But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos: 5: 24)
The Sermons At Calvary
By The Reverend Richard H.
Humke
TRADITIONS ARE IMPORTANT BUT CAN BE DANGEROUS
September 3, 2006, 17-B, Calvary
Church
Deuteronomy 4:1-9
Psalm 15
Ephesians 6:10-20
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Our
Gospel today signifies the end of the kosher laws for those who follow Jesus,
for he makes it very clear that nothing that is outside the person is ever the
problem, but what is inside that person, in the heart. In this Gospel Jesus says, “…there is
nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come
out are what defile.” And he then
enumerates them: fornication, theft,
murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander,
pride and folly.
Not only
does it spell the end of kosher here, that practice and belief that certain
foods are unclean; and that certain rituals are required in the preparation of
food; and that certain foods, like milk and meat, cannot be mixed. But he also signifies a different way to
look at one’s relationship to God, a way that examines, not the ritual actions
of the worshipper, but the heart. For
it is in the heart of humanity, not in the animate and inanimate world around,
that evil lies.
This is
not absolutely new with Jesus, of course, for some of the prophets in the Old
Testament also protested the replacement of inward disposition by outward
form. In the prophet Amos God says,
I hate, I
despise your feasts,
and I take no delight in your solemn
assemblies.
Even
though you offer me your burnt offerings and cereal offerings,
I will not accept them.
Take away
from me the noise of your songs;
to the melody of your harps I will
not listen.
But let
justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an
ever-flowing stream. (5:21-24)
Can
you hear those last words, particularly those of you who are near my age, and
not be drawn back in your mind to the 1960’s when Martin Luther King challenged
us with those very words at a time when our nation was torn between holding on
to the tradition of racial injustice or launching out into what we hoped would
be a new world of racial harmony. That
it has not happened (though some things are better, of course) only lends
support to what I say that it is in the heart of humanity that evil lies. All good can be corrupted by that evil
within.
We’re back
in Mark’s Gospel again today after four weeks with the Gospel of John and his
perorations on bread. And we will stay
with Mark for the rest of this year until we begin a new year with Advent early
in December.
Mark has
told us during this year in his straight-forward way the story of Jesus, and
while his words always have more meaning than readily meets the eye, as is true
with all of the Gospels, he is, nonetheless, less complicated than some of the
other Gospels, particularly John. His
words have a directness to them, and because the message appears to be less
hidden and any arguments less convoluted, we may respond more easily. But we would do well to remember that, as in
any reading of Scripture, there is always more than meets the eye.
In today’s
Gospel Jesus is chided by the Pharisees, his ever-present opponents, because
Jesus’ disciples did not wash their hands before eating. Since this was many centuries before germ
awareness, we must rid ourselves of the idea that the Pharisees were right and
Jesus’ disciples were wrong for not washing their hands before eating. We all have been told to do so by our parents
and many of us, in turn, have passed the admonition on to our own children and
grandchildren so that we may be puzzled by this passage. After all, isn’t it good to wash your hands
before eating? Isn’t it good to wash an
apple from Kroger before eating it?
As a
hand-washer myself, and I hope a not-too-obsessive one, I rather think the
Pharisees had a point when they “thoroughly wash(ed) their hands,” as our
Gospel says and did “not eat anything from the market unless they wash(ed) it.” But to put too fine a point on it is to miss
the point – which is that the washing was a ritual washing, much as my washing
of hands later in the Liturgy today after preparing the altar and before
consecrating the Bread and Wine is a ritual washing.
And Jesus
and his disciples, by not observing such rituals, were challenging the
religious leaders and reminding them, not too subtly, that you can observe all
the outward forms you want, but God cares only about the heart. You can do everything right ritually but
stand in opposition to God. Jesus said
to the Pharisees in today’s Gospel, “You abandon the commandment of God and
hold to human tradition.”
Evelyn
Underhill in her classic book on worship says,
Ritualism
represents the constant tendency of the human creature to attach absolute value
to his own activities…ritual always acts as a conservative force. It is the very home of tradition…But this
irreplaceable function carries with it its own perils of exaggeration and
over-emphasis, leading straight to the absurdities of the ritualist and the
“folly of the sacristy.” (p.35)
And she
quotes Father Benson, who says, “(Ritual) is not for the purpose of pleasing
ourselves.”
I would
not want to do away with all traditions, and certainly not with all ritual
traditions, because I believe the human being needs such things. I believe that God has made us in such a way
that we must express our devotion and commitment through outward, repeatable
acts. Traditions are good but have a
dangerous edge to them unless they are recognized in their proper place. But in themselves traditions are good. I like them even more as I have gotten older
than I did when I was young. Those
wonderful words from Tevye in Fiddler on
the Roof say it so well:
Because of
our traditions, we’ve kept our balance for many, many years. Here…we have traditions for everything – how
to eat, how to sleep, how to wear clothes.
For instance, we always keep our heads covered and always wear a little
prayer shawl. This shows our constant
devotion to God. You may ask, “How did
this tradition start?” I’ll tell you –
I don’t know! But it’s a
tradition. Because of our traditions,
everyone knows who he is and what God expects him to do.
When
traditions, however, lose their meaning it is best to discard them and move
on. Some of you may remember those days
in the Episcopal Church when no woman would think of entering a church – on
Sundays or at any other time – without covering her head. (Which, as an aside, makes me wonder why we
are so concerned with Muslim women covering their heads if they want to do so,
since we are only a few years from a related practice ourselves.) I would bet that somewhere upstairs in the
choir room there is a drawer filled with beanies, or perhaps four-cornered
floppy hats, because ladies in the choir, being good, devout, subservient
women, always covered their heads, as St. Paul demanded.
The
practice became more outrageous as the years went by, as women assumed
leadership roles that formerly had been the possession of men only. But still
the head coverings continued for a while – hats, babushkas, mantillas,
hankies. Imagine how startled I was one
Sunday, and how much I had to draw upon my priestly impassivity, when I came to
a woman at the Communion rail who had a $20 bill bobby pinned to her hair! Since that was after the offering had been
received, I knew we hadn’t gotten THAT one!
There
is nothing I have said this morning that you didn’t already know. That’s an awful thing to say after having
taken up 15 minutes of your time, but I think it’s true. And it is likely true most any Sunday. It is not so much that we learn new things
as that we are reminded of things we learned at another time and have not
thought about very much of late.
I
love our traditions, and I do not want to lose them. But as Fr. Benson reminds us, they are not for pleasing ourselves
but, he would say, for honoring God. In
any case they are not at the heart of the Faith and could all be swept away in
a moment while the truth of the Gospel continues on.
For we
really do know, don’t we, that it is the human heart that God cares about
because it is from the human heart that evil intentions come, as Jesus tells us
today. But it is from the human heart,
as well, that good comes forth, and it is that which we would want our
traditions to strengthen
Richard
H. Humke