Faithful Hearts

sermon by Torin Eikler
Mark 7:1-8, 14-23

I'm not sure how it is with you, but often when I read a scripture, it calls to mind others that I have read before.  I know that shouldn’t surprise me, but it does.  Maybe it’s just a hold over from a time when I felt like I didn’t know the bible very well, but I’m not really a biblical scholar, and the congregations I grew up in didn’t particularly encourage memorizing passages of scripture.  So, it still amazes me when connections come to mind … and especially when I actually know where to find the text that comes to mind.

This week was one of those times.  When I read the last three verses of the scripture from Mark, I immediately thought of Matthew, chapter 18, verses 8 and 9.  Those verses read:

            If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away;
                        it is better for you to enter life maimed or lame
                               than to have two hands or two feet and to be thrown into eternal fire.
            And if you eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away;
                        it is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes
                                and to be thrown into the hell of fire.

 

If you don’t see the link between the two texts, I don’t blame you.  It’s not the kind of connection that usually leads from one scripture to another, but I think that it does underscore what Jesus told his disciples as he explained his statement about what is clean and what is unclean.  I know that still doesn’t make the link clear.  So, let me do some explaining myself … and I should say that most of this comes from a lecture I had with Professor Jeff Bach rather than my own thinking.

 

Take a moment to think about those verses in Matthew.  “If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off ….  And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out….”  They sound horrible and inhumane … and impossible.  Even the most extreme zealots would have to think twice about doing that, though some have followed these instructions over the years.  But, even if you take the teachings literally, it make little sense to maim or blind yourself … because, after all, it is not your hand or your foot or your eye that causes you to sin.  All of those parts of your body are controlled by your brain.

And what controls your brain?  The answer to that is up for discussion.  You might say that it’s your spirit that holds those controls.  Or your conscience.  Or your will.  Or your sense of yourself – your ego.  But in the time when Jesus was teaching, the heart was the seat of all of those different pieces that make a person … a person.  So, one of the points that Jesus may have been trying to make was that sin and evil did not come from some outside source.  It came from the heart – from a heart that was not in tune with God.

But, if the heart is the seat of sinfulness and evil, it is also the seat of righteousness and good.  It is the place where our highest purposes are born and nurtured and brought to life.  It is dwelling place of our souls and the place where we connect most directly with the Spirit of the Divine.  It is the wellspring of the love and compassion, the mercy and justice, the hope and faith that inspire and empower our lives as children of God and followers of Christ.  And, … it is the arena in which our struggle to choose between right and wrong … to choose for or against God takes place … to embody a heart of faith or live with a heart of stone.

 

As far as I know, there is only one sin that the Bible tells us is unforgiveable – blaspheming against the Holy Spirit.  It’s not in the Ten Commandments.  It’s not part of the law taught by the priests or rabbis.  But it was condemned by Jesus a few chapters before this in Mark.  So, I think that we need to take that seriously.

At the same time, I think we need to take the spiritual condition of a hardened heart just as seriously.  It seems to come in a close second, and Jesus saves his harshest criticism for those in the religious community who demonstrate hard hearts.  That’s what this whole little tableau is about.  Earlier, some of these same people (or at least people with the same credentials) had incited a crowd to try and kill Jesus because he had healed a man’s hand on the Sabbath.  Now they are condemning the disciples for eating food without washing their hands first.  That was a rule originally meant for priests who were about to eat the sacrificial bread, but it had been transformed into a ritual practice for all upright and observant Jews.

The Pharisees and scribes had apparently missed the point the point the first time around.  So Jesus spelled it out, “there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”  It is the selfish actions that demean people, ignore or cause pain and suffering in others, or seek to elevate one person at the expense of a brother or sister that make a person unclean. 

The message seems clear, especially after Jesus explains further to the disciples.  In abandoning the commandment of God and holding to human tradition, the Pharisees had lost touch with the compassion at the heart of the law – a compassion for all people born of God’s great love.  If they had had faithful hearts, they would have been much less concerned with physical purity.  They would not have been pointing fingers.  Instead they would have been reaching out to people with open hands … helping hands … loving, compassionate hands.

 

We need to be careful too.  It’s easy to point fingers at the Pharisees and dismiss their “legalism,” but if we stop there, we, too, have missed the point.  The rules that they followed had been formed over generations by well-meaning people who were honestly trying to follow the commandments they had received from God.  They were just trying to make sure that they didn’t slip up – didn’t accidentally break those laws through ignorance.  But the hedge that they had built around the law had grown to obscure its meaning over time.  Little by little, they had wandered from the path.  Step by step, their hearts had become hardened even as they were trying to remain faithful.

That happens to us too.  We start off following Christ with good intentions … and end up far from the compassion that Jesus himself modeled.  Usually we aren’t even aware that we have strayed because the reasons that started our wandering have become such a part of us that we no longer question them until someone comes along and challenges us.

