Living From the Heart
Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 17) - August 31, 2003
by
The Rev. Linda Yeager,
Deacon
- Deuteronomy 4:1-9
- Psalm 15
- Ephesians 6:10-20
- Mark 7:1-8,14-15,21-23
(From The Lectionary Page)
Did you know that, in Connecticut, every male shall have his hair cut round, according to a cap; that no one shall kiss his or her children on Sunday; that no one shall eat mince pies, dance, play cards, or play any instrument of music except the drum, trumpet or jew's-harp? Well, John Schaefer, you'd better stay clear of Connecticut!
These are remnants of "blue laws," those laws from the early days of our country that tried to regulate public morality. Punishments were harsh, including fines, whippings, having body parts burned or cut, or even the death penalty.
These laws have something in common with the laws that the Scribes assembled. The Scribes, who lived between the fifth and fourth centuries before Christ, were legal experts who had a passion for definition. They, too, tried to regulate morality, and they cut the laws into bits and pieces to spell them out in the finest details. By the time of Jesus, these details had become oral traditions which, along with 613 written axioms, the Pharisees, the legalistic branch of Judaism, treasured. The Jews in first-century Palestine had evolved a law code which by its very complexity was impossible to maintain.
The washing of hands before eating, for example was a religious ritual and involved all kinds of tiny, specific rules: how much water was to be used, how many fingers were to be washed at various times during the meal, and how far the elbow was to be washed. There were restrictions about unclean cups, jugs, kettles and many other items.
When Jesus chose his disciples, he did not select men who had studied Torah in the same thorough way that he had. Instead, he gathered ordinary working men and challenged them to follow him. These fishermen, guerrilla fighters, and tax collectors knew little of the religious system, and Jesus made no effort to instruct them in it, for to him it would be wasted effort. Instead, the law he gave them was simple: to fully love God and their neighbor.
Jesus himself did not totally ignore the rules of Orthodox behavior. In today's gospel passage, it appears that Jesus performed the ceremonial hand washing before a meal, but he did not prompt the untrained disciples to follow that example. The Pharisees were not happy.
So Jesus addressed the issue. He informed the crowd that "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." Remember when Jimmy Carter was interviewed for Playboy Magazine when he was President? He told the interviewer that he had not committed adultery but that he had lusted from his heart, which made him guilty. Jimmy Carter understood what it means to live from the heart. Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan who turned against the accepted behavior of "law" about Samaritans being unclean and went to help the injured man on the road to Jericho. He was living from the heart.
Most of us know when we are living from the heart. We use excuses when we aren't living from our hearts, such as that as Christians living in an unchristian world we are pressured into things that we do. I know people my own age who still blame their parents for the behaviors in which they engage. Others blame their spouses or their bosses or their circumstances. I wonder what excuses the CEOs who bring down their companies use for their greed. We are all capable of explaining our behavior with ostensibly acceptable excuses.
But Jesus does not let us off the hook that easily. We are responsible for our actions. We are responsible for that which comes from our hearts. We can blame our past, our families, our circumstances or even fate. I heard the story of a minister who was going to trade pulpits with a neighboring minister, one who believed strongly in predestination. On Sunday morning, they met as they were headed toward each other's churches. The neighboring minister said, "I wish to call to your attention that before the creation of the world God arranged that you were to preach in my pulpit and I in yours on this particular Sunday." "Is that so?" asked the other minister. "Then I won't do it!" And he returned to his own church.
This story serves to remind us that we are free people and therefore must accept responsibility for our actions and motives. This is the uncomfortable but consistent emphasis of Jesus and it is constantly present in our lives. When we begin to feel the discomfort of our actions, we can understand the teenager whose T-shirt said, "When all else fails, lower the standards." And we sometimes do that; we take the easy way out, we rationalize, we over-explain, we hang on to irrational laws.
But the gospel speaks to us today about living from the heart and accepting responsibility for our lives. Rigid laws that serve to act as ritual rather than reason were not important to Jesus. Rather, Jesus gave us the only law that we need to live from the heart: to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, and mind; and to love our neighbor as ourselves. That is the only law we really need, and it is the constant test which we must use to discover if we are living from the heart. Is what we are doing being done in love for God and for our neighbor? Are we hanging on to custom for its own sake rather than responding in love?
Jesus was speaking in the tradition of other rabbis when he said that Pharisees paid God only lip service because their heart was far from Him, and their reverence for God was empty because they taught as dogmas what were mere human precepts. But the collective effect of Jesus' teaching of the "spirit" of the Torah, and his saying that all people were called to be children of God alienated him from official Judaism. Jesus suffered and died for his beliefs, and I believe that we are called to humbly serve God in love and to live from our hearts.
Shortly we will all participate in the baptism of two precious children of God. Much of what they learn about God and his love for them will come from the words and actions of all of us. I pray that Aimee and Henry will grow up in a community of love and be nurtured in a community of love and live all their lives in a community of love, of people who live from their hearts, of people who understand that for which Christ suffered and died.
Today's psalm asks who may abide upon God's holy hill. The answer is the person "who speaks the truth from his heart." From his heart. May that be the test for all our actions. Are we living from our hearts?
