Wadhams United Church of Christ
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Sermon by Steve Smith Order of Service
August 17, 2008, When God Groans Matthew 15:10 – 28
I’m about to make some broad, sweeping statements about comparative religion, and my hyperactive conscience requires that I provide you with a disclaimer. Technically, I’ve never even taken a course on the subject, and I can’t honestly tell you that I’ve ever even gone so far as to read a text book or any kind of primer that deals with the topic. In the spirit of good oratorical practice, however, I’m simply going to overlook these minor deficiencies and override my shortcomings by speaking authoritatively and perhaps a little more loudly than usual. And if I suspect that I’m on shaky ground or getting into trouble, there’s a good chance that I will become uncharacteristically animated, so as to distract you from my glaring lack of knowledge.
What I wanted to say (before my conscience so rudely interrupted me) is that the modern practice of comparative religion wants to find the common ground among widely divergent belief systems. While most of us are sympathetic to such an approach, the reality is that if peoples most deeply held beliefs actually had that much in common with another religion, there wouldn’t be so many different choices on the menu, and there would have been a lot less bloodshed throughout human history.
In my studied opinion ((increasing volume)) the history and comparison of religion has more to do with the disagreements than it does the common ground between us. It has to do with the fractious nature of humanity, and our seeming inability to get along with people who think differently from us. What we can fail to recognize as we begin the study of a religion is that their presuppositions are completely different from ours. The way they define and characterize their deity, the universe, and humanity’s role within it and in relationship to divinity is like a foreign language to us. The terms they use to communicate their understanding of the divine may be the exact same words that we use, but the meaning is the polar opposite of what we think or envision when we use those words.
Because Christianity has its roots in Judaism, our modern emphasis on unity wants to put a good face on the schism which has radically divided the two groups over the past two thousand years. While a common ground approach to Judaism might give us deeper insight into and a better appreciation of the Jewish context of the New Testament, it won’t help us understand the dynamics behind today’s reading. Today’s selection jumps right into the middle of a narrative section where Jesus has just had a rather heated exchange with the Pharisees, the perennial bad-guys of the New Testament. The Pharisees had asked Jesus a question that was puzzling them: “Why do your disciples break the tradition of our elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”
Here I spent all those years thinking my mother had invented the whole process of washing my hands before I ate, and it turns out the Pharisees had it figured out thousands of years ago! But the question runs deeper than hygiene and what kinds of icky germs and other micro-organisms might be thriving on our hands. In fact, it is one of the most important issues in the whole gospel story. It represents a head-on clash between Jesus and the leaders of the orthodox Jewish religion. On this occasion we don’t have to presume that the Pharisees and scribes are there to try to trick Jesus. They are genuinely bewildered by what he and his followers are doing, and in a very short time they are going to genuinely outraged and shocked.
The basic importance of the passage is that the question and its answer represent the collision of two views of religion and two views of humanity’s response to God. The whole Jewish conception of clean and unclean is foreign to us. To our modern minds, we define clean in literal terms having to do with hygiene and with the absence of dirt or stains. To the Jewish mind, though, it was and is far more. When someone is clean in their context, it means that they are in a state of readiness to approach God and worship God. Being unclean means that they are unfit to do so. Being unclean has an alienating effect, because those who are observing the laws are not allowed to have contact with anything or anyone considered unclean. It means that the defiled will not be allowed into the Temple or synagogue for any religious observances other than those which will make them ritually clean again.
In that setting, failing to wash your hands in the correct manner would have provoked more than your mother’s wrath; in this context, it would have invited the very wrath of God. The Pharisees and Scribes simply could not comprehend why Jesus would have failed to instruct his disciples on this most basic of concepts. It was such a simple thing to do, and yet it meant so much in terms of how they understood God and how they believed God wants us to connect with God. After using a debating technique which answered their question with an even more penetrating question, Jesus proceeded to gather a crowd so that he could make a public service announcement.
