonathan Myrrick Daniels, August 14.)

August 16, 2009

Curt Asher

When I was 15 years old, we lived in El Paso, Texas, and my best friend Kelly and I convinced a lady who lived in the upper Rio Grande Valley that we were capable of breaking and training her three-year-old filly. We had a book on horse training that described a long process of slowly gentling a horse and accustoming it to a saddle and rider. But we were kids, and after a couple of days we became impatient with the book and decided to try to ride the horse. We flipped a coin and I won. Even though we’d discarded the long process our book described for gentling the horse, when I swung up in the saddle and she stood completely still, I began to think this was going to work out fine. That was a misjudgment. The horse tensed up and exploded in wild-eyed panic at having this gangly teenager on her back and ended up throwing me head first into the corral fence.

I really did think I knew I what I was doing. I was a pretty good rider. I spent two or three hours a day after school on the back of my horse riding trails in the desert. Instead of team sports or musical instruments, I was interested in horses and a good student of them. My ambition in those days was to work as a trainer on a horse ranch (which I think says a lot about the strange direction life can take because I ended up working as a librarian at a university). Anyway, after I got hurt, the lady who owned the filly told us to leave her horse alone and not come back anymore.

At the risk of stating the obvious, we didn’t know what we were doing. We’d fallen in love with the idea of ourselves as horse trainers and we were as confident as we were incompetent.

I think that sometimes religious people fall into the same trap, into what the missionary Oswald Chambers described as self love. He described a circumstance in which people fall in love with their own devotion to Jesus. Instead of worshipping God, they’re worshipping their own piety. They love the idea of themselves as Christians, just like Kelly and I loved the idea of ourselves as horse trainers. They might not literally get thrown into a fence for that kind of misjudgment, but they’re probably walking around with a certainty of their own inherent rightness that’s going to land them there figuratively.

Buddhists have a saying about this. “If you meet the Buddha in the road, kill him.” That sounds harsh, but with the help a lecture I read by a Buddhist nun named Pema Chodron, I came to realize that this is actually a parable advising us to be wary of feeling too familiar with the unknowable. In other words, if you suddenly find yourself feeling that you know Buddha better than your neighbor does, you’re going to harden your heart against that neighbor. Most of us aren’t Buddhists, but I think we can all relate to the idea. If I’m confident that my belief is better than yours, somebody’s going to end up getting thrown into a fence. I think the Buddhists have it right. It’s better to kill that certainty. It’s better to simply accept that there’s a lot we can’t know.

The Apostle Paul said something similar. In Second Corinthians, he said: “For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.”

We’ve seen what happens when people begin believing that they know the thoughts of God. It’s led to unparalleled division in our church both nationally and internationally. What if everyone had just acknowledged that we couldn’t know the mind of God? What if everyone just killed that concept of the Buddha, so to speak?

Some of us, I would wager, have sensed God’s presence at some point in our lives. Maybe in the depths of meditative prayer or in the miracle of our children or just watching wind blow over tall grass in some quiet mountain meadow somewhere. Some of us may live lives feeling surrounded by God’s presence and others may have witnessed occurrences they can only describe as divine or have seen lives profoundly changed by His intervention. Some of us may encounter God’s presence in scripture or in the beautiful ritual of our church’s communion. Others may have had conversion experiences or encounters with the Holy Spirit that electrified them and led them into spiritual ecstasy. Then again many others of us may never have experienced anything and live with profound uncertainty about the reality of God’s presence. We all know God a little differently.

There’s a very diverse understanding of the nature of God and how he’s experienced. We try to codify that into religion, into a means of corporate worship. That seems to be where the problems start. One of the problems with churches generally, in my opinion, is that people who think they know the thoughts of God become convinced that everyone else doesn’t. Think of how many churches there are in the world that came into being because someone who knew the mind of God got mad at all those clods who didn’t. That’s why there are over 1,000 Christian denominations in the United States, and every damn one of them is the only one that’s right, the only one that experiences God correctly, the only one that worships Him the way He wants to be worshipped and the only one that truly understands sin and scripture.

