3rd Sept 200612th Sunday after Trinity
Fr Julian Browning
Deuteronomy 4 : 1 – 2 & 6 – 9; James 1 : 17 – 27; Mark 7 : 1 – 8 & 14 – 15 & 21 - 23
"Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves."
The doer of the word has no reward either, except the deed itself, the worship given, the undeceived heart lifted up in joy and sorrow, at one with God and each other.
It should comfort us that the problem has always been there. It's
nothing new. In one ear, out the other, that's our Christianity. It's
like having a look in the mirror, says St.James, then wandering off and
there's nothing in the mirror any more. Back to square one. That's us,
trying to live the Gospel. Why is it so difficult? Jesus speaks the
words of eternal life. He uses simple words. But too often we think He
can't mean me, and we are back keeping ourselves company, using our own
mix and match rules for getting through life without accident, as best
we can. Our daily prayer, all too often, is like that of the Pharisees.
Jesus quotes Isaiah against them: 'This people honours me with their
lips, but their hearts are far from me. In vain do they worship me..'
The Gospel is about the Pharisees. Fine people, the Pharisees. They
stood up for personal holiness and social responsibility. They laid
down rules and made a great effort to keep them.. They had the Law of
Moses to read, and to live by. They felt that their society was under
threat. Ring any bells? Yes, they were good church goer material.
There's nothing too dreadful with being a little bit of a Pharisee.
Attending to detail, keeping busy with things we love and
understand, it's a way of hanging on, keeping going when faith grows
dim. But the Pharisee is in danger. When Jesus discusses the purity
laws and the food laws and so on in this Gospel, he puts his finger on
what's gone wrong in the minds of these Pharisees. All these laws and
prohibitions are designed, not for the honour of God, but to create
social and religious barriers. So the commandments of God come second
to the desires and ambitions of human beings. With the best will in the
world those Pharisees were deceiving themselves.
Let's meet a modern Pharisee. Let's start with me. After Mass last
week, Fr.David entertained the preacher and his wife, and after lunch I
walked back with them to their car, and decided to pop into Church. And
our Korean Christian friends were in full swing. And in Pharisaic mode,
I thought I'm not going to like this. Don't understand this. Not my
style at all. Not right in this building. But as I watched and
listened, something happened. The building replied, and it wasn't
the answer I was expecting. I know, slightly tipsy after a good lunch,
lulled by a foreign tongue, but even so I heard the building speak.
Those worshippers were so obviously doers of the word in their worship,
not merely hearers, they were givers of themselves in prayer and song,
and what they were doing brought Christian joy and hope into this
church, and the church awoke and gave answer. It is as if deep called
to deep, as if the prayerful worship of today has its echo from the
past, and in that conversation Time stands still and we get a glimpse
of eternity, a signal from God that we are safe in His hands.
I used to think that being a doer of the word, as opposed to a hearer
only, meant the practical bit, doing what St.James talks about at the
end of his epistle, caring for the orphans and widows in their
distress, in other words, good works. Of course it means that,
Christianity is practical, religion demands action, but we don't have
to be Christian to realise that orphans need caring for. Being a doer
of the word is more than that. Being a doer of the word is a way of
life, it's the way we are human, the way of life to which you and I
have been called. We don't just listen to the Word of God, with a view
to passing it, looking it up, mulling it over, and changing it subtly
to suit ourselves. The word of God is implanted in us, engrafted, says
St.James, it is there to grow, it is there to be spoken, it is there to
be read by anyone we meet, it is there to save our souls and to protect
us from evil. When we are doers of the word, when God is at work in
what we do, then our prayers will have an answer. Deep calls unto deep,
as the psalm says. If we are hearers of the word only, how can we
expect to have an answer when we have said nothing, pleaded for
nothing, experienced nothing of God's power to save, we sink back into
Pharisaic self-absorption, feeling very sorry for ourselves, and none
too pleased with others. The self-deceiving hearer of the word, who
feels a need to sit in judgement on what God says and does, will have
no reward. The doer of the word has no reward either, except the deed
itself, the worship given, the undeceived heart lifted up in joy and
sorrow, at one with God and each other.
I know you have overdosed on Betjeman these last few weeks, and I am
late with my twopence worth, but he did pray here as we pray here, in
the light of eternity, to be a doer of the word, and not a hearer only,
and maybe some echo of that prayer should now be heard in this church:
The great door shuts and lessens
That roar of churchyard trees
And the Presence of God Incarnate
Has brought me to my knees.
“I acknowledge my transgressions”
The well-known phrases rolled
With thunder sailing over
from the heavily clouded wold.
“And my sin is ever before me.”
There in the lighted East
He stood in that lowering sunlight,
An Indian Christian priest.
And why he was there in Lincolnshire
I neither asked nor knew,
Nor whether his flock was many
Nor whether his flock was few
I thought of the heaving waters
That bore him from sun glare harsh
Of some Indian Anglican Mission
To this green enormous marsh.
There where the white light flickers,
Here, as the rains descend,
That same mysterious Godhead
Is welcoming His friend.
[John Betjeman. A Lincolnshire Church]