Pasadena Presbyterian Church Sermon Text
August 31, 2003

"Graces Human and Divine"
Preached by The Rev. Gregory Norton

Gregory Norton, Minister of Music at Pasadena Presbyterian Church, is ordained as a permanent deacon in the United Methodist Church.

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

(17)  Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. (18) In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.  (19) You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; (20) for your anger does not produce God's righteousness.

(21) Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.  (22) But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.  (23) For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; (24) for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.  (25) But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act-they will be blessed in their doing.

(26) If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless.  (27) Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

James 1: 17-27

(1) Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, (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."

 Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

When a group of people of my generation are informally discussing religion, usually somebody comes up with something resembling the following:  "I don't go to church.  I consider myself a spiritual person, I was brought up Christian.  But these days I just don't feel like I need the institution."

Now, depending on the person and the amount of pain they have experienced with the Church in the past, this initial statement might be followed by their reasons for not needing the Church:  the "trappings" get in the way of a spiritual life; the people in the Church are hypocrites; the Church is not accepting enough, or its rules are too restrictive; they have never forgotten/ forgiven what the Church taught them or didn't teach them during childhood.

At first glance, Jesus seems to be choosing up similar "sides" in today's lesson.  Here are the Pharisees again, the True Believers of Jesus' time.  In this passage they are trying to get Jesus to condemn himself by not upholding the Jewish purity laws.  In rebuttal Jesus says that it is the things "within" that matter, not the outside things.  "Be spiritual inside yourself," he seems to be telling the crowd in v. 15, "for it's the things within the human heart that matter."

Pharisees.  They appear a lot in the Gospels, and usually in an unflattering light.  It's tempting to discount them as religious fanatics.  Historians tell us that they were a reform group within ancient Judaism who were attempting to normalize the purity practices of the temple into the daily life of Jewish homes.  Some commentators even hold that many of the Pharisees' core beliefs were similar to those of the early Christian movement.  That may be the reason that the Gospels continually portray them as Jesus' enemies - they were perceived as "the competition!"  In this encounter there is no missing the Gospel writer's intention to use them to represent the religious and cultural status quo.  And they hand Jesus another chance to show that he is about a new thing. 

All of us are, in some way, Pharisees.  It's a universal tendency that the Pharisees are exhibiting in this story.  Like them, we all adopt outward practices and habits that help us tell who is "in" and who is "out" of our group.  We may not demand that everyone follow our adopted set of "laws," but it sure is reassuring when we observe certain conventions being followed by others.  Then we know our own.

That was what the Jewish rules concerning Kosher diet and ritual washing were really about.  They served to remind the Chosen People who they were and to make clear the distinction between them and the foreign nations that surrounded them.  The rules probably had practical health benefits as well ... did anyone see the review in yesterday's Times of a new book entitled, "What Would Jesus Eat?"  The author bases his assumptions about our Lord's diet on the Jewish dietary laws, and suggests that Americans might be less "super-sized" today if they followed the Biblical rules about what to eat and drink.  

But no Rabbi, then or now, would have argued that these rules were somehow more important than the shema - which is the essence of the law:  to love God with all of one's heart, mind and strength.  So then why were these Pharisees after Jesus, picking all these "nits" about things that were of secondary importance?

That is the fundamental challenge that Jesus is putting before us in today's readings:   to draw the balance between human things and divine things.  What are the "commandments of God" and not merely "human traditions" spoken of in verse 8?  And, to add one more layer of decision-making, what is the proper relationship between the two things?  Obviously God's commandments are more important than human traditions, but does that mean that they are the only important things?

A wise preacher once said that there is really only one sermon in Christianity: Love God and love your neighbor.  All the rest is explanation.  That certainly sounds a lot like shema, and the centrality of that idea is a primary theological "bridge" that links Christianity with the old covenant that preceded Jesus. 

So the sin of the Pharisees, and one that we inherit, is to cling to the explanations - in their case the particular rules and regulations that defined the faith community.  While they were doing that, they seemed to forget about loving God and neighbor.  They forgot about the essence of the law.

It is the same for us.  It is much easier to try to conform to any number of rules about what it means to be religious than to transform our hearts to love with Christ-like love.  It is much easier to busy ourselves with endlessly talking about doing Christ's work, instead of actually loving each other. 

"Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves," we just read from the Book of James.  "If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless.  Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world."

There's that wise preacher's one sermon again!

For the rest of this sermon, I want to think together about what this balancing means for the Church.

While this distinction between God's commandments and human tradition has ethical dimensions for each of us individually, it is the Church that has been the place where the tradition is kept.  The Church is constantly struggling with the balance between the commandments of God and traditions of human origin; the balance of being doers AND hearers of the word - not hearers only. 

Defining this balance lies at the heart of every ecclesiastical debate.  When embroiled in a disagreement, what law shall we follow?  How do we discern for ourselves and for the community of faith? 

Whenever the Church disagrees, one of the first things we fear for is the "unity" of the Church.  This usually means that we are afraid that, once a decision is made, the "losing" faction will leave, taking their members, money, real estate and some of the Church's effectiveness with them. 

We have heard this threat made again recently among our Episcopalian brothers and sisters as that church's General Convention confirmed the first openly gay bishop in Christian history.  Lest we be tempted to point fingers, the very same fear has been repeatedly voiced as the PC (USA) and my own United Methodist Church debates and studies and tables and ponders what to do with gay and lesbian Christians who ask to fulfill their calling to lead the Church.

While the integrity of the Church and the power of its voice are issues that should matter very much to every believer, we risk making them idols when they keep us in a perpetual state of "analysis paralysis," seemingly afraid of doing anything that might cause controversy.   