A little over a hundred years ago, there was a priest at Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church here in Bakersfield named Edward Morgan. He was an Irishman who was ordained in 1898 at the age of 31, after a number of years working as a cowboy. Father Morgan wrote a novel about Judas and forgiveness that he published himself. In it there was a line that really struck me:

“The leaders of religious thought in every age, with but few exceptions, have pictured God after their own hearts, and then with unctuous complacency presented their masterpiece to a world hungering and thirsting after righteousness, saying: ‘Behold your God.’”

That’s a profound recognition of reality, in my opinion. There are plenty of people ready to invent our God for us.

One reason I like Oswald Chambers is because he believed that knowing God was a matter of duty. It’s a slog, not a thrill ride, but if we keep plodding along, doing what we’re called to do, serving others under Christ, we’ll build up the church and thereby get to know God.

The best way to get thrown into a fence is to be certain about things we don’t know. What can bring us some peace is faith that God knows all of us better than we know ourselves, and offers us different ways to encounter Him.

If we’re a little uncertain, we may be better off. I used to think it was a miracle at the Episcopal churches I’ve been part of, in Japan and Oregon and Nevada and Texas and here, that people with such a wide diversity of views and experiences could come together, kneel before the altar and share their faith in the ritual of the Eucharist. Each one knew God a little differently and held a range of personal spiritual views -- from Catholic to fundamentalist to new age transcendentalist; many had political and social philosophies that conflicted; and all were sinners that fell short of the glory of God. That was the beauty of the Episcopal Church. Maybe it will return to that here again someday.

It’s my opinion that when churches, like people, work, they get too busy to begin interpreting God’s mind for Him. When people get lost in the work of faith, caring for others and not making getting their own way primary, they may find they need each other. Lots of interpretations about God’s thinking fall away when we’re working together to get a job done.

If I had recognized that I had work to do and if I had done it patiently and with the kind of calm care it required, if I hadn’t fallen in love with an image of myself, and if I’d paid more attention to the book, I might have avoided getting thrown into a fence. The Episcopal Church can do the same.

What’s the work? I think the Book of James gives us the best answer:

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

Amen.

12 Pentecost (Proper 16)     August 23, 2009

Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18     Psalm 34:15-22
Ephesians 6:10-20       John 6:56-69

Poor Judas.

He’s the only person in the Bible who dies twice.

In Matthew’s Gospel, Judas hangs himself. In Acts Luke tells us that Judas “fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out.”

So, how did Judas die?

The better question is: Who was Judas?

The even better question is: Who is Judas?

Today I hope to show how, through informed study of the Bible, we can better understand what the Gospels say about Judas. That understanding, I believe, can help us better know who Judas is. It may even help us better understand who we are.

Poor Judas.

Paul never mentions him.

Even the Gospels aren’t sure about him.

In Mark’s Gospel, the last we see of Judas is when he brings soldiers and betrays Jesus with a kiss in the Garden of Gethsemane. In Mark, we don’t know how Judas dies. John, too, doesn’t say.

I kind of doubt that Matthew or Luke knew either.

Why would I say that?

Well, because Matthew and Luke contradict each other. You don’t have to be a forensics expert on CSI to figure that one out.

But much more importantly—I can say it because an informed study of the Bible strongly supports it.

We need to remember that the Gospels aren’t history in the modern sense of that field of study.

First: they’re stories—sacred stories, true, but stories.

Second: the Gospels are theology.

Informed study of the New Testament tells us that Matthew and Luke inherited the basic Gospel tradition from Mark. I say “basic” because Mark has neither a birth narrative nor a resurrection narrative. Matthew and Luke added these.

Before there even were Gospels, early Christians quite naturally were asking, “How did Judas die?”

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all agree that it’s Judas who brings the contingent of soldiers to arrest Jesus. Matthew, Mark, and Luke also agree that Judas betrays Jesus with a kiss.

I think that’s all the earliest Christian tradition knew and passed on.

As I mentioned earlier, Paul, our earliest Christian writer, says nothing about Judas.

John thinks he knows what motivates Judas. Before Judas’ last supper with Jesus, John reports, “the Devil had already prompted Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, to betray Jesus.”

This is “The Devil made me do it” theology. So much for free will. According to John, Jesus hands the bread of betrayal to Judas. As soon as he does, Satan enters into Judas. Poor Judas seems to have no say in the matter.

