It has been a wild week, watching the scenes from Kabul in Afghanistan. The members of the Army have done a fine job in their rescue mission, bringing out twenty times their number of Americans and Afghan allies in the last couple of weeks. Of course, those men and women in the Army had been to boot camp and learned the basics of being an American soldier. They had further training. They could look to their left and look to their right and see men and women who would guard their backs when they went into danger. And they have been committed to getting everyone out they can possibly get out. It makes me very proud, how about you?
This couldn’t be done from home, it
couldn’t be done from the safe Pentagon. No, the soldiers had to actually get
down and dirty in Kabul, at the airport, mixing with the people. And they have
been successful in accomplishing their mission.
But soon, the mission will end and there
will be people in Afghanistan who will decide in a week, a month, a year that
they should have taken the opportunity to get out. And it may be too late. And
that’s sad, for the opportunity is there now, today, and the last flight out of
Kabul will come soon...
And so we come back to our life here…to
our safe, secure life.
When I was a math teacher at Parkersburg
Catholic High, I had a certain number of students arrive in my Algebra I classroom
who were convinced – and their parents were convinced – that they were
wonderful at mathematics. You see, when they were in third grade, they had
memorized the basic multiplication tables quickly, while other students had
difficulty in memorizing those same tables. Therefore, for the next few years,
until they hit Algebra I, those who memorized the tables quickly were known as
good in math, while those who didn’t memorize those 81 math facts were “poor”
at math. The good students were proud of their ability to do mental math
quickly – while the “poor” students had difficult with mental math. The good
students – and their parents – were immensely proud of their mental math
ability. They were math snobs! The so-called poor math students were convinced
that they could never learn math – and it was all because of their ability or
inability to quickly memorize those 81 multiplication facts. And then, they all
came into my Algebra class.
In Algebra, the emphasis is upon learning
a system that will allow us to solve any problem, no matter how complex.
Usually starting in mid-August, by early September the good students were
having trouble while the poor students were doing okay. You see, the good
students just tried to use mental math to solve the problems. They were too
good to get their hands dirty by putting down the intermediate steps on paper.
Meanwhile the so-called poor students
actually put pencil to paper and laid out the intermediate steps like I showed
them. They were surprising themselves with how well they were doing.
Eventually, all the so-called good
students encountered math problems with so many steps they got confused, while
the so-called poor math students continued to trudge along and get the right
answers. For in the real world, we all encounter problems that are so complex no
one can keep all the stuff in our heads. We have to solve those problems step-by-step,
writing down the results of each steps and then working the next step. But
these so-called good students had been taught and praised and rewarded for
mental math to the point that they considered it a failure to get down and
dirty by putting a pencil to paper. I had to break that snobbishness before
they could go forward.
For success in algebra and higher math
doesn’t depend on a few memorized addition and multiplication facts, but on
learning that system of solving problems that will get the right answer, always
get the right answer, will allow anyone to get the right answer if they
will follow the system faithfully. Using that system requires getting down and
dirty, putting pencil to paper, erasing, writing down step after step until the
answer finally pops out. A mental math snob will not go far unless they get
dirty with pencil and paper.
In the same way, many people in this
world, indeed in the world even in the time of Moses, have strong ideas in
their minds as to what is right and good – and what is wrong behavior. And we
transfer those ideas about right and wrong behavior to say that some people are
good and others are bad. And most of the time, even with people who have been
raised in church – perhaps most especially with people who have been raised in
church – a certain pride develops. “I am not like THEM” pointing to outsiders.
The specific ideas about right and wrong vary depending upon the family, the
church, and the teachers who have raised the child to adulthood. But the situation
is the same as those math students who thought they were good at math – they were
praised for certain things which turn out to not be very important, yet become
important in the child’s mind simply because they were repeatedly praised for
their mental math, their cleanliness, their neat dress and haircut, their
coordinated clothing. They had the use of a functioning car as teenagers,
enough money to buy gas, to go out with friends, to belong to the football
team, the band, the cheerleaders.
