In matters of the heart Jesus was rarely silent and always right. In fact, for Jesus faith is true only so far as it is true to the heart, the symbolic home in the body for all moral intentions and ethical principles. And the healthy heart is the one true to God’s Word and purposes.
You can think anything you want about the politics of Jimmy Carter and hold your opinion regarding his effectiveness as a president of the United States, but when he admitted some years ago that he had lusted after women in his heart and felt scarred by his sin – though he had not acted on his feelings – he was at once true to the teachings of Jesus Christ while mocked openly by those who found a way to make fun of him.
In fact, it is in matters of the heart that we are found out by God to be truly faithful or not. And while God does not use such knowledge of our sinful hearts to judge us, God does urge us to recognize our own failings so that we not judge others when we can easily be judged ourselves. Honesty about matters of our hearts serves to encourage us to recognize God’s good gift of humility which enables us to assume our rightful place not as God but as God’s creatures and to share that place with other sinners.
One problem with the religious leaders who confront Jesus and his disciples in this morning’s reading is that they don’t want to share their rightful place with others; they want to assume a higher place that sets them apart from others and gives them a sense of superiority, false though it be. Clothed in self-righteousness, they come off not as superior religious beings but as common hypocrites.
Hypocrisy refers to the disconnect between the moral values and standards we profess and those that we actually practice in our behavior. The towering theologian of the twentieth century, Paul Tillich, spoke to hypocrisy when he said that “self-integration” was a basic function of life. By self-integration he meant that in order for our lives to have integrity – a cohesiveness in spirit – we need to find our center – the heart of our lives, if you will – and then move forward from that center with freedom and courage. The center – the heart – of our lives cannot then be divided, only strengthened and broadened. Hypocrisy – a disconnect between values professed and actions practiced – erodes our center and begins to tear us apart.
Hypocrisy is near the surface in the attack the Pharisees and scribes level at Jesus’ disciples when they claim that they have seen the disciples not wash their hands before eating. It’s a good thing, of course, for all of us to wash our hands before eating. It’s only good hygiene. We’ll be hearing much of that in the next few months as the flu season comes upon us again. But cleanliness is not necessarily next to Godliness, as many of us picked up from Sunday school. Unless, of course, we’re talking about cleanliness of the heart. In matters of the heart, cleanliness matters.
But the religious leaders who confront Jesus about hand washing and not eating certain foods confuse such actions with the heart of faith. Jesus is familiar with that confusion. It has existed ever since religious life has been practiced.
As Arnold Toynbee put it in his work An Historian’s Approach to Religion: “All religions start with a promise of universality but they deteriorate into a concern for particularity.” That is, all religions seem to carry the tendency to lose their heart to doctrine and dogma that distort the very heart of their being. Nearly all human expressions of faith have carried that danger and given in to that self-serving temptation.
The Pharisees and scribes are trying to discredit Jesus and his disciples so they try to show that Jesus and his followers are not practicing the traditions of the faith. Jesus defends his followers, however, by referring to a giant of that very tradition – the prophet Isaiah – who centuries before had noted that people were practicing rampant injustice but piously positioning themselves as God’s anointed. Jesus remembers Isaiah’s words as he responds quickly and forcefully, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips,/but their hearts are far from me;/in vain do they worship me,/teaching human precepts as doctrines.’”
Elsewhere Jesus had maintained that he had not come to destroy the law of Moses – the heart of the tradition – but to fulfill it, to cling to the heart of it. There was nothing wrong, Jesus would have said, about ritual hand washing and dietary laws that remind the people of their covenant with God. The trouble begins when those acts are substituted for the essence of faith. It’s matters of the heart that matter. Always has been, always will.
Don’t you love the words of Psalm 51, even as they call us to task: Create in me a clean heart, O God,/and put a new and right spirit within me. We Christians use that psalm every year at the beginning of Lent to remind us of the work and prayer before us. For we know that our hearts need cleansing and our spirits a great renewal. For we, too, have substituted doctrine and dogma for the heart of our faith.
I have been told that John Weicher honored my request last week to tell you that my absence was due not to vacation but to a preaching engagement at a lake community church where some of our parishioners spend much of their summer weekend time. I think John also said something disparaging about the use of the term “senior pastor” here to refer not to rank but to age. I’ll let that one pass for now. I’m sure I’ll have a like opportunity some time down the road.
Anyway, when I guest preach somewhere I’m never quite sure who’s listening. That shouldn’t matter, of course, but when someone invites me as a guest I don’t want to abuse their hospitality in the midst of their friends and neighbors. But as we were concluding the service last Sunday with the hymn “We Are One in the Spirit,” the refrain that ends each stanza kept imploring me to say something more as I offered the charge and benediction. The refrain I’m referring to is held in the words “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, yes they’ll know we are Christians by our love.”
Will they I wondered? Will the unidentified they who will form some opinion of us professed Christians know who we are by our love? Or will they know us by our hypocrisy, by our exclusiveness, by our prejudice, rigidity, and bigotry? That would not be Christ’s way – the way on which our faith is based – but that doesn’t mean we don’t fall far short of our Master’s calling.
And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.
The words kept haunting me with every stanza, made more powerful by the lilting melody that carried them along. So, when the music stopped, and I stood front and center to issue a charge and pronounce the benediction, I said something like this: “As you know, I am a Presbyterian. I think many of you are Methodists. Some here are Episcopalians and some are members of other denominations. But this morning I have to say, I am a bit jealous of the Lutherans, for in their vote this week to include openly gay and lesbian clergy in monogamous relationships to be pastors in their churches it feels to me that they are showing they are Christians by their love. I hope that the rest of us catch up with them.” Then I offered the blessing I do here Sunday after Sunday.
I hoped I hadn’t offended friends of my friends. I’m sure I must have offended someone. But the outward response I received was quite the opposite. In the congregation – unbeknownst to me – was a woman, the widow of a prominent New Testament scholar, and her daughter, a lesbian Lutheran pastor, newly buoyed by her denomination’s acceptance of her role in parish ministry.
To tell the truth, though I would not have wanted to be rude in the face of my invitation to preach, I cannot be silent when my heart compels me to speak on behalf of a matter of justice in what I perceive to be the eyes of Christ. Surely Isaiah did not worry about offending when he spoke out about injustice in the religious practice of his day. Neither did Jesus. And those are not bad models for any of us to follow in securing in our human institutions, including our church, the rights granted by the gracious acceptance of Jesus Christ. And so I shall labor on toward that goal I believe to be right, as I have felt for many years and with increasing certitude.
In challenging the centrality of purity laws as a substitute for the heart of religious practice, Jesus said that what defiles us is not what food our bodies take in – though in matters of physical health, of course, food is critically important – but rather what comes out of our hearts – which in matters of faith is important beyond measure. Our challenge today remains the same as that from time immemorial: our challenge is to recognize how we, like the Pharisees, misinterpret what is important to God.
The human race has changed little in two thousand years. It seems that we cannot build prisons fast enough to hold our murderers, thieves, and white-collar criminals. Marriages and families continue to be torn apart by acts of adultery and selfishness. We may not use words like avarice and licentiousness, but greed and lack of sexual restraint continue to be problems for us. We need to hear Jesus’ teaching just as much as his followers and disciples needed to hear his words so long ago. We need to be reminded of what is important and what is simply to be cast away.
The evil intentions that come from our hearts separate us from God. When we use religious rules inappropriately, we separate ourselves from one another. That is sin. But when we face that sin and its many manifestations, letting go of that which is not a matter of the heart and turn to God, then we are welcomed in the sanctuary of God and at the table of our Lord.
Amen.