Since Matthew, Mark, and Luke know nothing of any of this, it’s pretty clear that John made it up.

I know that what I just said is heresy and blasphemy to many, if not most, Christians in Bakersfield. That’s why I avoid large piles of stones—especially those heaped in front of churches.

But there’s nothing wrong with saying that John is making up these details. There’s nothing wrong because John (1) is a storyteller and (2) he’s a theologian. He—and all the Gospel writers—are storytelling theologians. Or they’re theological storytellers. Or both.

Today’s Gospel reading offers a perfect illustration. In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells the disciples, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them."

“Eat my flesh and drink my blood.” That should get our attention. There’s nothing remotely like this in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Here, through Jesus, John is theologizing who Christ is as the Passover Lamb. And he’s doing it through narrative. Story.

Our reading today also says that Jesus “said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.” Not at the Last Supper. In John’s Gospel there is no Last Supper on the evening of Passover. Why? Because for John, Jesus is the Passover Lamb. In the other three Gospels, Jesus dies the day before Passover; John, for fully symbolic and theological reasons, has Jesus die on Saturday, the feast of Passover.

Unlike John, Matthew, Mark, and Luke don’t try to theologize the cause of Judas’ treason. Given the results of John’s efforts—the Devil made me to do it—I think Matthew, Mark, and Luke are smart guys and have made the right decision.

Since the tradition that Mark hands on doesn’t know—or doesn’t care—what Judas thinks or how he dies, Matthew and Luke feel the need to fill in the blank.

Most of the time, Matthew and Luke fill in the blanks in Mark’s Gospel from another, shared, source. With Judas, though, each goes his own way.

With Judas, Luke goes all Quentin Tarantino on us. He doesn’t kill Judas off in his Gospel. He waits until Acts. Then he screenplays a particularly gruesome end for Judas by literally eviscerating him: “With the reward he got for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open, and all his intestines spilled out.”

Matthew tells a completely different version of the Judas story.

That’s good news for us. Mark leaves us not knowing much about Judas. What Luke and John tell us is pretty depressing.

But Matthew, bless his heart, sees Judas very differently. For Matthew, Satan’s not in the picture, so Judas exercises free will in his actions.

That’s both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because it makes Judas one of us. It’s a curse because, well, it makes Judas one of us.

But . . . it’s a curse only if we fail—or refuse—to realize that Judas is us and we’re Judas.

Please close your eyes. We’re going to act out Judas’ story in the Gospel of Matthew.

Imagine the stage: It’s almost dark; light embraces Jesus in the background, hanging on the cross; he’s still breathing, but barely, the rise and fall of his chest a mere whisper. He’s alone. Even the Roman soldiers have left.

Judas is in the foreground, dimly lit. But lighted well enough that we can see his face clearly. He’s alone. He’s sitting in sackcloth and ashes. There’s a tree nearby. What’s Judas doing with that rope?

Now put yourself in the role of Judas. Feel his emotions. Picture his face

You’ve betrayed Jesus with a kiss.
Jesus has been arrested and hauled off to who knows what torture.
He’s been handed over to the Romans—and you know from long experience that that can’t end well.
Now you hear that Jesus has been condemned to death.
Since Jesus isn’t a Roman citizen, you know, with a horrified shudder, that he’ll be crucified. Just like those poor souls you see almost every day.
But now that you realize all this, you’re filled with remorse.
You repent.
You go to the chief priests and elders. You give back the blood money that they bribed you with.
“I have sinned,” you say. “I have betrayed innocent blood.”
Now, in despair, hang yourself.

      But wait. Jesus now somehow leans over from the cross. He takes Judas by the hand and raises him from the dead. Judas, too, is now embraced by light.

       Now Judas steps off the stage. The light follows him. He’s walking down the center aisle of the theater.

      Wait—he’s walking up our center aisle.

      He takes a seat.

      Right next to you.

      Amen.

Sermon, August 30, 2009

Pentecost 13, Proper 17

Grace Episcopal Church, Bakersfield

The Rev’d Vern Hill

Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9  Psalm 15

James 1:17-27   Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

I received an email this week while preparing this sermon, a Dept of Health warning -

Dept. of Health warning.

