September 2, 2018, Sermon: Doing and Hearing

After a couple of weeks of some pretty unique worship services, it was nice to move into our regular school year worship schedule at St. Peter. Also, after 5 weeks, we’re done with the Bread of Life passages in John 6!

Here’s my sermon on Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 and James 1:17-27 for this fifteenth week after Pentecost. I found helpful this week both this commentary at Working Preacher by Elisabeth Johnson and Cory Driver’s discussion of purity vs sin in his lectionary reflection.

Also, if you haven’t seen them yet, check out these pictures from the Sunday School scavenger hunt we had this week!

James 1:22 “Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.”

I know all of you are hearers of the word. Literally, you just heard God’s word in the scripture readings. Faith comes by hearing. It is good to hear God’s word.

The question in today’s lessons is not whether you’ve heard the good news of Jesus Christ, or even whether you’re a Christian. The question is, what difference does Jesus make in your life?

Are you a doer of God’s word? Or merely a hearer?

Last week, we talked about the Peter the disciple as a model of faith. Many of Jesus’ teachings were and still are difficult to understand. When Jesus started saying controversial, difficult things, many of his followers turned back and went home.

Peter and the other disciples stayed, because as Peter said, “Where else are we going to go? You have the words of eternal life.” They may not have understood everything, but they knew to look to Jesus. That’s faith.

Today’s reading from James takes faith a step farther. James argues that it’s absolutely essential to hear God’s word, but then it has to make a difference. God’s word does something.

God’s word changes us. You can read the Bible and learn about Jesus, you can come to church and dress nicely and say nice things, but if it doesn’t change the way you live, you’re missing the point. Faith leads to action.

James’ example is that if you hear God’s word and don’t do anything about it, you’re like someone who looks in the mirror and then forgets what they look like as soon as they look away.

Similarly, in the Gospel reading, Jesus quotes the prophet Isaiah to say, “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.”

In the story, the Pharisees and religious leaders complain that some of Jesus’ disciples are not following all of the correct traditional rituals before eating.

In response, Jesus calls them hypocrites, accusing them of being more interested in following human traditions than God’s law. Pay attention, though. Jesus does not say that following traditions is bad. He certainly doesn’t say to avoid washing your hands.

The problem with the Pharisees is that they paid so much attention to their rituals and traditions that they forgot the point of the traditions. God gave them the laws so they could live God’s way and be a blessing to their neighbors. Their life of faith is to be a testimony to their God.

Over time, though, the laws and traditions turned into a way to judge their neighbors rather than to bless them, a way to separate themselves from those people, those unclean, contaminated people. They heard the law, they focused on obeying the law, but they didn’t do the purpose of the law.

They focused so much on the individual trees, on the specific details of the law, that they missed the forest. They missed the point of the law, which is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.

When the Pharisees ask Jesus a question about ritual cleanliness, Jesus changes the question. It’s not a sin to be unclean. According to the tradition, you only need to be “clean” for certain activities like going into the temple, but the law expects that everyone will sometimes be “unclean.”

Instead of being concerned about a specific ritual that isn’t even in the Bible, Jesus starts talking about actual sins, like murder, adultery, envy, and pride. He reminds them and us that actions that affect life are more important than human rituals dressed up as religion.

This isn’t just a problem for the Pharisees; it’s a danger for us too. Both as individuals and as a church, we have lots of beautiful, meaningful traditions. But we always need to be asking if those traditions are getting in the way of what we’re called to do as followers of Jesus.

Are our traditions and history connecting us to the past, grounding us in faith so we can love and serve our neighbors like Jesus?

Or do they sometimes become excuses to avoid reaching out and serving in new ways, excuses to avoid having to care for the people around us?

Do our traditions help people connect to God, or do they put up walls keeping people separated from each other or from God?




Again, traditions are not bad, until they’re used against other people. I was reminded of this when we celebrated communion last week at outdoor worship.

Did you know there are all sorts of traditions about the white cloth over the communion bread and wine? One image is that it represents the linen grave cloth over Jesus’ body. Another image is that it’s a veil like the curtain in the Holy of Holies setting the God apart from the people, and removing it during worship represents the curtain ripping in two at Jesus’ death.

Beautiful traditions. The original purpose, though, is to keep flies out of the wine. That’s not usually a problem in this space.

Another one is chanting. Chanting the liturgy can be beautiful. It can help get you into a more worshipful mood. I don’t do it because I think my chanting would be more distracting than beautiful, but if anyone wants to volunteer to chant, I think that’d be great and really add to worship.

The original point of chanting, though, is that your voice carries better when you chant than when you speak, and microphones hadn’t been invented yet.

Chanting is not a problem, until Christians use it as an excuse to fight over the right way to worship. Altar cloths are a good thing, until someone is criticized for not doing it “the right way.” I haven’t seen either of those happening here at St. Peter, but I’ve heard of them happening in churches.

The Pharisees were very faithful, but they got so focused on how faithful they were that they lost the point of faith. Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.

How we worship and our traditions are important, because our worship shapes our faith, but coming to church on Sunday morning is not the point of being a Christian.

This is the pit stop, the time to refuel for the rest of the week. If you’re driving somewhere, it doesn’t do any good to stay at the gas station. You’ll run out of gas if you don’t regularly stop to get fuel, but if you just stay in the parking lot, you’re missing the point of your trip. You’re not going to get anywhere unless you pull out back onto the road.

Read with me the last words in the worship service. It’s in the bulletin, in the middle of the third page, right under the last hymn. These are the last words of the whole service. “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” and “Thanks be to God.” The worship service ends with instructions for the week’s service.

If our traditions are to be meaningful, they have to point us to how Jesus calls us to live. Faith has to make a difference in our lives, or it’s a waste of time. Listen to the last verse from our James reading: Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

We’ll hear more next week from James about living faith requiring doing good works, but for now, I invite you to consider this week where it is God is calling you to be a doer, not just a hearer.

Consider, which of our traditions and rituals help us to do God’s word? Where are you tempted to focus more on the law and human traditions than on Jesus’ commands?

May God forgive us when we are more concerned about ritual purity than about loving God and our neighbors. May the Holy Spirit help us to be doers of God’s word.
Amen