Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost: Proper 17: What Comes from the Heart?

Today's Scripture Readings

Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8 (NRSV)
 

Moses said: So now, Israel, give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe, so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that the LORD, the God of your ancestors, is giving you. You must neither add anything to what I command you nor take away anything from it, but keep the commandments of the LORD your God with which I am charging you.

You must observe them diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, "Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!" For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is whenever we call to him? And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today?

But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children's children.

Psalm 15 (BCP., p.599)


James 1:17-27 (NRSV)

Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God's righteousness. Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.

But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act-they will be blessed in their doing.

If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. 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.

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 (NRSV)

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."

Blog Reflection

I have had many times during my life in which I found myself in a place of confusion about what was going on inside of me.  No time was more confusing for me than when I was in the process of moving from my Protestant Evangelical way of thinking/believing and practicing to become a Roman Catholic.  The Late Father Ralph D. Tetrault would often listen to me as I struggled with this and that.  At one point I was talking to him about something that was very deep in my heart.  As I tried to explain it, Fr. Tetrault said to me, "No! No!  Only God knows what is truly in your heart.  I cannot tell you what is there.  No one else can tell you what is there.  Only God knows what is in your heart.  You must learn above all else to trust what God is doing within your heart."  These words have proven to be true on many, many occasions.

In our worship of God, there is the tendency for us to pay so much attention to whether our rituals are just right, and movements are what they should be; so that we can justify ignoring what is going on in the heart.  I write this blog post full of guilt of any number of times I have done so.  "Did I bless myself during the the Sanctus at "Blessed is the One who comes in the Name of the Lord.."?  All the while, the One I pronounce blessed with my lips is drawing me closer to God's Self through God's Holy Essence from within.  God does not require that I be someone I am not, nor someone other than who God has made me.  God only asks me to do what Saint Benedict wrote in the beginning of the Prologue to The Rule.  "Listen my child. Incline the ears of your heart."

We also need to give those questioning Jesus about what His Disciples are doing a little slack.  They have been following a particular set of rituals for as long as they could remember.  Whether the ritual is just that, or flows from their hearts, it is a deep part of their worship of God.  Who are we to second guess them?  

Jesus is saying to us, what James is telling us in our Second Reading today.  If we think our rituals are ends in and of themselves, and do not allow the grace of God to transform us, and through us transform the world around us; we are the ones who limit what God can do. 

The Christian Religion is chock full of Christians who pay God lip service.  We certainly do not need to be telling other religious traditions such as Judaism and Islam to turn to Christianity for a more redeeming faith.  If Christians continue to present our Faith as if it is nothing more than a wealthy enterprise of political agendas and the marginalization of others; what makes the Faith so attractive to anyone else?  

While so many Christians are so determined to make abortion, gay marriage the infallibility of the Bible and winning elections as the only reason as to why our Faith means anything; Christians are allowing ourselves to miss many important things that are far more damaging.  Frank Powell wrote a very compelling blog post entitled 9 Sins the Church is Okay With.   Those sins Powell focuses on are fear, worry, gluttony, apathy, flattery, comfort, consumerism, patriotism and lying.  These certainly fall under the category of things that come from within.  They suggest that we are not satisfied with trusting in God to feed our hungry souls.  This alone makes our meditating on Jesus as the Bread of Life over these past five weeks very important. 

Jesus challenges us to worship God from our hearts and allow the love and mercy of God to flow out and in.  As we gather as worshiping Christian communities, we do not do so alone.  We do them with other Christians near and far.  We celebrate the life of Jesus in Word and Sacrament from within our often wounded and weary hearts; longing for God to refresh, bless and re-energize us for the work of hospitality, healing and reconciliation with our neighbors and families.  We receive from God as we engage in worship, prayer and celebration; the confirmation of God's love in our hearts and the mission to speak to the lonely, the prejudiced, the oppressed and the hurting.  We are given direction to listen intentionally to the stories others tell of how they are searching for and finding God in those places where it is so difficult for us to see God and listen to the Spirit.  We discover that we are not walking the course alone, but with the help of others that are going our way.  Trying to follow the Way of Jesus to learn compassion for the suffering, the poor, the sick and those who are thirsting just to be included in the Church and society.

May our worship of God bring us clarity to what God is saying within our hearts, so that we may together serve Christ in others who are different from ourselves.

Amen.


Prayers

Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good
things: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in
us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth
in us the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God,
for ever and ever. Amen.  (Proper 17.  The Book of Common Prayer, p. 233).

O Almighty God, who pours out on all who desire it the
spirit of grace and of supplication: Deliver us, when we draw
near to you, from coldness of heart and wanderings of mind,
that with steadfast thoughts and kindled affections we may
worship you in spirit and in truth; through Jesus Christ our
Lord. Amen.  (Prayer Before Worship.  The Book of Common Prayer, p. 833).

O God, you have made of one blood all the peoples of the
earth, and sent your blessed Son to preach peace to those
who are far off and to those who are near: Grant that people
everywhere may seek after you and find you; bring the
nations into your fold; pour out your Spirit upon all flesh;
and hasten the coming of your kingdom; through Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen. (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 100).

