Saint Francis Church, Dunellen, New Jersey

August 30, 2009

a sermon delivered by Timothy J. Mulder

Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23

 

There were four people standing on the side of the driveway to the cemetery the other day as I turned in to go to a service for a friend who died earlier in the week.  They were wearing sandwich boards and I realized that it was a picket line I was driving through.  They looked hot and tired.  I’m not sure what their issue was.

But for me, they are a wonderful part of what it means to be an American.  Right, wrong, or more likely somewhere in between, they have the right to gather peacefully and publicly protest whatever their grievance is with their employer.  And the employer has rights, too.  It is democracy at work, and as Labor Day approaches, I am proud that an American tradition is the legal right to dissent.  And I am proud of a nation that recognizes the debt it owes to the common laborer. It’s a grand tradition, this Labor Day of ours.

Churches have traditions, too.  I served four parishes in the last 30 years.  One had Wassail story telling party each Christmas.  Another had an Antiques Show, another a Pig Roast. 

As our Gospel opens today, Jesus was being attacked by the Pharisees because his disciples were not washing their hands before they ate.  Actually, what they said was that his disciples didn’t follow the traditions of the elders and wash their hands before eating.  There were good reasons for washing one’s hands before eating, but cleanliness wasn’t the real issue.  

Ask yourself what was at stake.  Washing one’s hands was a part of the Levitical code.  More than 1,000 years earlier the Levites had established a series of hygiene and dietary laws.  It was not only a health matter, but it was more importantly it was what set Hebrews apart from other tribes.  They washed their hands before prayer, and they prayed before eating.  You could tell a Jew from a Gentile by what they did before they ate.

In 1981, I moved to Bedminster and went to register to vote.  The lady behind the counter said, “You aren’t one of them, are you?”  “One of who,” I asked, naively.  “Oh, you know, them.  There are only five of them in this whole town.”  I didn’t know she was kidding, but my mind started to race.  What might she think I might be?  I finally replied, “I’m sorry, but I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.  Five of what?”  “Why, dear, don’t you know?  There are only five Democrats in this entire town.  Are you going to make it six?”  She was joking, but it was one of the rare times in my life, this young, white, middle-class, educated, employed male had a momentary sensation of feeling like an outsider, someone who didn’t belong, maybe wasn’t wanted.  I was what my friend says his aunt always used to say, “Oh honey, they’re NOKD (not our kind, dear).  I was not the right kind, and felt it strongly.

Your disciples don’t wash their hands before they eat, Jesus.  Your disciples are Jews, but they’re intentionally insulting us.  We hold you responsible for their disrespecting the traditions that set us apart from other people.

What mattered to the Pharisees, was that God had set them apart from other people.  Following every aspect of the law made them visibly different. 

 But according to Jesus, despite their good intentions, following the road to the letter of the law had gotten them lost.  They couldn’t find the spirit of the law anymore.  They had made secondary things primary.  They worshipped the tradition rather than the reasons for the traditions.  They had turned a law of God into a weapon of segregation.  They cordoned off God’s grace from anyone who wasn’t well washed.  We’re in; you’re not.  We’re the church; you cannot be..  We belong.  You don’t.  Unless you are as we are, unless you do it our way…”

The crisis facing the early church was whether to accept that Jesus was a new way to God or whether salvation still depended on following the traditions and laws.  The message of Mark’s Gospel was that in Jesus, there are no “those people.”  There are no NOKD.  In Christ, you and I and anyone else and everyone else is but one kind, and that is a child of God, loved by God, wanted by God.  In Christ, there is no difference between people, no matter who or what they are. 

I am proud to be an Episcopalian today because we are struggling to remove some more dividing walls between those who are in and those who have been kept out.  And it is hard, and it is coming at a cost.  But for me, it goes to the very heart of way Jesus came to a world that can all too often brutally and arrogantly say, “You’re not one of them, are you?”

As our world gets smaller and our interaction with people very different from ourselves becomes natural, there is no way for us not to bump into even more walls in the future, not just ethnic walls or national walls, but even the walls that separate us into different religions with different notions of who and how God is, let alone how we should be.  My hunch is that there will be times I will be like the Pharisees… “But we do it this way, we believe this, you insult us by not honoring our traditions.”  I pray for the heart of Jesus when those moments come. 

Anne Lamott, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict tells her story.  If a tradition is something people really care about enough to do over and over again, then listen for the tradition of this particular church.

When Sam was six days old, I took him to my little church in Marin City, the church where I’ve been hanging out for four year’s now… I got in the habit of stopping by the church on Sundays but staying in the back, in this tense, lurky way, and leaving before the service was over because I didn’t want people to touch me, or hug me, or try to make me feel better about myself.  After I got sober and started to feel okay about myself, I could stay to the end and get hugged… Anyway, the first Sunday after Sam’s birth, I kind of limped in… and everyone was staring joyfully and almost brokenheartedly at us because they loved us so much.  I walked, like a ship about to go down, to a seat in the back.  But the pastor said, “Whoa, whoa, not so fast – you come up here and introduce him to his new family.”  So I limped up to the little communion table in the front of the half circle of folding chairs where we sit, and I turned to face everyone.  The pain and joy were just overwhelming.  I tried to stammer, “This is my son,” but my lip was trembling, my whole face was trembling, and everyone was crying.  When I’d first started coming back to church, I couldn’t even stand up for half of the songs because I’d be so sick from cocaine and alcohol that my head would be spinning, but these people were so confused that they’d thought I was a child of God.  Now they’ve seen me sober for three years, and they saw me through my pregnancy… Toward the end of my pregnancy, people were stuffing money into my pockets, even though a lot of them live on welfare and tiny pensions.  They’d sidle up to me, slip a twenty into the pocket of my sweater, and dart away.[1]

That was that church.  Make a list about St. Francis.  What’s on it?  What are the traditions that really matter in your personally life and in the life of St. Francis, Dunellen?  Do they set apart or bring together?  Do they pronounce, “You are not our kind, dear,” or do they proclaim, “In Christ, all the children of this earth are one kind.”  It’s more than just washing hands.