In the same way, other children grew up
convinced that they were not behaving well, because they didn’t memorize their
multiplication tables, they weren’t always clean, their hair wasn’t cut neatly,
their clothing was a bit older, maybe dirty, or didn’t coordinate. They didn’t
have use of the barely running car their parents had, forget money for gas,
going out with friends, they were clearing tables when the members of the
football team, the band, the cheerleaders came in after the game.
But God has a different idea as to what constitutes
good behavior – and it doesn’t depend upon what we learned as children and
teenagers. And God has still other ideas about who is good – and who is not.
The Israelites had been in the desert
wilderness of western Arabia a little over forty years. They were there because
most of their parents who left Egypt had not trusted God to guide them. Now that
generation was mostly gone, and Moses is giving one of his final sermons to the
people before they enter the Promised Land under the guidance of Joshua. Moses
spoke:
4 Now, Israel, hear the decrees and laws I
am about to teach you. Follow them so that you may live and may go in
and take possession of the land the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is
giving you. 2 Do not add to what I command you
and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your
God that I give you.
6 Observe them
carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the
nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, “Surely this great
nation is a wise and understanding people.” 7 What other nation is so
great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our
God is near us whenever we pray to him? 8 And what other nation is so
great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am
setting before you today?
9 Only
be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the
things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you
live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.
Notice this last verse. “Be careful…so
that you do not forget…Teach them to your children and to their children.”
We’ve all played the game of “Telephone”
or “Gossip”. One person whispers a sentence such as “All fire engines are red” to
another, and the phrase is passed around the group until we get to the other
end, where the last person says, “Our star in grins are dead.” The same thing
happens with people throughout history when we don’t go back and check what God’s
commandments truly are. We have to get down and dirty and actually read the
Bible to know what is commanded – and what is not commanded. Here’s an example:
In the late 1800’s, it was common for
traveling salesmen in the Midwest to ride from town to town on the trains
together. They’d stop at a town and, depending upon the trains, either make a
quick sale and get back on the train while it took on coal and water, or catch
the next train a few hours later. But these salesmen would travel as a pack,
and while they were traveling they played cards – poker and whist and euchre –
for money. They gambled. And, of course, they often lost. And then they played
with friends at home because they often lost their sales jobs.
So gambling card-playing became a social problem
a hundred and fifty years ago. And so preachers began to preach against it
because of the gambling and the effect upon families. But as new generations
grew up, the preaching stopped being against “gambling with cards”, and it
became just against “card-playing”. In fact, in many churches and homes, any
sort of card-playing was looked upon as devilish, whether or not money was
involved, or whether or not the game was a game of chance or of skill, like
bridge, which involves almost as much skill as chess and almost as little left
to chance. And there were interesting variations. I remember that my
grandmother said that her father would not allow a normal deck of cards in the
house, but the family would play Rook for hours on end, which used a different,
special deck. And this all completely ignored the fact that in Acts Chapter 1,
the Apostles drew lots to determine the replacement disciple for Judas – relying
upon chance – or God’s choice, as they saw it.
In the same way, the original Methodist
movement under John Wesley clearly distinguished between distilled liquors such
as whisky or brandy, which were forbidden, wine and beer which were okay, and
getting drunk, which was considered sinful. But over the years, Methodists and
related groups gradually eliminated all alcoholic drinks, eventually leading to
Prohibition, with some even frowning on the use of wine in cooking, which, of
course, evaporates the alcohol. All because we relied upon what “the preacher
said” rather reading the Bible to find out on our own. Even today, we have
people who believe that if they drink a couple beers or wines a week, they
cannot be a Christian – and we have some Christians who agree. Of course, Jesus
is recorded as actually making wine, and Paul recommends wine to Timothy to
help him with his illnesses. But Paul does warn against getting drunk. So things
are a bit more complicated, aren’t they?
