When Our Hearts Are Transformed Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 August 31, 2003, Year B Proper 17 The Rev. William V. Livingston, Rector Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi Visit Resurrection on most Saturdays, and you will find one or more parishioners cutting grass, landscaping, painting, making needed repairs, or hauling backbreaking slabs of concrete to the future labyrinth. Sometimes, Michael Fazio, our Junior Warden, sustains, rewards, or perhaps bribes these work crews by providing a meal as they work. Before eating I'm sure they wash their hands, but otherwise, each of these workers would be out of place, improperly attired, aromatically unwelcomed at one of Starkville's finer restaurants or as a guest at a dinner party in one of our homes. It simply would be against our Southern tradition. Was Mark snickering as he offered his parenthetical editorial? They "do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; 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." It sounds like Episcopalians condemned to hell for standing or kneeling at the wrong time in the liturgy. Before we condemn the Pharisees so quickly, we need to understand the origins of such practices. For generations, in order to preserve its faith in God as the true creator, ruler, and judge of the world, the Israelite community needed to distinguish itself from other nations so as not to be tempted to worship the gods of the nations who conquered Israel. The traditions of the Pharisees began as honest attempts to keep the Law - devising hundreds of rules and routines intended to help them do so. Over time, the traditions came to be regarded as the Law, obscuring the Law's real intent. Their scrupulosity about observing tradition led them to depend, not upon God, but on their own ability to channel their lives into certain predictable routines. That led them to abuse the Law by using it to set themselves apart as better than other people. Their hypocrisy was not the concern for hand-washing as such, but only defending the ritual to prevent the erosion of their certainty and power. Into this ritually addicted world, Mark reveals Jesus, being much more radical here than meets the eye. Rather than a radical fundamentalist, the Messiah comes as a radical iconoclast. God surely is tolerant and probably has a great sense of humor because since the beginning of our creation, God has tolerated, and probably looked upon our squabbles with a laugh wondering when we will ever get it. The conversation we heard about the religious import of hand washing and dish washing may seem remote from our concerns here in the year 2003, but do we have to look far to find similar iconic debates? Perhaps we have belabored the debates of General Convention too long already, so, lets look just to our East, and the battles over the placement of a graven image of the Ten Commandments in a State office building. How would Jesus respond if today's Gospel took place in this Alabama courthouse rather than in a small Judean community, now rather than back then? Is the question underlying the story as alive as ever? Like the Pharisees quoted by Mark, Christians today are a people with rich traditions of spiritual practice that divert us from the main thing. Who knows, maybe I am wrong, but as I watch the news reports, I have no trouble imaging Jesus standing on those courthouse steps and saying, "This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." Some how, I can imagine Jesus saying, "Until they have kept a vigil to assure that today no child in this community was abused or exploited or went to bed hungry, until no mentally ill person fed himself only on what he salvaged from trash containers, until this very courthouse has done all in its power to stamp out racism and injustice, then in vain do they worship me by their vigils to keep these pieces of graven rock unmoved." Setting faith in context is never easy. When does a commandment lose relevance? If a rule is a rule, then ought it always to be a rule? Can a Scripture verse become drained of life? If God said it, can there be a time when God didn't mean it? Can truth become untrue? We often diagnose the Pharisees' problem by making a distinction between law and gospel. The Pharisees, we say, practiced law, while Christians are free from the law. We are saved by hearing and believing the good news of Jesus Christ. This is a false distinction. Both the Law and the Gospel are good gifts from God, and we are meant to practice them diligently. But like all of God's good gifts they are subject to use or abuse, and they are abused when they're not practiced in the context of love, when we hold on to merely human traditions as if they were divinely revealed but ignore the very basic virtues of love, reconciliation, and the good news that God has come among us. The challenge, since our creation, has been to comprehend God who is beyond our comprehension. Faced with this dilemma and the ambiguities of our history, we people of faith have sought words to provide us just a glimpse into the surpassing glory of God. From these futile attempts we have our traditions of faith and have written down the Law and the Prophets and documented the wrenching account of Jesus' suffering and the amazing grace of his resurrection, to try remember what he had said and done. The Pharisees washed the items purchased at the market; Jesus washed the market with his presence. The Pharisees washed the dirt from their food; Jesus blessed the food and the dirt from which it came. The Pharisees washed their feet to separate themselves from the world; Jesus washed others' feet and dirtied his feet walking in our dust. The Pharisees washed their hands to distinguish themselves from others; Jesus extended his dirty, calloused, nail-scarred hands to welcome all into the unconditional love of God. The precise difference between Jesus and the Pharisees was that they looked at the external activity whereas Jesus looked at the heart, the source of activity. They looked to the fulfillment of law and tradition while he looked to love and commitment. They looked at the letter of the law while he looked at it's spirit. Before we condemn the Pharisees, we must be prepared to apply the same principles to our debates about the Ten Commandments in state office buildings, ordination issues, prayers at football games, the wording of prayer books, or which musical instruments we use in worship. It is, in fact, easier to follow any number of ritual practices than to transform our heart, but Jesus invites us to let go of the things that do not transform our heart into a heart of flesh rather than a heart of stone, a heart that is alive not dead, a heart that is compassionate not selfish, a heart that is large, not small, a heart that is hospitable not judgmental. "It is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come," Jesus tells us. It is also from within the human heart, one that has opened to and allowed the Holy Spirit to enter, that love comes. How will we, the Church, know when our collective heart has been transformed? To answer this, I paraphrase a bookmark our diocese gives to deacons during their studies. We will know this transformation or our heart has occurred when meeting the needs of the marginalized and vulnerable takes priority over rules and rituals; when we Christians make a habit of gathering the gifts of the church and taking them into the world, and gathering the needs of the world and bringing them into the church; when in our going back and forth we have worn down the boundary lines we use to keep the church and world separated; when we have beaten a path between the altar and the gutter so that the world sees the link between the Blood in our chalice and the blood in our streets; and when we respond to the challenge to live, not in the love of power, but in the power of love.