If you receive an email from the Department of Health

telling you not to eat canned pork because of Swine Flu.........

Ignore it. It's just Spam.

While the dietary and purity laws from the Hebrew Scriptures often seem formed out of a world alien to us, still the issues of health and how we should care for one another remain a constant challenge.

In the current health care debate which it hardly is if debate has anything to do with substance and values - what began as a serious conversation some sixty years ago (it didn’t just show up) – this conversation has degenerated into a warfare of caricature rather than content. We have the ironic oddity of politicians and citizens decrying how awful is anything government does – odd really for a people whose government charter begins – “We the People.” Ironic too for the same screaming citizens who often praise the importance of Medicare and social security. We have citizens with serious questions dismissed as “yahoos” and “stupid” from one side and we have others who would equate the President with Adolf Hitler, a caricature of monstrous proportions.

I am not suggesting a way through this current ugliness, but I would hope in hearing the readings today we can affirm the important connection between the Christian concern for the “least of these”, the most vulnerable and marginalized in our national community and our country’s inclusive affirmation of equal protection under the law.

Irresponsible and blatantly untrue portrayal as we are seeing in healthcare debate is always a dangerous thing, misrepresenting the truth of a situation to manipulate people into accepting a certain point of view. It’s a shortcut for real thinking. Unfortunately today in sermons across Christianity, pastors preaching from these readings will draw nasty images of Pharisaic practice and Judaism as the enemies to Jesus’ teaching, another short-cut to thinking.

Our religious version of Sermonic Talk Radio will portray the Pharisees as religious hypocrites, interested in the heartless enforcement of rules, speaking of a God who is distant and without mercy or justice. Simple, predictable; a case of the bad guys vs the good guys. But since nearly all of Judaism today comes out of Pharisaicism and the religious thinking of people like Hillel, who was a famous religious teacher and scholar at the first century, when we speak this way we actually insult today’s Jews and Judaism.1

One of my favorite professors at the School of Theology in Claremont was Eric Titus. Dr. Titus was a gentle soul who had been with the school since its birth out of the USC School of Religion in the 1950s. I had him for an 8am class – a miserable time to begin listening or thinking. Early on in his NT course he began a lecture saying – “Jesus was a Pharisee.” That woke me up. What about all of these hostile encounters between Jesus and the Pharisees? What on earth had caused Titus to come to the conclusion that Jesus might be a Pharisee?

What did the Pharisees of Jesus’ time really believe? Was it that awful? They believed that the Torah – the first writings – represented the thinking of God, the mind of God about what it was to be a human being, an earthling of God’s image. To follow those teachings was to live within God’s mind. Listen again to these words from today’s first reading –

You must observe Torah diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, "Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!" For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is whenever we call to him? And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today?

To be faithful is to do what Torah asks. For the Pharisee, the God of Torah described in Exodus 34 is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” and “forgiving iniquity and sin.” (Exodus 34:6-7)   This god could be present not just in the Temple for priests but in anyone’s workplace or bedroom or kitchen. Faithfulness was not something only for a priestly cult – it was an obligation placed before everyone. A sign of faithfulness was obedience to the many rituals found within Torah. The Pharisees also believed that God welcomed all persons to his Table. Listen to this amazing parable which is really about a Gentile convert to Judaism, how he should be treated. It captures the inclusive nature of Pharisaic ethics

“. . .A king had a number of sheep and goats which went out every morning to the pasture, and returned in the evening to the stable. One day a stag joined the flock and grazed with the sheep, and returned with them. Then the shepherd said to the king, "There is a stag which goes out with the sheep and grazes with them, and comes home with them." And the king loved the stag exceedingly. And he commanded the shepherd, saying, "Give heed to this stag, that no man beat it"; and when the sheep returned in the evening, he would order that the stag should have food and drink. Then the shepherds said to him, "My Lord, you have many goats and sheep and kids, and you give us no directions about these, but about this stag you give us orders day by day." Then the king replied, "It is the custom of the sheep to graze in the pasture, but the stags dwell in the wilderness, and it is not their custom to come among men in the cultivated land. But to this stag who has come to us and lives with us, should we not be grateful that he has left the great wilderness, where many stags and gazelles feed, and has come to live among us? It behooves us to be grateful." So too spoke the Holy One: "I owe great thanks to the stranger, in that he has left his family and his father's house, and has come to dwell among us; therefore I order in the Law: 'Love the stranger'" (Deuteronomy 10:19).