Of course, most of us remember in the
1960’s when men who had been in the short-haired, clean-shaven army of World
War II and Korea began to object to men who wore long hair and/or beards, or
who wore blue jeans, in many cases prohibiting them from coming to church. These
older men had taken rules which were from their Army discipline and applied
them to the church, despite the fact that the Old Testament passage of Leviticus
19:27 clearly says ““Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off
the edges of your beard.” Which, if anything, requires a full beard. But
the real issue for the older men was the fact that most of the young men who
chose long hair, beards, and jeans were doing this in rebellion to the older
standards – and the politics of the Vietnam War. Both groups understood this
and the church was harmed greatly by the conflict, as always happens when
political battles move into the church. Wearing a beard or not became a sign of
which side you were on, politically.
In our reading today from Mark Chapter 7,
Jesus is challenged by the Pharisees who jumped on the fact that some of His
disciples were eating food with unwashed hands. Now we know today that washing
hands before eating is a good idea, just as wearing masks when a respiratory
disease like Covid may be present is a good idea. But the Pharisees had made hand-washing
into a determination of who was a good person and who was a bad person. It was
a marker of who was acceptable, and who was unacceptable. In essence, it was a
political issue. “Were you with us or were you against us?” the Pharisees are
saying – and hand-washing was required to be with us. It’s just like how mask-wearing
– or not, how getting vaccinated – or not - has become a political issue with some
people.
(Mark also points out that the Pharisees
always washed before eating, as well as washing their cups, pitchers, kettles –
and in some of the translations and early manuscripts, even dining couches. The
word that is translated as “they wash” here, is “baptismous” which has the same
root as “baptize”. So the word can mean sprinkle, or wash as well as immerse.)
Anyway, the Pharisees used hand-washing as
a sign that people were good. When the Pharisees complained to Jesus because
His disciples did not wash their hands, He let them have it.
, “Isaiah
was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:
“‘These
people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
7 They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.’
Jesus
was concerned that the politics of the hand-washing rule were more important
than what God had commanded – or didn’t command.
8 You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to
human traditions.”
14 Again
Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and
understand this. 15 Nothing outside a person can defile
them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles
them.”
The
Pharisees thought that eating with unwashed hands could defile a person – make them
“nasty”, “evil”, “bad”, or “impure”. Jesus said they were wrong, extending the
concept to even cover different foods and drink. He said it wasn’t what went
into a person that made them evil, but what came out of their heart:
21 For
it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual
immorality, theft, murder, 22 adultery, greed, malice, deceit,
lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. 23 All these evils come from inside and defile a
person.”
Imagine
that you are growing a flower. Consider the seed or bulb to be the heart of the
flower. Does your choice to use clean, manufactured fertilizer - or manure instead
- determine the beauty of the flower? No, it is what comes from out of the heart
of the flower, the seed, the bulb, that determines whether this plant will be a
beautiful rose, a tulip, a gladiolus, a lily – or an ugly bramble, a thistle, a
weed. It is not the food or drink or our washing or unwashing that we put into
our body that determines our goodness or evil nature. It is what comes out of
our heart that leads us to be good or evil, pure or nasty.
The
Epistle of James near the end of the New Testament expands on these ideas. It
should be noticed that most Bible scholars find three men named James in the
New Testament. There is the Apostle James, the son of Zebedee and brother of
the Apostle John. This man is often referred to as James the Great. There is
also a second Apostle, James the son of Alphaeus, often called James the Less.
And there is James, the brother of Jesus, son of Joseph the carpenter. This man
is often called James the Just. Let me also note that there is some
disagreement about this.
What
appears certain is that James, the brother, half-brother, or stepbrother of
Jesus became for a time the leader of the church after Jesus ascended to
Heaven. It is also most likely that this man wrote the Epistle of James before
he was executed.
