Sermons for the Month
Create a Clean Heart … Again and Again
DATE: September 3rd, 2006
SERVICE: 13th Sunday After Pentecost
TEXT: Mark 7:1-8, 14-15,21-23“To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN
I walked into a local grocery store this past week and noticed that there was a container of hand cleansers hanging on the wall by the door. It was, evidently, an invitation to eliminate germs before handling the food - especially in the produce department. For me it was yet another reminder of one of those cultural changes that have occurred in my life-time. While my mother might have admonished me to wash my hands before a meal as a child, there was no such thing as hand sanitizer, and certainly not as much focus on the dreaded presence of germs on this or that surface. But, that was in the dark ages before people carried around bottles of water and drinking fountains had a practical purpose. I note this change because it may cause us to be more sympathetic to the references to hand washing in today's Gospel lesson than would have been true a decade ago. The recent emphasis on killing 99.9 percent of the germs might cause us to think that we understand why, in first century Palestine, washing hands before eating was a matter of grave concern, and why the fact that Jesus disciples failed to do so was a source of controversy. The problem is, though, that we probably do not "get it" because germs were really not the issue. All that hand washing was based in tradition, a good tradition I might add, that Jesus felt had gone awry. Among the "traditions" of the ancient Jewish faith which had been developed to deal with issues that were not specifically addressed in the written commandments and laws had to do with hand washing. The written law was that those who served as Temple priests had to wash their hands before entering as a sign that the place was holy … that God was present. In the oral tradition this idea was expanded to include lay people, and hand washing became a sign of sanctity or holiness. So it was that when people washed their hands before a meal it was a sign that not only the food, but mealtime itself, was sacred - blessed by God. That sounds like a good tradition to me. Where it seemed to get off track, though, was in the details concerning how to do it and what happened if you did it wrong or ignored the tradition all together. A person who did not follow the prescribed method risked being unclean, and thus separated from God, and the followers of Jesus were in that category. So, Jesus reminds his listeners that God's will and God's commandments take precedence over human tradition, and that following those traditions does not necessarily mean that one is being faithful to God. Then Jesus goes on to make the radical statement (radical to Jewish ears at the time) that food - even that which is eaten with unwashed hands - cannot make a person unclean. Instead, it is those things that come out of people - those things that people choose to do - which create a gulf between them and God. That's the part that we really need to hear; everything else is background to help us understand why Jesus said what he did. The point is that Jesus wants us to pay attention to the condition of our hearts. He, no doubt, understands heart in the Hebrew sense as the center or core of the person, the inner self. And his important message is this - if our hearts are broken, damaged, or filled with that which is harmful, then what comes out of us is potentially evil. All the "religious" behavior in the world cannot heal us. We can act faithful, but not be faith-filled, and sooner or later, what we lack will become obvious in how we think and live. What we need is to detoxify our hearts from the poisons filling them and allow them to be healed, by the power of God. The problem is not external. Only then - when our hearts are attended to - will our hearing AND our doing the Word be a blessing rather than and obligation and really make a difference in the world. It occurs to me that there may be some tendency on our part to think about other people we know who obviously have stinky, damaged hearts, but not put ourselves in that category. If that's true then we really need to pay attention lest we are like those who Jesus mentioned as he quoted the Prophet Isaiah, "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." I'm reminded of something I heard African American author and orator Maya Angelou say a number of years ago when she spoke at the University of Akron. She was quoting the play write Terrence, a freed Roman slave, who said, "I am a human being. Nothing human is alien to me." She noted that if we really grasped that statement, it would change us because we would realize that each one of us is capable of feeling or doing anything that another human has felt or done. Let me quote her, "…No matter how heinous the crime, you can never say, 'Oh, I could never do that.' Not if a human did it. You can say, 'I never mean to do it.' But, if a human did it I have within myself the capability of doing that thing." That's an equalizing thought, isn't it? It's a reminder that the warning in today's Gospel lesson applies to all of us; we all can have - and probably do have - inside damage that taints our outer lives. And, even if it's not apparent to anyone around us, and we work hard to ignore it, God is intimately aware of the problem. Given all that, I bet I know what you want now. You want me to tell you how to heal your heart. I certainly wish there was an easy answer to that question, but I'm fairly sure that the method for healing is as varied as the injuries that were sustained. But there is one aspect of this that is universally true. We cannot do it alone. While it's true that we must be open to, and participate in, the process, it is God - always God - that restores that which has been damaged deep within us. At least once every year we read Psalm 51. It's the hymn that King David wrote after he committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband killed. In traditional worship we sometimes sing a portion of it as an offertory. "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me…." In other words, "You do it God; you cleanse my heart; you replace all that brokenness and all those poisonous thoughts with that which is new and right." I have this feeling that when we come to that point of saying, "Help me," God says, "OK, I'll lead, you follow", and as we are open to the Holy Spirit's guidance the healing commences.
Little by little the poison seeps out and the cracks heal. We are faith-filled and that leads to our being faithful. Are we perfect? No. Is there sometimes further damage or do we allow poison in again? Often that's the case. But, hopefully, we also are quicker to cry out for renewal. "Create in me a clean heart, AGAIN, O God." And our God is one who says, "OK", again and again and again.
AMEN