Sermon for Pentecost 12
August 23, 2009
Mark 7:1-13
Pastor Curt Dwyer, St. John’s Lutheran Church, Lafe AR

Grace, mercy and peace be yours from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Dear Friends,

God wants our hearts (the rest is just details)

  Did you see the cartoon in the bulletin? I thought it was funny, because, of course, we know that Luter and Liladean are just being silly. Of course God likes my kind of music best, right? And plastic plants? Surely she doesn’t mean plastic plants in church? That would be totally in appropriate. And Luter’s wrong, God likes facial hair. Just look at the pictures of Jesus ­ and do you think I would have a mustache if God didn’t like it? We do all have expectations, don’t we? We all have certain expectations about what is ‘good, right and salutary’ in the church, whether they are as crass as Luter and Liladeans, or perhaps a little more subtle.

  What would happen if suddenly, when we gathered for Sunday, we suddenly had no hymnals? Or organ? Or pulpit? Or altar? Or pews? (or guitars, bulletins, etc.) What if we stopped having VBS or the Children’s Christmas program? What if Young at Heart and LLL and Dorcas never had another meeting? What if, despite the lack of music, decorations or furniture, the church service lasted 3 ? hours? Would it still be church? Would you still go?

  Expect things to be a certain way, but that doesn’t mean they have to be that way. The main point, of course, is Christ, and the faith that God works in our hearts. Nothing else will do. Nothing else is ultimately important. Traditions (like hymnals, organs, liturgy, pews, etc.) are good, because humans like to have a certain predictibility to our days. We like the familiar. It helps us understand what is going on around us. But when the familiar, or comfortable, or traditional takes the place of Christ in our hearts, it’s time to re-(negotiate, arrange, prioritize), or to use another, more Biblical word, repent.

  The Pharisees in the gospel lesson take Jesus and the disciples to task because they weren’t following the rules; they weren’t acting in a way that was acceptable to men of faith. It was the accepted norm that men of God always followed the ritual of washing hands before eating. (This wasn’t a sanitary thing; it was a spiritual ritual.) When the disciples failed to follow this tradition, they were showing themselves to be something other than faithful men of God. At least, that was the impression that was left in the mind of the Pharisees.

  But Jesus points out that God isn’t concerned with ritual. God wants our hearts. The rest is just details. Before we get too hard on the Pharisees, let’s remember something; they were trying very hard to be faithful. Their main goal in life wasn’t to oppose Jesus; their main goal in life was to live so as to show themselves faithful to God’s law. They were dedicated to following God, in every aspect of their lives. They approached every aspect of their lives, from the largest decisions to the smallest daily routine, with the concern that their behavior reflect their obedience to God’s law. That isn’t such a bad thing, is it? In a way, we all ought to learn from their example, and get a little more concerned about how our every action reflects our faith, or not. But Jesus gets to the heart of the problem, when he points out that their actions have taken the place of their faith. God isn’t so concerned about the outward action; He wants our hearts. When our hearts are right, everything else will be right also. No outward actions, no rituals, no acts of obedience will ever take the place of a faith-filled heart.

  So the question for us becomes, “How do we get a faith-filled heart?” It’s tempting, at this point, to revert back to the same mistake the Pharisee’s make again at this point, and come up with some 5 point plan for a faith-filled heart. But that misses the point. Mark actually gives us a hint at the answer in the middle of this story, though it doesn’t translate very well into English.

  When Mark talks about the ritual washing of hands and pots and cups and kettles, he uses a Greek word that we are very familiar with, just in a different context; baptize. How do we get a new heart? We get a new heart when we are washed in baptism. When Jesus instituted christian baptism, He took these ritual washings that were so familiar at the time, and invests it with a new purpose. Now, instead of undergoing baptism as a ritual way to make myself clean and therefore please God, Jesus uses baptism to make us clean. We don’t baptize ourselves, Jesus baptizes us. And in that baptism, Jesus gives us a new heart. In baptism, our hearts are turned away from the sinful, selfish desire to put ourselves ahead no matter what the cost to anyone else, and turned toward the selfless, self-sacrificing love of God given to us. Our hearts and our lives and changed from insecurity to the secure and peaceful understanding that we are God’s because of Christ. In baptism, our obedience is no longer the primary factor; in baptism, Christ’s perfect obedience becomes ours, so that no matter what might happen to us, we know that we are God’s.

  We aren’t always perfect. Sometimes, some tradition (either new or old) becomes too important to us and begins to take the place of heart-faith. We may be tempted from time to time to replace faith with membership in a certain group, or adherence to a particular political outlook, or pursuit of a specific agenda. All those things may be good, but when they begin to replace faith, it’s time to repent. When we repent, we simply return back to our baptism, where we know that God gave us a new heart. When we repent, we ask God to restore in us the purity that He first gave us when He washed us in baptism. In repentance, we reject everything that pretends to be faith, and hold on to Christ alone.

  Our salvation, our acceptability to God, does not depend upon the version of worship we prefer, the color of carpet we have, the number of Christian organizations we belong to or our political affiliations. Our salvation depends on Christ and how He has changed our hearts.

God wants our hearts. The rest is just details.