“Listen to me,” he said to the impromptu gathering. I’m going to add a little color commentary so you can catch the full drift of what he was saying. “You know all that stuff that you’ve been taught about being clean and unclean? It doesn’t matter, because it isn’t what you put into your mouth that defiles you. What matters is what comes out of you, because it’s the stuff that comes out of you that defiles you.” For the scribes and Pharisees, for the devout Jew of Jesus’ day, this may well have been the most startling thing Jesus ever said. In a single pronouncement, Jesus dismissed the scribal and Pharisaic rituals and their ceremonial religion. With a single utterance, he abolished the dietary laws that make up a good share of the book of Leviticus.
His followers came up to him afterward to give him a debriefing on the debate. “You do know, don’t you, that the Pharisees were shocked by what you said? You hurt their feelings.” No wonder they were shocked. The very ground of their religion was cut from beneath their feet. If Jesus was right, their whole theory of religion was wrong. They identified religion and pleasing God with an exhaustive set of rules and regulations that literally dealt with every conceivable choice or decision a person would ever face. The dietary laws and the careful prescription for washing your hands in a particular way was an iconic symbol for an externally based approach to God.
Jesus identified religion and pleasing God in completely different terms. For him, what mattered most was not the external state of a person’s ritual observance of the law, but rather the internal state of that person’s heart, or inner life. The scribes and Pharisees immediately grasped what Jesus meant. His followers, on the other hand, were a little slower on the uptake. “Umm…” said Peter, “could you explain this to us?” At this point, Jesus probably rolled his eyes upward and groaned. Do you remember that nifty word “dense,” and how we used to use it (albeit sometimes a little too enthusiastically) to describe someone whose intellectual skills were deficient? That’s pretty much what Jesus said to Peter. “Are you still so dense that you don’t get it?”
Up until a few years ago, I never would have admitted to being so dense that the meaning of Jesus’ words could ever have eluded me. I would have been compelled to answer him, “No, I understand each and every word you say with such perfect clarity that it sometimes frightens me.” Nowadays, there would be no hesitation whatsoever in my response: “Dense? You want dense? You’re looking at him. I am one with dense. I am all over it. It’s all over me. What were we talking about again?” The older I get, the more I realize I don’t have it all figured out. But that’s okay with me now, because it helps remind me that I’m not God. If the church of the ages could only have been a bit more humble on this point, there would have been fewer wars, less prosecution and torture of heretics, and a lot more service and ministry to the world.
But church leaders have seldom wanted to embrace the attitude of Jesus: “Just leave them alone. Eventually, they’ll lead their followers into a ditch.” Instead, when Christians gained the upper hand and had the power, they used it to humiliate and obliterate those who disagreed with them. So Jesus took a deep breath and explained it to his dense followers. It’s the stuff that comes out of our internal lives that make us unclean: evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, and slander. Eating with unwashed hands doesn’t defile us.
As I look at two thousand years of church history, over and over again I hear the groan of God, and sometimes a heart-rending cry of agony, as the voice of Jesus echoes through the ages: “Are you still so dense that you don’t get it?” When Augustine was inspired to vanquish his enemies under the sign of the cross, or when greedy and power-hungry knights went off to fight the infidels in the Crusades, or whenever Protestants and Catholics have slaughtered each other in the name of Jesus, God groaned: “Don’t you get it?” It’s not just the Christians who are guilty. When extremists of any faction decide that the best thing they can do with their lives is to blow themselves up on a busy street corner or in a crowded market, I can’t help but listen for the echoes of God’s groan.
Whenever representatives of a major religious group embrace the mindset that revenge and retaliation are the right paths for wrongs real and perceived, I can hear the faint rumbles of divine distress. Whenever the leadership of a country, a church, a political party, or a sect begins to demonize their opponents, I can feel the atmosphere become more dense and heavy, because that process of dehumanization is always the necessary precursor to harsh and brutal treatment. While disagreements and fractured relationships may be with us until we all get to heaven, it doesn’t mean that we have to be so dense as to do the things that will defile us by ridiculing, belittling, or debasing our antagonists.