This idolatrous view of church unity seems to be based on a definition of the Church as a community of people who conform to an unchangeable set of moral teachings.  "God said it, I believe it, that settles it" is the rally cry of the self-appointed defenders of piety.

But the reality is that we are an evolving, changing Church.  "God is working His purpose out," as the old hymn says.  "Reformed and ever reforming" has a familiar ring here in the Presbyterian Church.  We are not called to make idols of the Church's history, or of its doctrines and writings, or even of our Holy Bible itself.  Human understanding about these things will change, and always has.  But what does not change is our calling to be a faithful people.  What does not change is our calling to hear the word, and then become doers, to live out God's Word in our time and place. 

In his letters, the Apostle Paul calls the Church - all of us - the Body of Christ.  As he develops that metaphor, Paul draws the parallel between the specialized functions of a human body's various parts and the specialized gifts of the people who make up the Church, Christ's body in the world. 

This vision of the Church offers a new way to unity, a unity that depends on diversity.  The Church's unity becomes possible when it sheds the ways of this world, in which everyone is either a "winner" or a "loser."  The Church's unity becomes possible when it is a place where broken people can come to safely search for their best selves, rather than a place for the self-righteous to come to sharpen their weapons.  Such a church is a place where it is possible for God's people to share their journeys together, bearing one another's burdens and sharing each other's joys.

Structure and governance are necessary to make this happen, of course. If I didn't believe that I would not be giving my life to the Church.  But administration and structure and rules exist to assist us in our primary task of forming community.  The Church exists to faithfully do God's work of loving, not as a means of enforcing some unwavering doctrine.  Only when the Church strikes such a balance will we live under what the writer of the Book of James calls "the perfect law - the law of liberty." 

Another idol of the Church today is its membership rolls.  In the mainline churches, more ink has been spilt on this subject than any other in the past 25 years. 

Since the end of the post-war baby boom that filled newly-constructed church buildings across the land, we've experienced ever-shrinking attendance and influence in American society.  This has hurt.

In response, many of us have offered books, seminars, speeches and sermons to address the problem.  The prescriptions are numerous.  Pastors and others flock to hear the latest ideas, to pick up the latest books and tapes.  And all of them have some kernel of value; we must have numbers to remain viable as an institution.  So we hear:  we must develop attractive programs and preach relevant sermons so that people will come.  We must market the Church with the best techniques we can borrow from Madison Avenue.  Worship services should be held at more convenient times with more narrowly-focused styles of music and preaching.  Make it more visual.  Make it more relevant.  Make it a one-stop spiritual shopping experience. Replace pews with couches and chairs.  Build Coffee Bars. 

James writes, "If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless.  Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world." 

It is so tempting for us to busy ourselves with the preserving of the institutional church.  We are so afraid that the Church may close its doors on our watch.  So we in the Church spend our time developing programs instead of relationships, debating the meaning of "human precepts" instead of living out the love of Jesus; being "hearers who forget" rather than "doers who act."

Meanwhile, our neighbors - who are God's children too - need us to do something.  A basic education, a safe place to live and an affordable way to see a doctor are things that are unavailable to many children and their families in our community and nation.  I'm talking about today, right now.  And this is happening right here, in the land of opportunity, in the wealthiest nation in human history.

And then we could spend the rest of the day talking about the rest of the world!  How will we - the Church, the Body of Christ - be doers who act, faithfully following God's commandments?

Of course we want to fill the Church, but why is it empty?  So many outside the life of the Church say that they are spiritual, but they have no time for the institution.  Why is that?  It is because so many of us in the Church have gotten used to the "busy-ness," the "industry" of being about Christ's work.  Our despair about shrinking numbers makes us turn ever more inward so that we are unable to hear the cries of those in need, who surround us on every side.

We have made idols of our institutions and programs.  We have lost our balance - the balance between God's commandments and human tradition.  "Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves." 

Friends, the Body of Christ has so much to do.  To be sure, we must work to fill the church with all kinds of people, with their vast diversity of gifts and graces.  And I believe the Church is full and will be full - in every way - when its people find that balance to which Jesus called the Pharisees so long ago and to which He calls us this morning.

But the ultimate point of filling the church is never the mere survival of the institution.  The point of filling the church is so that the church can pour itself out:

• pour out understanding where there is division,

• pour out expertise where there is ignorance, 

• pour out welcome where there are walls,

• pour out abundance where there is poverty. 

The list is endless -  we all know that.  But first we must regain our balance, and in so doing we will fill the Church.  Then we can pour ourselves out to a world that is broken and in need and in pain.  In the words of James we might even be bold enough to call such a religion "pure and undefiled before God."  O Come, Holy Spirit, and fill the Church.  AMEN.

Gregory Norton is the author of the following hymn: 
Come Fill the Church

Come fill the church, all you that know Christ's love.
To dusty portals bring new breath and light.
Venture to lay old barriers aside,
And dare to welcome, honor and delight.  

Come fill the church with partners joined in faith,
Confirming love in all the ways its found.
Let sacred space receive all doubt and fear,
Let faithful struggle lead to common ground.

Come fill the church that's empty for so long;
Cast out old idols and old heresy.
Trust and affirm another's way and call,
And clear the path that all may serve and be.

Come fill the church, then let it be poured out
To quench the thirsty ones who hope to find
A different way to order human life.
Built weak and strong: the church of Christ's design.

 

(c) Copyright 2003 by Gregory Norton.  All rights reserved.  Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution.