The Shepherd’s Voice

Readings for Sunday, August 30^th
Deut 4:1-2, 6-9
Ps 15
Jam 1:17-27
Mk 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

The Shepherd’s Voice – Sermon Audio

Over the past few weeks as many of you know I have been on vacation, but I’ve also these few weeks had the opportunity to be involved with or preside over 2 weddings, a memorial service and now a baptism. This is kind of a trifecta for a Lutheran pastor in terms of ceremony and tradition. Our Gospel lesson today has a few words to say about tradition.

Jaroslav Pelikan was a distinguished professor and author of over 30 books with the crown jewel being The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (1971-1989). Pelikan, had a Lutheran pedigree (a Lutheran pastor and his paternal grandfather a bishop of the Slovak Lutheran Church in America.) and himself became a Lutheran pastor once said, : “Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” From an interview to in U.S. News & World Report (July 26, 1989).

About 2000 years before Pelikan said this, Jesus said “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me;” or another way of saying this may be, “You people go through the motions of worship each Sunday, but your hearts are somewhere else.” Jesus was responding to the Pharisees and the scribes who asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”

Today’s Gospel text is for some a little bit confusing or complicated especially as you start digging into the traditions of that day in the Jewish community. Since the time Moses was given the ‘Law’ the Ten Commandments, many in the Jewish community thought it necessary to add more specific stipulations/ceremonial traditions that described how to live out the law. The leaders, the Pharisee’s, and the scribes eventually added 613 mitzvot or commandments to the original law to help people honor God.

These traditions, rituals, or enhanced commandments led to a very legalistic approach to living out the Jewish faith. The Pharisee’s thought that only those who carried out the full extent of the law were worthy of being called Jews.

Catherine the Great had noticed the first flowers of spring in that very location. She then ordered a sentry to be posted there so that no one trampled the new flowers as they came up. You can wee some traditions die hard. (Leadership, Summer, 1989, p. 43.)

However, it’s not that tradition is bad, I’m not saying that and neither was Jesus. Certain traditions help guide us, help us follow good habits or ways of doing something. Jesus wasn’t against the disciples washing their hands, Jesus wanted them to be washing their hands, but for the right reason. Tradition is all about law. There is very little heart in the law.

The Bible is filled with law, but Jesus wanted the Pharisees to know that the law doesn’t save, the law isn’t what’s required of us, the law is helpful in knowing what harms us, but the law is not what makes one holy. Many of us today need to learn the same lesson. It’s not the law that saves us, keeping the law NOT what’s required, it’s only the gospel has the power to save. Our challenge as Christians is how do we in attempting to keep the law embrace the gospel as God gift to us. How do we live as enlightened people sharing in God’s promise, the good news?

What we’ve talked about so far and what Jesus was talking about in response to the Pharisee’s question are trappings, those things that somehow have been elevated in our mind to be important in regards to being a Christian. Do this, follow this, if you are baptized you will be saved. Again, I’m not trying to diminish tradition or trappings of the faith, but I want us to understand them from their proper point of perspective.

This proper perspective is one of helping us or enabling us to come back again and again to the foot of the cross. You could say, how we do a baptism, whether we do infant or adult, whether we sprinkle or dunk these are trappings or part of our tradition depending on our denomination. The specific actions we follow, how we perform the ceremony is less important than what happens to our hearts in the process.

Jesus was trying to make this point to the crowd and the Pharisee’s when he said, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: 15there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” Jesus was concerned about matters of the heart.

Jesus was concerned not about the trappings, but about the alignment, the truing of the heart.

In our baptism of Jenna Ann, it’s not about the sprinkle it’s about the heart of the parents, sponsors, and more importantly about Jenna Ann’s heart. How will she grow up, how will she learn about God, about the gospel, about the ‘Good News’ of Jesus Christ. These are long term matters, these are alignment matters. Will the life she leads align with the God’s gospel of hope, of promise, and of resurrection?

It is by water and the Word that God delivers us from sin, death, and the forces of evil and then raises us to a new life in Jesus Christ. Those aren’t trappings – this is alignment.

Will Jenna Ann’s life be one of rules, one of tradition, one of trappings of the faith or will her life be one where nothing can separate her from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus? Are you beginning to see the difference between the trappings of the faith and the truing of our hearts?

Jesus went on to say, “For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

The law, the trappings of our faith, the traditions we follow are helpful, are important for many of us for without them we become lazy, sloppy in our faith, people who don’t have a clue about social order or conscience. The law acts as a sort of guide. We can mirror ourselves against what the law says and we can immediately see that we can never measure up to what the law demands.

Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. How are you doing with that law that Jesus said was perhaps the most important law to follow? I, perhaps just like you can not measure up to what God demands of us.

Mark Twain once said, “We’re all like the moon. We have a dark side we don’t want anyone to see.” Well, Twain’s absolutely right! There is a side to each and every one of us that we don’t want exposed. We would be mortified if what was deep inside ever saw the light of day. So we cover it up – afraid to show it.

Jesus knew this when he responded to the Pharisee’s questions regarding tradition or ceremonial rituals. Jesus knew that even when ceremonial ritual was followed to the letter it would not be enough to save, to cleanse.

Jesus said “For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come.” Surely you know that as well.

I know at times when I open my mouth out pops exactly the wrong thing to say. Pride gets in the way my tongue tries to speak. Envy makes me say something foolish. Greed makes me say no I don’t want to share that last piece of double chocolate cake with you. These evil intentions come from the heart and they are ugly.

The law shows us they are ugly, but it’s the gospel that covers them over with the blood of Christ. Sin diminishes us, but the Gospel builds us up again. When we ask for God’s forgiveness we come to the foot of the cross because we realize we can’t do it on our own.

Maybe you have never reached that place in your life. I just have to say, I feel very sorry for you, because God is calling you right now. If you are here, listening to this message than God is calling you to repentance and wholeness as God calls each of us everyday. Your being here or hearing this message is no coincidence. God has something to say to you right now.

Our reading from James this morning said, “But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act — they will be blessed in their doing.”

Jesus wants each of us today to not just honor him with our lips, but Jesus wants our hearts also. Again from James, “If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless.” Our next hymn is about God touching our heart and in the process we will learn how to love God and one another.

Spirit of God, descend upon our hearts;
Wean it from earth, through all its pulses move;
Stoop to my weakness, strength to me impart,
And make me love you as I ought to love.

Amen

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