DOES YOUR LIFE HONOR GOD?

James 1: 17-27, Mark 7: 1-23

Twenty-one years ago my wife and I came across the Port Orange bridge for the first time to interview at a church needing a pastor. Just as it is today, the intercoastal waterway was inviting and thrilling to a couple who were living in the Midwest; there was a mixture of small homes along with a brand new development of condominiums called “The Oceans.” And the beach was so close! Then there was the church building as we turned north on Peninsula Drive: a gleaming white church with a colonial spire pointing high in the air towards heaven; all seemed almost perfect that day. And this church was interviewing a man of just 28 years old? This community could be a place where we could live and raise our small children? It seemed like a dream come true. But like Christians who have the fish bumper stickers on their cars but drive and gesture as if they don’t; or like congregations have ushers dress in uniforms but souls that are stained with unrecognized sin that circle the wagons around their way of life, this church building 21 years ago looked beautiful, but inside there were stale smells along with people who were tender with hurt, woefully short on trust, and pitifully short on program. Such a difference between what was outside and what was inside! It still happens: some youth looking for acceptance, join the biggest youth groups in town and find that they fuel themselves by railing against other Christians who don’t baptize like, vote like, or look like they do: the outside of our churches, or our bodies, or our faces are just window dressing that can hide emptiness, rigidness, or exclusiveness: polar opposites to the life and ways of Jesus Christ. Sometimes a façade can be deceiving. And what about this Chamber of Commerce community in the last 20 years? It still has contentious condo board meetings and County Council fights about who gets to use the beach: residents, visitors, cars, property owners, sea turtles, or some combination. But we can each vote, each speak out, and each seek to raise the level of and quality of our community. The old saying is that to get a tall ship under a bridge, one has to either raise the bridge or lower the water. Most want to raise community standards with not only appearance, but with integrity. Over the years, you and I have wanted a church that was more than a building, and so now it is. To honor God, church members- ones who have claimed Christianity and who are watched carefully by the outside world- must demonstrate a heart for Christ, or we will have the judgment of Jesus the way he judged hypocritical Pharisees in Galilee long ago who had clean hands but crusty hearts. If our lives are to honor God, we not only walk the walk, we speak from a well of kindness, and we look for ways to help the lost. As it is written in the book of James, “Let us be doers of the Word, and not hearers only.”

In our efforts to follow Christ, the Apostle Paul reminds us that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Modern Christian writer Kathleen Norris captures the double-bind we enter when we try to be perfect in following God’s laws the way the Pharisees and Sadducees tried to live them but failed, as Jesus described in Mark’s gospel today. She writes: “Perfectionism is one of the scariest words I know. It is a marked characteristic of contemporary American culture, a serious psychological affliction that makes people too timid to take necessary risks and causes them to suffer when, although they’ve done the best they can, their efforts fall short of some imaginary, and usually unattainable standard…. [AMAZING GRACE, Riverhead Books, 1998, p.55] To be fair, rabbinic teachings prescribed a certain way to ritually wash, and certain foods which could and could not be eaten. But when Jesus was questioned about the hand washing and eating habits of his disciples, he did not dwell on how things looked to others, he turned their focus on what was in their hearts. Do you remember adults in your life who tried to teach you proper habits about how to dress, how to thank others, how to set a table and how to eat like a civilized person? Did ANYONE try to teach you those things? I remember the difference between those who seemed to do it to make me a better person and those who did it in a punitive corrective way. The heart of our Lord, it seems to me, knows the importance of religious and cultural rituals, but when one dwells on them to the disregard of the soul that needs healing, then Jesus judges them as he did the rule keepers of his day. Sometimes we can’t see the forest for all the trees. Jesus said, “What comes from within a person, from a person’s heart, are the things that can stain another one’s life: evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness.” [Mk. 1: 2-22] You or I may wear the clothing of religious people, but doing so with a cold heart or sinning without repentance has driven more Christians away from churches than attracted them. Like a dishonest partner in a business; like a lying member of a team, or like the neighbor who shows utter disregard for others, it saps the joy out of living and the ability for others in your business, church, team, or condo to rise to higher levels of integrity. We have the chance to honor God by attracting people to the Christian life, not repelling them from it. Taking seriously and joyfully the message of Jesus, we have a beautiful church on the outside and one where, when people enter, they are greeted by those with hearts for Christ: not perfection, but a desire to do the right thing. We have mission, program, and study; but mostly we believe we have the presence of God’s Holy Spirit changing lives. Americans are good with beautiful packaging and attractive promotions. Without Christ, what’s inside a church can hurt the Kingdom of God. With Christ, what’s inside is part of the Kingdom of God on earth.

In closing, here is what some of the greats in the Christian life wrote about living the sacred life: Are you trying to have salvation without being willing to change your heart? Oswald Chambers, who wrote MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST, once wrote: “There are times when you can’t understand why you cannot do what you want to do. When God brings a time of waiting, and appears to be unresponsive, don’t fill it with busyness, just wait. The time of waiting may come to teach you the meaning of sanctification—to be set apart from sin and made holy.” Or Thomas ‘a Kempis in THE IMITATION OF CHRIST: “Keep an eye on yourself first of all, and admonish yourself before all your dear friends. If you have not the favour of [others], let this have weight with you, that you do not hold yourself as well and circumspectly as befits a servant of God.” And finally, Halford Luccock once wrote: “Near the entrance to an art gallery in London there used to be a wastebasket. A visitor once asked a guard at the entrance what the basket was for. He answered with a smile, ‘That is where the students drop their conceit when they go out.’ He had noticed over the years that many students had entered the gallery and, upon seeing the work of some really great painters, took away the conceit from their own work. So the sight of Jesus takes away our self-satisfaction over our imagined excellences, and only one prayer rises to our lips: ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner.’” Amen.

Jeffrey A. Sumner September 3, 2006