Sermon from 10am Sunday Worship by Felicity Thompson, Seminarian, 9/1/2024
We are here celebrating our last “Mass on the Grass this year”. The weather is cooperating with us again and I want to thank everyone for spending part of our unofficial end of Summer here. Good morning!
This weekend we remember and honor those who labor and their contributions. We honor those who work long hours: our talented and dedicated musicians who help us find happiness and on every part of the globe…everywhere! (pause), those in education: our teachers, professors, healthcare: doctors, nurses, nurse aides, pharmacists, construction workers, plumbers, sanitation workers, electricians, carpenters, daycare workers, food workers. Some of us filed an extension on our taxes, thank goodness for our accountants. Let’s not forget our farmers, gardeners, dairy workers, those who work on the lines of our auto industries, those who clean our rooms in hotels, motels and on ships, miners; pray for our pilots and the engineers on the trains; truck drivers, those who are retired in name only (pause), those who fish for a living and those who live to fish, our religious leaders - we see you and are grateful for you. All of us deserve to live in a society where we are respected, able to live and be acknowledged, nurtured, celebrated, protected, have religious freedom, and experience joy and love.
Some of us are celebrating the start of a new academic year. I see some folks nodding their heads. It’s time for the kids to get out of the house and back to school. I remember those days, hahaha… And as we celebrate new beginnings, the theme we have today is one of obedience to God and our commitment to following God’s commandments, to live in a way that can be seen and admired as right, by others.
All our workers, the workers we honor today, labor with their hands, minds, hearts, and voices. We all work with our hands and our gospel reading today talks about eating with defiled hands, eating with hands that are not clean. Purity in the Bible has nothing to do with our personal interpretation of cleanliness. Purity has nothing to do with external cleanliness, it is not about cleaning things to make them pure, it is not about what our sanitation engineers labor with so that we don’t have to.
In the New Testament, Christ explains it as the cleanliness that God wants from us. It is not about things that are external, but about things that are internal. It is not about things that are outside but about things that are inside! It is not about the talk but about the walk. It is not about up but about the down. It is not about the loud but about the soft.
That’s why in one of Jesus’ first sermons, He said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”, Matthew 5:8. In contemporary language, “You are blessed when you get your inside world - your mind and heart - put right. Then you can see God in the outside world”.
If you feel this is all this life has to offer you, you have not seen God. If you have not exercised your faith in challenging circumstances and marveled at the outcome, you have not seen God. If you have not experienced or sat with others in their pain, you have not seen God. If you have not cried tears of joy or pain in prayer, you have not seen God. If you have not experienced inexplicable joy when gathered with other pilgrims for a common purpose, you have not seen God. If you do not desire to be with God in Glory, you have not seen God.
Because when you see God, you would want to be like Paul. You would be torn between wanting to be here and wanting to be with God. You would think, “oh snap, there are people around me that should know about this!” You would want to share your experience with others. You would want to be with God, right here, and do God’s work and live a life following Christ’s example.
The gospel, “These people honor with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.
This is important. We always look forward to welcoming new members into our faith community. Are we practicing what we say we have within us? Are we showing we believe and have the love of God? We talk the talk, we should walk the walk and live into what is demanded of us. Otherwise, you know what we are accused of. We shouldn’t abandon the commandment of God and hold on to human tradition.”
Let me put this in a language we understand. When Jesus heard and saw the wrong interpretation of the Word, His response to the Pharisees and religious scholars was this: “Prophet Isaiah was right about frauds like you. These people make a big show of saying the right thing, but their heart isn’t in it. They act like they are worshiping me, but they don’t mean it. They just use me as a cover for teaching whatever they find appealing, disregarding God’s command and taking up the newest trends”. Then Jesus turns to the crowd and says; “Listen, all of you … it is not what you swallow that contaminates your life or defiles you, it’s what you vomit - THAT is the contamination.
You know the disciples still didn’t understand what Jesus said. So, when they were away from the crowd, when they got back home, they asked Jesus to explain what He had said in plain language. Jesus asked the disciples, “Are you being willfully stupid? Don’t you see that what you swallow cannot contaminate you? What you eat does not enter your heart. What you eat enters your stomach, works its way through your intestines and is finally flushed.
It’s what comes out of a person that pollutes. It’s what comes out of a person that causes pain to others. It’s what comes out of a person that causes trauma. It’s what comes out of a person that takes opportunity away from others. It’s what comes out of a person that takes power away from others for generations. We have heard of instances that came out of a person caused loss of life! It’s what comes out of a person that builds an empire. And it has happened again and again and again. So, brothers and sisters in Christ, it’s what comes out of a person - obscenities, lusts, murders, thefts, greed, depravity, deceptive dealings, mean looks, arrogance, slander, foolishness - all these are vomit from the heart. That is the source of pollution”.