James
reminds us that everything good comes originally from God:
17 Every
good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the
heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. 18 He
chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a
kind of firstfruits of all he created.
James
then gives us advice on how to live:
19 My dear brothers and
sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to
speak and slow to become angry, 20 because human anger does
not produce the righteousness that God desires. 21 Therefore, get rid
of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the
word planted in you, which can save you.
The Word of God, the truth can save us –
if we will humbly accept that word. Isn’t that always the issue? That our
pride, our early ideas that we received as children, that these ideas keep us
from accepting new ideas – even if those ideas are from the wisest Being in the
Universe, God/Jesus/Holy Spirit?
But James tells us that even in this, we
must get down and dirty. We can’t just sit in our pews, we can’t just listen in
the car, and hope for salvation. As James says:
22 Do not merely listen to the word,
and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23 Anyone who
listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at
his face in a mirror 24 and, after looking at himself, goes away and
immediately forgets what he looks like. 25 But whoever looks intently
into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not
forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in
what they do.
It is the difference between watching a war
movie and actually going to war. It is the difference between watching a
romantic movie and actually marrying someone. It is the difference between
reading a cookbook and actually cooking a meal. That is what James is telling
us – to be truly blessed in our Christianity, we have to get down and dirty,
doing what the Word of God asks us to do, doing what Jesus would have us do,
listening to the Holy Spirit and then actually speaking kindly to people, being
generous with our money, generous with gifts, feeding people, becoming friends
with those who are not pleasant, investing our time and talents to make the
world a better place. Being a Christian can’t be done just watching or
listening to a series of sermons – we need to get down and dirty in the world.
But weren’t we told by our parents, our
Sunday school teachers, our pastors to keep from getting the dirt of the world
upon us, to stay pure, to stay away from strangers, the wrong sorts of friends.
Weren’t we told to avoid evil?
Yes, we were told those things. But that
was because we were children. Today, we are full adults, baptized by water and
the Spirit. We carry the full armor of God, including the Sword of the Spirit.
We have lived, we have developed wisdom, we have learned what is good – and what
is bad. We have been through Spiritual Boot Camp for Christians and heard
countless sermons which have trained us over the years. And now, it is time to
act as the trained spiritual leaders Christ asked us to become, walking back
into the world and changing the world – and that means we must get down and
dirty with the world, that some may be saved.
James focuses upon not doing damage to
others with our words:
26 Those who consider themselves
religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive
themselves, and their religion is worthless.
But James wants us to get into the world –
but not to be changed into something evil by the world:
27 Religion that God our Father
accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and
widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the
world.
Look to your left – now look to your
right. These are your brothers and sisters whom you can count upon to guard
your back as you go into the world during this rescue mission, to rescue people
who are hurting, despairing, lonely, lost, and frightened. There are widows and
orphans – did you realize that over 1 in 6 West Virgina children are in some
form of foster care? – And there are adult men who are just as lonely, lost and
frightened. There are people who are enslaved by addictions – and we are being
sent into the world to rescue people for Heaven.
Even in this nice safe land in which we
live, there are people who will soon die, people who will be tortured by evil,
people who will be enslaved by sins. Like the soldiers at the Kabul airport, we
each have people to help out of a fallen world before evil overruns us. The last
plane for Heaven will leave soon – who will you help get on that plane to God’s
love? Will you be on that plane?
Amen.
Now, as we sing this song, each of you come
forward to the altar rail or simply pray for the peace, the rest, the healing
of another person, a friend, a relative, a neighbor. Pray to help someone come
to Christ. Surely you know of someone. Come forward to support another person
and help them with their burdens. Set an example for others in your family. Come
to the altar rail as we sing.
Amen!
Response Hymn – OSpirit of the Living God 539
Benediction: May God the Father, God the Son and God
the Holy Spirit show you those whom you must speak with! And may God be with
you throughout this week. Go forth and spread joy to the world!
5 Closing Song – Forward Through the Ages 555
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