I can hear Jesus telling this story. Yet Jesus criticized Pharisees to be sure, but not because they represented a dangerously wrong understanding of God’s will for us, but because they were so close to his understanding of what God wishes for us. Jesus’ quarrel with the Pharisees is a quarrel between brothers, it’s within the family and it is a quarrel not unlike those that continue today among people of faith.

The heated exchange in today’s Gospel focuses on the practice of the laws of purity and cleanliness. It was noticed that some of Jesus’ followers had not washed their hands prior to eating – sort of reminiscent of a younger sister squealing to mom about the failure of brother to wash up before dinner (hmm, I recall something about that!). As part of a culture that disinfects everything and is captivated by creating pleasing smells - I love the little gadget that sees your movement, blinks at you and goes “phoust” with a soft jet of pleasing smells - we are not that far removed from this story’s setting.

The cue to the real problem in this confrontation comes in Jesus’ reference to Isaiah – “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. . .”  The ritual of washing one’s hands is symbolic for the holiness of living, an outward sign of faithfulness to Torah and the Will of God. But holiness of living includes more than a private act of sanitation in the preparation for a meal. That becomes Jesus’ point. Jesus lays before them and us what he sees as a misrepresentation of Torah by his religious brothers. He reaches out to recover the complete sense of Torah, the communal nature of living in the mind of God – that holiness even more importantly includes what comes out of a person – the ethical acts of mercy, compassion and a questing after justice and fairness that he did not see in the day to day actions of his brothers in faith. Complete holiness is found in the call to walk humbly with your God in doing justice and loving mercy as Amos the prophet had taught.

In our lectionary, we begin a study of the epistle of James this week. James, the brother of Jesus, was the leader of the Jerusalem Church. He was fairly conservative theologically. He believed for example that Gentile converts to Christianity had to first become Jews, a view that put him at serious odds with Paul. James would lose that debate.

What is interesting about this epistle for us today is that James picks up on this recovery of the complete sense of faithfulness to Torah. James’ encouragement is to be more than “hearers of the word” – more than washers of the hands.   How well we understand what we have been created to be comes in what we do outwardly within the many communities we find ourselves connected – home, work, church, neighborhood, nation and the world. How is our purity of living expressed with others? As James instructs, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress . . .” a message not unlike the other New Testament Epistles - "give evidence of the hope within you" (1Pet 3:15ff), that "faith without works is dead" (James 2:14-26), that our judgment depends on care for brother and sister (Rom 14:10-12).

On the eve to the funeral for Senator Ted Kennedy bloggers were busy expressing grave concern that this would turn into some kind of liberal political rally. What I found most striking while watching the funeral yesterday morning was that the most political moment occurred not from the eulogy by the President or by remarks from family members or even from within the sermon. The most political moment was the reading of the Gospel, these painful words of the Gospel of Matthew - “Lord, when did we see you?”

[The King] will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Amen I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. (Matthew 25)

The religious challenge for us today is the same that Jesus confronted with the Pharisees – embracing the whole will of God in our quest to be faithful. Among the many communities we interact within, our time within a church community such as Grace serves a unique purpose beyond a place of prayer, study and praise. Our faith community is something of a laboratory, a place of experimentation, a place to perfect this notion of embracing the mind of God in our heart and by our actions, the union of hearing and doing. With each other we practice doing for one another and perfecting what we are called to live in the greater world. It is here we receive the strength from one another and from the Table Eucharist to carry on. But this is a lab and all is not perfection and so it is here in our unfortunate moments of harshness and the lacking of kindness and understanding that we also find the grace of forgiveness and healing that we owe each other in Christ Jesus. We are all works in progress in terms of a life in God and need to regard one another with charity and the understanding of our common journey toward faithfulness in ministry.

I leave you today with this to consider from Francis Beaumont, a dramatist in the 17th century English Renaissance theater; he noted – “Faith without works is like a bird without wings; though she may hop with her companions on earth, yet she will never fly with them in the heavens.”   Amen.2