For all the enlightened thinking that’s supposed to have elevated us to a higher and better plane of existence, I’m disturbed by how little progress humanity seems to have made in terms of loving our neighbor as we love ourselves. In a lot of ways, it’s easy to focus on external regulations and observances. It’s a whole lot easier to abstain from certain foods, or to wash our hands in a meticulous fashion, than it is to love the unlovable. It’s much more convenient than helping the needy at the cost of our own time, our own money, our own comfort, or our own pleasure.
There is an antidote to this devastating greed for power. There is an answer to God’s heart-rending groans. While it’s simple, it’s not necessarily easy or convenient. It’s a matter of looking past that which doesn’t really matter in order to extend love and compassion to the very people who are crying out in their own bewilderment, their own shock, or their own outrage. It’s a matter of setting aside our own agenda in favor of embracing God’s agenda to bring transformation to a suffering world. It’s a matter of paying attention when we hear the whisper of God’s groans echoing through the pain of the person or the people right in front of us.
It’s as simple as dropping a note in the mail, or making a phone call to say, “I’m thinking about you.” It’s as uncomplicated as offering a prayer for the person or people who are annoying us. It’s as unsophisticated as admitting to ourselves, to God, and to the people around us that while we might not understand why these things are happening, we do understand that the best possible response is one of compassion.
Order of Service August 17 , 2008 Back to Sermon
"NC" refers to The New Century Hymnal, The Pilgrim Press (1995)
Welcome, Announcements, Joys and Concerns
A Candle for Peace NC #575 (verse 4)
Call to Worship
Leader: Merciful God, we boldly pray to you, confident you will not reject us.
People: In spite of our human failings, your love continues to draw us together.
Leader: Be with us today, as we rejoice in the power of your love.
People: Sing with us today, as we proclaim the good news of your grace.
Leader: Rejoice with us today, as we celebrate our unity in Christ.
People: Open our hearts to your love, and show us how to love one another in spite of our differences.
Leader: Help us claim our heritage as your own children, and to live together in unity as your family.
Hymn NC #86 When Morning Guilds the Skies
Responsive Prayer
Leader: God of redeeming love, gather our hearts and minds into your presence. Bring us together in this time of prayer.
People: Merciful God, we confess that we have failed you. We sometimes doubt your power, or your willingness, to intervene in our lives.
Leader: We confess that we have failed those we love and those who depend upon us. We sometimes leave kind words unsaid, while saying words that are hurtful.
People: We withhold caring actions, while doing things that offend or wound others.
Leader: We confess that we have failed ourselves when we made feeble use of the gifts you have given us or failed to believe that you have given us any gifts at all.
People: We sometimes fail to allow ourselves to accept the forgiveness you offer for our inactivity when you call us to act. We fail to accept the grace you offer so that we may begin anew.
Leader: God, in your unfailing mercy, grant us the peace to part with past failures and the courage to graciously accept the future you offer.
People: In your steadfast love, renew a right attitude within us.
Leader: Secure in the embrace of your everlasting arms, may we be strengthened to serve you.
Pastoral Prayer, Lords Prayer
Hymn NC #439 A Mighty Fortress
Psalm 105:12-22, Genesis 45:1-15, Matt. 15:10-28
Sermon When God Groans
Offering, Doxology, Dedication
Hymn NC #479 God Is My Shepherd
Benediction
Leader: Fill our hearts to overflowing with your love and joy, O God.
People: May our hearts be saturated with peace as your showers of mercy rain down upon us.
Leader: Guide us now as we share with others the abundance of our joy.
People: Give us the vision to use our blessings to offer hope to others.
Leader: May our Creator, the maker of heaven and earth, pour out upon you all the blessings given to God’s beloved children.
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