Monday of the Third Week in Lent: Gregory the Great: Servant of the Servants of God

Today's Scripture Readings

1 Chronicles 25:1a,6-8

David and the officers of the army also set apart for the service the sons of Asaph, and of Heman, and of Jeduthun, who should prophesy with lyres, harps, and cymbals. They were all under the direction of their father for the music in the house of the LORD with cymbals, harps, and lyres for the service of the house of God. Asaph, Jeduthun, and Heman were under the order of the king. They and their kindred, who were trained in singing to the LORD, all of whom were skillful, numbered two hundred eighty-eight. And they cast lots for their duties, small and great, teacher and pupil alike.

Mark 10:42-45 (NRSV)

Jesus called his disciples and said to them, "You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."

Blog Reflection

Today's commemoration of St. Gregory the Great is one that I cannot so easily dismiss.  Even during Lent by which we have the option of omitting commemoration of Saints, because the Lenten weekday takes precedence.  Being an Oblate of St. Benedict, and Gregory's contribution to Benedict's legacy by writing about him in Book II of the Dialogues, and being a musician who loves Gregorian Chant, I have to stop and write about him today.

My admiration of the Saint has nothing to do with how much I might disagree with his work that led to the idea of the Papacy being one of supreme authority in the Universal Church.  A Saint is someone who has their share of vices, even while they may excel at virtue.  Each individual in the Churches' history added as much woe as they did wisdom and hope.  St. Gregory the Great is no exception.

If you have attended Mass and/or a celebration of the Holy Eucharist recently and prayed the Lord's Prayer after the Eucharistic Prayer, you have celebrated an accomplishment of St. Gregory the Great.  Attention to the worship and music in the Church was one of Gregory's many passions and projects.  If you have ever listened to any Psalm chanted in plain chant, it was Gregory the Great who put those chants and Psalms into an order to be used and referred to. 

Gregory the Great also had a passion for Monastic Life.  He was inspired by St. Benedict, and from his model began his own Monastic community.   He sent his Prior St. Augustine to Canterbury to become the first Archbishop of Canterbury to spread the Gospel to the English people. It was the work of St. Augustine of Canterbury that gave so much life to the Church of England and the Anglican Communion to which the Benedictines made so many contributions to our worship, music and architecture.

The contributions and accomplishments of St. Gregory the Great would not be spelled out as well, if we did not mention his passion for the poor, disadvantaged and the marginalized.  We have to be careful here, because in his short comings, he definitely did not contribute well to the history of the Church and their relationship to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.  Yet, his devotion to the Gospel to be a "servant of the servants of God" should speak to the Church of today about the importance of pursuing justice, inclusion and equality for LGBT and other persons marginalized in both the Church and society.

What might it mean to be a "servant of the servants of God" for us?

Jesus in today's Gospel reading from Mark tells us that to be considered a leader is to be a servant to others.  Leadership and/or being in a place where what we say and do has such an important impact on others, gains its momentum by being a servant first and foremost.  It comes from seeing a need and our readiness to serve that need so others can join us in speaking to it.  Being a servant of the servants of God, recognizes that all of us are human with the potential to be wrong, while at the same time seeing the potential for something good to come out of even the worst of situations.  That will happen, as we are willing to bend down and wash the feet of anyone who comes to us.  Even someone with whom we disagree.  That is no small order.  That kind of thing takes a lot of humility.

Jesus is the example and model of humility.  Jesus was not just some Joe Schmoe who happened to be a really good person. He was a great person.  Jesus was God's perfect revelation of Self.  God who had come among us as one like us in all things, but did not sin.  Affected by our humanity with all it's prejudices such as the episode with the Canaanite Woman in Matthew 15: 21-28.  Yet, even in that moment, Jesus does not "regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,,," (see Philippians 2: 6-7).   Jesus seeks not what is his own will, nor what is ultimately best for himself, but what is the will of God and the good of the individual before him.  At the Cross, Jesus regarded all of us as more important than even his own body and blood, by pouring himself out, from that amazing love that comes from God for all humankind.  God redeems us through God's total giving of Self in the Person of Jesus Christ, in his Passion, Death and Resurrection.

This Lent we are challenged to be servants for the servants of God.  We are given a model by St. Gregory the Great, and the ultimate example through Jesus Christ.  As we make room for God within the silence of our hearts, it is crucial that we also make space there for the marginalized and destitute of society and the Church.  We must challenge our leaders to seek not what is best for themselves in terms of free flowing political cash, or getting their name in front of someone else's.  But, because the good of people who are different from them and us, needs to come to the fore front and be given the opportunity to uphold and move forward the dignity of all human beings.

How might we be called to be the servants of the servants of God?


Prayers

Almighty and merciful God, you raised up Gregory of Rome to be a servant of the servants of God, and inspired him to send missionaries to preach the Gospel to the English people: Preserve in your Church the catholic and apostolic faith they taught, that your people, being fruitful in every good work, may receive the crown of glory that never fades away; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Collect for St. Gregory the Great.  Holy Women, Holy Men, Celebrating the Saints, p. 269).

Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have
made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and
make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily
lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness,
may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission
and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives
and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever
and ever. Amen.  (Collect for Ash Wednesday, Book of Common Prayer, p. 217).

Almighty and most merciful God, we remember before you
all poor and neglected persons whom it would be easy for us
to forget: the homeless and the destitute, the old and the sick,
and all who have none to care for them. Help us to heal those
who are broken in body or spirit, and to turn their sorrow
into joy. Grant this, Father, for the love of your Son, who for
our sake became poor, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Prayer for the Poor and Neglected, Book of Common Prayer, p. 826).