And Let It Begin with Me - Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Author: Pastor Scott Schul
September 01, 2024
Way back in January, Linda and I
spent a week in Cyprus. We were guests
of the Orthodox Bishop of Limmasol, an invitation that came about because he
and I had a friend in common, a professor in Maine who knew the right people to
contact. It opened a bunch of unexpected
doors which allowed us to explore the ancient religious sites and traditions of
that Greek speaking Mediterranean island.
Linda and I were nervous about the
trip. We didn’t know much Greek, and
wondered how we’d communicate. We knew
even less about the culture. Things went
pretty well the first few days, and then on a Saturday the Bishop insisted we
travel to one of the little villages in the countryside because he was going to
ordain a young man from that village to be a priest, and the Bishop thought it’d
be a unique thing for us to see.
One of the monks drove us
there. The village was full of little
winding roads with steep hills and narrow streets lined with old stone
walls. The church was quite old and very
plain looking, not ornate or fancy. It
reflected the humble and gritty character of the town and its people. The monk explained that this was probably the
first ordination at this church in hundreds of years. We asked him why it’d been so long. “Ah, Scott, this is a rough little
village. People like to drink and fight,
not serve as priests.”
We took our place way in the back
of the church, because we knew the service would be in Greek and we wouldn’t
understand it. We were afraid we might
sit or stand at the wrong time or do something that would at worst offend
someone or at least expose us as the clueless foreigners we were. And so we did our best to be inconspicuous
and invisible.
That worked for a while, until the
Bishop decided that we’d never be able to see things from way back there. And so in the middle of the service, he sent
a monk back to bring us up front, in the same row as the Bishop, in the midst
of the ordinand’s closest family and friends. There went our plan to be inconspicuous and invisible…
At the end of a really long
service, I breathed a sigh of relief. We
hadn’t stood when everyone else sat, and we hadn’t sat when they stood. We didn’t blurt out anything in English, or
swing our arms and accidentally club someone in the face either. Somehow, we had survived a Greek Cypriot
ordination without causing an international scandal.
At least that’s what I
thought. As we were leaving the church,
I noticed a few elderly villagers speaking in an animated way, and they seemed
to be looking our way. I made the
mistake of asking my host what they were saying. It turns out that they were very offended
that Linda had crossed her legs in church. As the monk explained to us, in that culture, enduring long church
liturgies in stiff, bitterly uncomfortable wooden pews is a badge of honor and
a mark of suffering that displays one’s faithfulness and piety. Crossing your legs is a way to get
comfortable, and you aren’t supposed to be comfortable in church. Because if Jesus could be nailed to a cross
for you, then surely you can sit for a couple hours in a hard wooden pew with
your feet firmly planted on the ground!
As you can imagine, we felt awful
that we had upset those villagers and distracted them from the worship
service. But we also got a little
defensive and grumpy too. How dare those
people judge our love of Jesus by something as silly as crossing legs. Shame on them! But as we cooled down, we realized that the
very same thing happens in our country too.
I’m old enough to remember a time
when you got the evil eye in church if you showed up wearing sneakers or
shorts, or if someone judged a man’s hair to be too long or a woman’s dress too
short. People these days may be a little
more careful about what they say out loud, but those kinds of
evaluations still happen, even today.
It’s a terribly vulnerable feeling
to visit a church for the first time. Your appearance is just the surface level
of concern. Even if you look and sound
like everyone else, you can feel so awkward, exposed, and judged if you don’t know
when to stand or sit, how to navigate the hymnal, whether to cross yourself or
bow, or how to receive communion. Sometimes
the problem isn’t that church people say something offensive, but that they say
nothing at all. I know that striking up
a conversation with a stranger can be hard, but silence can leave the
impression that newcomers aren’t welcome.
Here at Grace we like to say that
every body is welcome. Deep down I know we
mean it, and we do a pretty good job with our hospitality. But we aren’t perfect. I’m sure that despite our best efforts, some
people have had an experience in our church or in other churches here in
State College that left them feeling just as judged and misunderstood as we
felt that day in Cyprus. If that’s ever
happened to you, I’m really sorry.
If it’s any consolation, the same
thing happened to Jesus and his disciples. In today’s Gospel we read that the religious leaders were upset that
Jesus and his friends had not washed their hands. The concern of the religious leaders wasn’t
related to germs and sanitary practices. Rather, the handwashing was part of their religious traditions and their
piety. The fear on the part of the
religious leaders was that if you couldn’t get the external stuff right, then
you probably got everything else wrong too, including the theology, which made
you dangerous and suspect.
Jesus’s response was to refocus the
leaders from obsessing about external practices and traditions and to
instead look inward because, as Jesus said, “it is from within, from the
human heart, that evil intentions come.” Jesus is right of course. Think
of it in terms of a house. If the roof
is leaking, the rafters are ready to collapse from termites, and the floors and
foundations have rotted away, no brand of exterior paint in the world will
transform that wreck into a palace.
The human heart is no
different. As one theologian has noted,
“the real source of evil in this world is what lies within us. This is why humanity needs salvation, and not
just reform.”1 It’s not our
external practices of piety, our clothing, or our hairdos that reveal our
faithfulness. What matters is our
heart. Is it filled with love for Jesus? Is it filled with love for our neighbor? That’s what matters. But we get caught up in the externals
instead, because it’s easier to blame someone else for the world’s problems. So we get worked up about the government, the
media, or some other group. “If only
THEY would change, then everything would be fine.”
That’s an exhausting way to live… When I was growing up in the 70s, a popular
contemporary Christian song was “Let There Be Peace on Earth.” The line in the song that always stuck with
me was, “And let it begin with me.” Friends, that’s Jesus’s counsel to us in today’s Gospel. Yes, the world usually seems like one big,
ugly dumpster fire. No matter how hard
you try, you aren’t going to fix it all. But you can make a positive difference in the world by tending
your own heart. Let it begin with you.
It won’t happen overnight, and none
of us can do it alone. But starting is
easy. It only takes a prayer. “Lord, I spend way too much time worrying
what others are doing, and not enough time worrying about myself. I want to sweep the cobwebs out of my heart
and love you and my neighbor more fully. But I can’t do it by myself. Will
you help me?” Amen.
Citations
1 Bo
Giertz, The New Testament Devotional Commentary, Vol. 1, p. 176.
Copyright Rev. Scott E. Schul, 2024 All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.
Gospel
Text: Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
1 Now when the Pharisees
and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around [Jesus], 2 they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that
is, without washing them. 3 (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do
not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition
of the elders; 4 and they do not eat anything from the market unless
they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the
washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) 5 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?" 6 He said
to them, "Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is
written, 'This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts
are far from me; 7 in vain do they worship me, teaching human
precepts as doctrines.'
8 You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition."
14 Then he called the crowd again and said to them, "Listen to me, all of
you, and understand: 15 there is nothing outside a person that by
going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile."
21 For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come:
fornication, theft, murder, 22 adultery, avarice, wickedness,
deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. 23 All these
evil things come from within, and they defile a person."
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