Dirty Hands

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
August 30, 2009; 13 Pentecost; Proper 17, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23) – Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, "Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?" He said to them, "Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,

'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.'

You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition."

Then he called the crowd again and said to them, "Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. 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."
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The chaplain at Temple University tells of watching a mother bringing her small son to the communion rail. As he held out his hand, she slapped him angrily. She was furious with him. Not the left hand! The right hand!

I got a letter from a leader in the Church of Christ. He was pretty furious with a recent column of mine. I get real mixed reviews from my columns, and that's fine. I don't think I know anybody who always agrees with me, including my mother and my wife, and they love me. Bill Clark is fond of saying, "I never agree with what Lowell writes in the paper, but I love him." Anyway, I got a letter correcting my contention that salvation is about a lot more than getting to heaven after you die. IN ALL CAPS the letter writer corrected me, saying that all Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and most Christians are going to hell unless they follow the right formula about Jesus. The Church of Christ teaches that only members of their church are saved.

I wrote back to say that the god he believes in sounds genocidal. His god doesn't look anything like Jesus, and we say Jesus is the incarnation of God. I said that the incarnation of his god would look more like Hitler; he was the last person to try to kill all the Jews. I wrote, "I'll bet you are a kind and loving man. I'll bet that there are people of your acquaintance whom you love and cherish who are not part of your church. If you were given the power of choice, you are kind and compassionate enough that you wouldn't intentionally condemn those good people to eternal damnation. Why would you worship a god who is less loving than you are?"

Well, I got a reply from him. He didn't actually write me back or respond to my questions, but he did enclose three brochures published by his denomination making it crystal clear his church is the only true church, the Bible read literally is the only "absolute, unchanging standard," and adult baptism with lots of water is "an essential condition to salvation." There were a lot of words in those three tracts, but the word "love" never appeared. That's where I'll start my next letter to him. (I wonder which hand they take communion with in that church.)

Ah, Traditions. Powerful stuff. I know I upset quite a few people when I removed some wooden blocks from underneath our altar cross. They were painted white so they might look a little bit like marble, and one had an empty hole in it for a microphone that used to be there in a previous sound system. I thought the blocks were tacky, and Episcopalians hate tacky worse than sin. But only after I removed them did I learn there was a tradition. According to some, the flowers should never be higher than the cross. I had never heard of that tradition. But I am assured that it is a holy tradition passed down from generations in certain Episcopal churches. I am out of compliance.

There are a lot of ways to mess up. There is a Mennonite bishop who had some trouble with some women under his spiritual care. The Mennonite bonnet has strings that are used to tie the bonnet under the chin. Some women decided not to tie their bonnets, but to let the strings dangle. "Honestly," cried the bishop, "I just don't know what this world is coming to!"

Many of you are old enough to remember as I do when women in the Episcopal Church always wore some covering on their head when they came to church. Lots of women had those little lace doilies that they pinned to their hair. That's not the right word, I know. What did you call those? That's a tradition that seems to be waning. There seems to be a lot of non-compliance as I look at the women's uncovered heads in this congregation.

"Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?" the Pharisees asked Jesus. Jesus quoted Isaiah back to them: Heart service is more important than lip service. You are teaching human precepts as doctrines.

I ran across an excerpt from the Digest of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America. "[Slavery] is a real and effective discipline, and without it we are profoundly persuaded that the African race in the midst of us can never be elevated in the scale of being. As long as that race, in its comparative degradation, coexists side by side with the white, bondage is its normal condition." Many Southern Episcopalians agreed.

I imagine that anthropologists in the year 5000 will not have many good things to say about American football. But in our day and time, football is pretty close to doctrine. For some people, it's a religion. "Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the righteous and wear longhorns on your helmets?" Okay, enough entertainment.

How do we know the difference between human precepts and divine truth? We are so immersed in our own culture, traditions, and customs that we rarely have enough distance to see them with much perspective. In some sense, we must hold lightly to what we think we know. James Russell Lowell wrote, "New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth."

The standard and the stillpoint that Jesus gives us is love. "God is love," the First Epistle of John declares. Jesus summarized the whole of the law and the prophets with the commandment to love. Scripture and human history is full of tensions between tradition and love, between purity and love. "Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?" Sometimes getting your hands dirty is the only way to love.

The Epistle of James offers us a tantalizing hint today saying, "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." Widows and orphans were the most vulnerable members of ancient societies. Caring for the vulnerable is an authentic religious expression of love. And "keeping oneself unstained by the world" sounds like a reminder to hold lightly the traditions, customs and values that our culture feeds us, constantly holding our inherited truths up to the discerning light of love.

According to the Rev. J. C. Austin of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York:

There are no political, economic, justifications for a lack of care, a lack of compassion, toward those who are suffering regardless of who they are, what they look like, what they’ve done, or whose side they are on. There are no others, only neighbors.

That means we put our hands to work in some pretty dirty places: on the streets, in prisons, hospitals, shelters, and rehab units; in faraway places filled with people who are deemed outside our national interests or against them, like Liberia, Sudan, and yes, Iraq; and in the messiest conflicts on earth, where the most evil intentions and acts of the human heart pour out unchecked and rampage through the streets, as in that region that seems so ironically named these days, the Holy Land.

Our hands are made clean, are made holy, not by washing them, but by getting them dirty. Our hands have been set apart to scrabble in the dirtiness of the world’s injustices and impurities on Christ’s behalf, to touch with compassion those considered untouchable or unclean by our social mores, cultural divisions, or political commitments. As Teresa of Avila famously put it, "Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours; yours are the eyes through which God’s compassion will look upon the world; yours are the feet with which God will go about doing good; yours are the hands with which God will bless others now. (1)

So, open your hands – either hand will do; no slapping – to receive Christ's Body and Blood, according to our traditions. Know yourself to be God's beloved child, fed and nurtured in Divine Love. And then go into the world, holding lightly to everything except love, and be the hands with which God will bless others today and tomorrow, until we return next week, as is our custom and tradition, to this holy place, to open our hands again, to be blessed, and fed, and sent.
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(1) J. C. Austin, sermon: Dirtiness is Next to Godliness; 8/31/03

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