That has been my experience, at least.  When I was in High School, I went to Christian Citizenship Seminar in New York and Washington, DC.  CCS is a program offered by the Church of the Brethren to bring youth together once a year to learn about a particular social, spiritual, and political issue that is important in the life of our society.  They have focused on militarism, the environment, and racism among other things.  The one that I am remembering concentrated on poverty, and I came out of it with a conviction that I should do more to care for the hungry and homeless around me.

That sense conviction has stayed with me over the years, and I still feel a compulsion to help whenever someone asks me for some change.  But, I have learned a lot more about the complex reasons behind homelessness, and I have seen many, many hungry people who will take whatever money they get to buy drugs or alcohol rather than food.  And so I have generally stopped giving money.

It used to be that I would carry food with me to give to people instead of money.  After a while, I stopped doing that, but I would take the time to walk with someone into a nearby restaurant or convenience store and buy them something to eat … if they were willing to go along.  Eventually, though, I stopped doing that as well.  Now, I usually just walk on past.  Sometimes I will say hello.  Sometimes I don’t even afford them that little offering of humanity.  When I think about it (which isn’t too often since it makes me so uncomfortable), I feel a deep sadness that I seem to have lost touch with the power of that 17-year-old’s conviction … that I don’t know how to change the hardened defense that separates me from those who are suffering back into a softer more compassionate heart.

 

This week I remembered a story that I hadn’t thought of in years.  It was shared by David Radcliff during the week of that same Christian Citizenship Seminar, and I found it to be quite inspiring.  David’s job required him to visit Washington, DC regularly, and he spent quite a lot of time in and around Union Station where many of the homeless men and women of Capitol Hill hang out.  So, he was often asked to help out with some spare change.

At first he gave whatever change was in his pocket to people, but then the word spread and more people would ask him for money.  He began to make sure that he never carried change in his pocket so that he could honestly say that he had none to give, but that didn’t sit well with him.  So, he stopped speaking to people and, eventually, even started to walk with his eyes on the floor so that he wouldn’t make eye contact.

A few months later, he was outside Union Station waiting to meet someone, and a homeless man was standing nearby.  David tried to be polite but distant when the man greeted him, but as his short wait grew into a long one, he ended up having a conversation with the "Sam."  Over the next hour, he heard a bit about Sam’s history, and when it was time for him to leave, he gave Sam $5 even though he had never asked for it.

Over the course of the next several weeks, similar situations gave David and Sam a chance to get to know one another better, and David came to care about Sam and to see him as a unique individual.  Over the course of the year, they became what some might call friends, and David began to plan his schedule so that they could have lunch together once a week.  In that way, he was able to reach out to one person and help.

 

But, we all know it goes deeper and farther than just how we deal with the hungry or homeless, though it would go a long way if we could find a way to show them compassion at every turn.  Our human habits have taken us a long way from Jesus’ teachings about faithful living.  He taught us to forgive others, and we gladly accept forgiveness from others.  We live with the assurance that our all our sins are forgiven through the grace of God.  Yet, we often harbor long-term resentment toward those who have offended us.

Jesus also taught us to love our enemies and to refuse violence even in the most dire of circumstances, and when it is a far away thing – a war somewhere else – we can generally go along with that.  Yet, when we often respond with physical, verbal, or emotional violence when we feel personally threatened.

And what about welcoming the stranger or visiting those in prison?  We are a very hospitable congregation.  It’s one of our spiritual gifts as a community of faith to open our doors and our hearts to the people who walk through our open doors.  Yet, look around you.  We have our differences, but in the larger scheme of things, we are all pretty similar to each other.  I think part of that is because the people who seek this place out are looking for a church like this, but I know that we have difficulty reaching out to invite others to join us.  And, I wonder if it part of it is that we struggle to accept and welcome people who are really different from us – who stretch our comfort zone.  I wonder if the way that we “do” church is a barrier – if our religious traditions have taken the edge off of the welcome we want to offer.

 

It is not easy to meet the central challenge of the gospel.  It is hard to transform our hearts.  And even when we have made the effort - struggled to meet the challenge to best of our ability, trusting God to do the rest – it is so easy to give in to the habits of our past and the weight of our culture.  It is so easy to wander … little by little … step by step … to wander from the path of compassionate love that Jesus set out before us – to let our faithful hearts become callous and hard.

Maybe the answer lies in personal relationships like the one David developed.  It is harder to ignore people when you know them well.  Or maybe it’s as simple as practicing.  Using our physical muscles makes them stronger, and many people have found the same to be true with our spiritual muscles.  Or maybe we need something else altogether.  I’m sure it’s different for each one of us, but there is one thing that remains the same regardless of who we are … we need to keep working at it.  If we are too live up to our dreams of being followers of Christ in more than name alone, we need to nurture faithful hearts … loving hearts … hearts that reach out to others in gentleness and compassion.

 
May it be so.