Mark 7:1-8, 15, 21-23; James 1:22; 27; 2:14-17; September 1, 2024; Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Two church leaders, friends, once got into an argument about the purpose of the Sunday morning service.
One of them remarked that it should simply be to worship and extol God. To joyfully hear the Word read and proclaimed; to be forgiven and made comfortable in God’s grace. I mean isn’t that the purpose; isn’t that the point, they asked? So why not, as Pastor, give the people an easy, lovely, and warm message so that everyone might leave feeling fuzzy and good about their lives, saying, “Praise be, Amen!”
Pretty compelling.
But, the other friend wasn’t buying that completely and argued that while all of that is good and necessary, the purpose of the church service should primarily be to follow Christ, which is best achieved by shaking us up some, by issuing us a charge, so that we all would feel slightly uncomfortable in our complacency. So, to get us out there, in action, in Christ’s footsteps, such that our hands might get dirty as we become his agents of change, as we seek to make a visible difference in ourselves and in God’s creation.
Also, compelling.
But, what do you think, my friends? Which approach would be better? The first or the second? What, in the end, would be most pleasing not just to you, but to God?
Well, the two friends continued to lay out their cases, and with some bit of frowning and a whole lot of headshaking, each asking the other, “what would be the good of that!?” Ultimately, neither was able to convince the other of their own argument’s superior merit. But, for the sake of their friendship, and of the congregation’s health and stability, they compromised and landed on the conclusion that it’s probably better to achieve a bit of both on Sunday morning, using whatever scripture’s tone is and passage for the day as the foundation.
So, sometimes praise. And sometimes conviction. Sometimes joy, sometimes admonition. Varying from Sunday to Sunday, season to season, in movement to movement. Not one or the other. But both. So that everyone would become more than just anxious activists, but listeners and light-bearers too; and, more than just casual hearers, but doers and interpreters also.
And that, my friends, I believe, is what we try to do here at Grace. A bit of both. So that everyone might play almost equal parts Mary and equal parts Martha.
And yes, it starts with those two women, again!
You’ll remember that last week we talked about each and their different responses to Jesus’ presence in their home. One, Martha, was running around to get everything done and ready for him. While the other, Mary, simply was waiting by his feet, pausing her life to wait on his word.
And you’ll recall that we spent a good amount of time defending Mary and using her example so to implore ourselves to slow down, to stop being such busy-bodies, so to wait and listen more for Jesus’ voice rising above the noise of our chaotic world. You remember all that, right?
Well, today, we’ll do a complete 180, and make a case that sometimes it’s better to get off our knees, and into motion, for a world in desperate need of some actionable correction.
And that’s the funny thing with church sometimes, and I imagine why those two leaders/friends originally disagreed. Because you can almost use any bit of scripture, person, or tradition as your foundation to support an opposite viewpoint and way to worship to God. And boy, would James today like have a word with Mary and her cohort; admonishing them to become more “doers of the word, and not merely hearers of the word (James 1:22).”
Which I imagine is similar to a fable that you’ve all heard before in a different place at another time. Oh, you know the one… About that guy up there on the roof praying for God to save him from a flood. You’ve heard it, right? He keeps praying and waiting for God to literally pluck him off the roof that he ends up not missing and not getting into a rowboat, motorboat, and helicopter that all attempt to save him.
Unfortunately so that he ends up dying; and when he gets to Heaven, he gets angry with God saying, “I had faith in you but you didn’t save me, you let me drown, and I don’t understand why.” To which God responds, “I sent you a rowboat, motorboat, and helicopter, what more did you expect?”
One of the morals being, as I think James would agree, that you can’t just sit around and listen and wait on God forever. But that sometimes you need to take action too, so to get off that roof, or out of the pews, so to greet God where God is already trying to meet you and help others.
“Don’t just be a hearer then” James tells us, “but, be a doer also.” For “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead (James 2:17).”
But it’s not just James who suggests this, but Jesus today too. For here in Mark, he also has a bone to pick with those who wish to sit around all day and perfectly quote the law. Those who also have no idea or interest in how to act on it or implement it.
Don’t just be a repeater of the law, he tells these Pharisees. But be a doer, an interpreter.
Now, at first glance in our text, their remark about washing hands before eating, which to them stemmed from a tradition in Leviticus 11, and basic common sense, well, it doesn’t seem too terrible or off-base. Does it?
Especially to our own ears and sensitivities in a world still dealing with covid and all of its many viruses. Washing hands before eating is something we yell at our kids to do, so to protect them. There isn’t anything wrong in that.
But, of course, this story involving Jesus and the Pharisees is not really about washed hands, now, is it? No, rather, it’s that these guys are always just too darn concerned with listening to their own laws and repeating their old traditions, that they miss what God is now asking them to do for themselves and others.
For what does getting all hot and bothered about hygiene accomplish, in God’s eyes, if you’re also going to let things like murder, slander, and deceit slide? Jesus is telling them to get their priorities straight. Like Martha, to get busy doing and get their house in order.
For it’s not what goes in that defiles us, but what comes out. And the priorities of our faith should always be made known in how they come out.
In other words, it’s not just about how well you hear and digest all of this scripture, all of the hymns and prayers in our worship service; but it’s about how well you turn all of that into action. How well all of this in here transforms your behavior out there.
Jesus, and James, are telling us that living by the marks of a true faith will likely end up getting your hands dirty. And that sometimes, you’ll need to be working so hard and for so long that you simply wont have time to fully clean them. Your hands are going to get filthy then, my friends – filthy! — that is, if you are willing to leave your warm and safe sanctuaries aside to go out there and make a visible difference in the world.
For “what good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?”
Indeed, what is the good of that?
So, my friends, here at the end, what is the purpose of a church service?
If, in the end, it’s to meet and praise Jesus, by walking alongside of him, and in his footsteps, then it likely shouldn’t only produce the warmest, easiest, and most fuzzy feeling inside of us. As great as that is!
But it should also hope to induce a daily life-changing event, where each of us would endeavor to leave our comforts behind, to take up our cross, and follow him.
Thanks be to God.
Amen