So, what misinterpretations have we burdened ourselves with - with what defiles a person? We are citizens of this world meeting people from all over the world every day, physically and virtually. What does this word, defile, mean in various communities? In the Old Testament, defile refers to being physically or spiritually unclean.
These things are well known. In the Jewish tradition, defilement (often referred to as "tuma") can relate to various states of ritual impurity. For instance, contact with dead bodies or certain bodily fluids can render someone ritually impure. The concept is connected to the idea of maintaining spiritual and communal purity.
In Islam, "najis" (impurity) refers to physical or spiritual states that require purification. This includes contact with certain substances like blood or urine, and spiritual impurities which might require specific rituals of cleansing (such as ablution or ghusl).
Hinduism includes the idea of ritual impurity associated with various factors, such as menstruation, contact with corpses, or certain activities. Ritual purity is important in many aspects of religious practice and daily life.
In Buddhism, defilement can refer to mental impurities such as desires, hatred, and ignorance. These are considered obstacles to achieving enlightenment and are addressed through meditation and ethical practices
Many African societies have specific beliefs about purity and impurity related to ancestral reverence, taboos, and social practices. Defilement might involve breaking taboos or disrespecting sacred places and customs.
Various indigenous cultures have their own understandings of defilement, often linked to spiritual and environmental harmony. Actions that disrupt the balance between people, nature, and the spiritual world can be seen as defiling.
In historical contexts, defilement might be connected to social norms and class distinctions. For instance, certain foods or activities could be deemed defiling according to class-based or cultural norms.
In contemporary secular societies, the notion of defilement may be less pronounced but can still manifest in social stigmas or moral judgments, often linked to behavior or personal conduct rather than spiritual or ritual purity.
These definitions of defilement highlight how the concept is deeply intertwined with cultural, religious, and social values. What is considered defiled in one context may be viewed differently in another, reflecting the diverse ways human societies understand and manage purity and impurity.
In today’s gospel, we see Jesus correcting the faith leaders again. They are misinterpreting what God has said. All these man-made rules!
As we study the scriptures, We have been looking at the life of Jesus to see who He really was. We might have noticed He spent a lot of time around the dinner table. Many of His most frequently quoted messages and standout stories happened while sharing a meal with others.
As we look closer, we notice that the people around the table are a remarkably diverse group. He shared meals with outcasts. He spent time with the self-righteous religious elite. He cared for people who had broken every rule and were seen as unclean. He dined at the tables of the wealthy men whose riches were sometimes won with lies and corruption. Some of those men gave up comfortable lifestyles to follow him. He crossed racial boundaries to the shock of many around him. He invited everyone to the table. When asked why he did so, he replied in John 18:37, “… I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of the truth listens to me.”
It was radical at the time. It remains radical today. No one was that inclusive. The religious do-gooders began to whisper behind his back. They called him a friend of sinners. It was supposed to be an insult, but Jesus wore it proudly. He was a friend to everyone. And what do friends do? They eat dinner together and share in each other’s lives.
Strangers eating together and becoming friends. What a simple concept, and yet, we’re pretty sure it would turn our own modern world upside down if we did it for real, the same way Jesus turned his upside down 2,000 years ago. We are human beings. We gather in common spaces and discuss what we see and hear. We see division and broken relationships everywhere. We see judgment and hypocrisy on the rise. We see people who claim to be followers of Jesus taking his open invite and turning it into an exclusive club.
You don’t have to make room in your life for those who wish you harm. Please do not ever apologize for existing or for taking up space in the world, or for having a well - considered opinion. I say this to everyone, we all know when we have been “othered”. Our socialization teaches us to shrink ourselves, as though our responsibility is never first to ourselves but always to others. And we end up sometimes feeling guilty for wanting the things we want, sharing the unique things about us that we love, loving the people we love, eating the food we love, for simply wanting to be our own selves FIRST. The messages that society sends us can be conflicting. The message, I call it tension, telling us to value ourselves, that we matter and then that other message that tells us to put other people first, and to serve. It is possible, it is necessary, that we find a balance between the two. But we will have to figure it out ourselves.
The name of Jesus has been used to harm and divide, but if you look at how he lived, you see how upside down that really is. Jesus was not exclusive. He was radically inclusive. What would our world look like if that were the norm? If strangers became friends over the dinner table as they did around Jesus?
Pretending to be friends, pretending we are happy to be in the same space. Proffering ridiculous manmade rules suggesting they are God’s. Who’s fooling who? These are the problems we are struggling with today. So, as we celebrate the beginning of a new academic year, don’t wait for an invitation to follow Christ. We don’t have time for that kind of foolishness. Fight for what is just. Fight for what is right. Because as the saying goes, when we fight in Jesus' name, when we fight - with Christ, we win!
And at the end of the day, when we lay our heads down to rest, Psalm 30:5 reminds us, “The nights of crying your eyes out give way to days of laughter”. Because I am among Christians, this may be more familiar. “Weeping may endure for a night, but JOY cometh in the morning!”
Amen