Take It All In

This sermon was preached at our Sunday morning service on 29th August 2021. The Gospel was Mark 7:1-8,14-15,21-23  Hope you enjoy reading it!

“There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile”. What an odd Gospel to hear in these days of Coronavirus, whilst we sit here in our masks, trying so diligently to contain the spread of this disease that we heard only earlier this week had returned into the top ten causes of death in England in July (that’s an odd top ten to hear about, by the way. I wonder if they announce the countdown to number one over the music for Pick of the Pops?).

Also in our Gospel, Mark calls out that the religious authorities had noticed – and taken afront at the fact that – Jesus’ disciples were eating without first washing their hands. I think I’m with the religious authorities here; I don’t know about you? I’m sure the hands of the UK have never been as clean as they have been over the past two years. I mean, for me, the song ‘Happy birthday’ is ruined now by the number of times I’ve sung it to myself. It was all I could do on Miriam’s birthday the other month to *only* sing it through once. Even then, I instinctively felt the need to turn off a tap somewhere after we’d finished singing. It’s odd how quickly something can become a tradition.

This image of Jesus seems completely at odds with our knowledge of good health and hygiene today. “Sure!”, you can imagine him saying, “Eat what you want! Mouldy bread, floor-meat, raw chicken; just don’t forget to keep up your liquid intake though – here, have a glass of extra-lumpy milk. Oh – and don’t worry about washing your hands first; a bit of dust, soil and animal dung never hurt anyone!”. <grimace> – apologies to those of you who’ve not long since had your breakfast.

I’m not sure, however, that this image of Jesus is entirely accurate. I hope you won’t be surprised to hear that! Our ancestors clearly knew about the importance of food hygiene – if they didn’t, well, then we would not be counting them amongst our ancestors. I’m sure Jesus did too; it was, after all, being executed on a cross that killed him in the end, not gastroenteritis.

Jesus is clearly not, then, referring to bodily defilement when he says nothing that comes into a person can defile. It’s also again clear that when he chastises the religious authorities for questioning the lack of handwashing that neither party are thinking on grounds of hygiene (otherwise the charge of hypocrisy would not come into it). No; this is something spiritual. It’s about being unclean before God.

That spiritual uncleanliness doesn’t come from outside you, says Christ. There’s nothing you can eat or drink or see or hear or touch (or smell for that matter – let’s throw in all five traditional senses!) that will damage your relationship with God. Nothing that is done to you or happens to you or that has ever happened to you is able to make you dirty before God.

This *is* good news; it *is* the good news of Jesus Christ; he came to set us free, to live under grace rather than under law so that nothing is able to separate us from the love of God. Nothing and no-one is deemed so unclean that it or they can make you unclean by proxy before God. And my sermon could stop here; it *would* be an excellent place to stop – and perhaps for you, that is the sermon you need to hear this morning, that in Christ, there is nothing or no-one that can separate us from the love of God, and nothing that we ingest or take in or nothing that anyone does to us or has ever done to us that can make us unclean before him.

But, that’s not where Christ stops. Because he’s not just about making us feel good. This isn’t just a woolly insubstantial veneer of a message; for those of us willing to go on, there’s more substance, and a call to change.

“There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come.”

Nothing can separate us from the love of God, this is absolutely true. But we can separate ourselves from God – not from his love; nothing can stop God from loving us – but we can cut him off from us by what we allow ourselves to think, through what we choose to desire, and by what we say. Sure, we may be influenced by external forces, but there is no ‘devil made me do it’ get-out, says Jesus; these things are on us. And from us. They come from within.

And this is why Christ calls the religious authorities hypocrites; they concentrate on the outside, but not on what lies inside of themselves. They wash their hands of sin, but not their hearts. They sing their praise to God, but they bad-mouth their neighbour. They pray for God to help the poor and needy, but do not do anything themselves to help. Their traditions of cleanliness and praise and prayer have turned into traditionalism; doing things by rote with no thought for the reasoning; like associating singing ‘Happy birthday’ with turning off a tap. They have managed to divorce their outward actions from within, from their human heart.

The US theologian Jaroslav Pelikan once said that tradition “is the living faith of the dead”, whereas traditionalism is “the dead faith of the living.” By that he meant that tradition involves remembering our forebearers in the faith (he talked of ‘living in conversation with the past’), and of interpreting our history and inherited actions anew each generation. Traditionalism, on the other hand, is doing things simply because they have always been done, with no thought as to appropriateness or reasoning; simply ‘going through the motions’. One is active, and connects our history with the core of our being. The other is passive, allowing us to disconnect our actions from our intent.

The religious authorities Jesus condemns are traditionalists. Sure, they say the right prayers, and sing the right songs, and can make the altar look Just Right when they're performing their act of worship. But, it *is* an act. They are all style, and no substance; at least not any more. Their traditions do not change their hearts, and nor are they an outward symbol of a changed heart, and so... they are worthless.

We at St Michael's have hundreds and thousands of years of tradition. What's it for? Because, if it is the case that nothing we take in can defile us, then it must also be the case that nothing we take in can make us clean. Our traditions cannot make us right before God; they are no substitute for repentance and a changed heart. So, if we're just going through the motions, then it is nothing but an act, the dead faith of the living. If, however, we can allow these traditions - this living faith of the dead gone before us - to seep into our core, to change our hearts and to shape us, well, then I think we would truly be a church that could change the world. So, let me encourage you, take it all in.

Amen