Proper 17 -- Deuteronomy
4: 1–9; Psalm 15; James 1:
17-27; Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23
A
homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given
at St. John’s Church’s Annual
Parish Picnic at Greenwood Furnace State Park, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on Sunday, August 30, 2015.
“THE HOLY ONES,
THE UNHOLY ONES, AND GOD’S GRACE”
(Homily text:
Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23)
Who are the holy ones, the truly
holy ones? Who are the most righteousness ones?
And, if there people who are truly
holy and truly righteous, we might also ask:
Are there those who are unholy?
Are there those who are unrighteous?
And, are these unholy and unrighteous ones permanently unholy and
unrighteous?
In other words, is there such a
thing as a religious caste system, in which some are at the top of the holiness
scale, and are there those at the other end of the scale who are
“untouchables”?
Today’s gospel reading describes the
actions and the concerns of the scribes and the Pharisees, and as we consider
the practices and the attitudes of this group of lay persons, we can see that,
indeed, there was in Jesus’ day a caste system, a system of classifying people
according to their worthiness before God.
The self-made “holy ones”, the scribes and the Pharisees, would be very
glad to tell you that they were at the top of that class system….They were
there by virtue of their own actions, their own faithfulness to the slightest
detail of the Law of Moses. They were “self-made”
men of faith.
At the bottom, according to the
estimation of the scribes and Pharisees, were the “untouchables” of Jesus’ day,
the tax collectors, the prostitutes, and other “sinners”.
The picture we have of these two
groups in the gospels isn’t a very pretty one.
Today’s reading portrays some of their concerns: They are concerned about physical
cleanliness. They insist on the washing
of pots, they insist on washing their hands prior to eating, they insist on
washing of other cooking utensils.
But while these scribes and Pharisees
seem to be clean on the outside, they are anything but clean on the
inside. The Lord says of them that “this
people honors me (God) with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in
vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.” (From Isaiah
29: 13)
Apparently, these scribes and
Pharisees are into putting on a good, outward show. Elsewhere, the Lord will warn people to
beware of the people, for they are the ones, He said, that like to walk around
in their long robes in the marketplaces, they like to have the best seats in
the synagogue, and they like to be greeted by their honorific titles. (See Matthew 23: 1–7.) “They do all their deeds to be seen by
others,” the Lord said. (Matthew 23: 5)
Two issues deserve our consideration
as we think about the idea of a religious caste system: 1. Is there such a thing, in God’s eyes, of a
scale of higher and lower holiness? 2. If there is, then is a person’s place on that
scale permanent?
These two questions figured
prominently in the Lord’s earthly ministry, and they figured prominently in the
early Church’s existence.
Let’s examine the Lord’s approach
first:
· A religious
caste system: Even a quick glance at the gospels will
reveal that Jesus did not accept the self-assessments of the scribes, the
Pharisees and the priests of His day that maintained that they were on the top
of the scale of holiness and righteousness before God. His comments, heard today, confirm that
explicitly. He debunks the notion that
outward observance of the Law of Moses, or of the many additional requirements
that the scribes and the Pharisees dreamed up, could ever serve to bring a
person into favor with God. Moreover,
the Lord deliberately sought out the “untouchables” of His day, the tax
collectors, prostitutes and other sinners, showing them that they were deserving
of God’s love and God’s forgiveness. An
essential point arises at this juncture:
When a person encounters Jesus Christ, that encounter is meant to bring
a person into a new and more blessed place than they were before. So the lesson we can take away from the
Scriptures is that, with Jesus, there is no caste system, and there is no way
that a person can make their way up the ladder, so to speak, to become
acceptable to God, on their own merits.
(More about this last point in a moment.)
· Is a person’s
position of acceptability before God permanent?: In a sense we’ve already answered this
question. Jesus’ desire to be in close
and ongoing relationship with the outcasts of His day shows that He believed
that they were worthy of God’s love and God’s acceptance. Jesus never leaves a person where He finds
them, if the encounter between the Lord and the individual is a genuine
one. Certainly that is true of some of
Jesus’ disciples whom we know by name:
Mary Magdalene is a very good example of that…her encounter with the
Lord and her love of Him and of God the Father changed her life completely and
permanently.
The early Church
was plagued by the idea that people’s place in relationship to God was fixed
and was immoveable, and by the idea that, if people could improve their lot,
they could do it by their own efforts.
The challenges to orthodox belief arose in two of the major heresies of
the early centuries. We would do well to
look at each instance:
- Gnosticism: This early heresy,[1] which arose out of Greek pagan philosophical thought, brought into its belief system from that philosophical background the idea that there were three types of believers: 1. The truly enlightened ones, 2. The spiritual dullards who were never going to be able to grasp the secrets of God, and 3. Those in between who, if they really tried hard enough and long enough, could become part of the enlightened group. This is deterministic thinking, a way of regarding people and their relationship to God by categorizing them and by putting them into spiritual cubby holes. It is also fatalistic thinking, fatalistic in the sense that it saw people’s place in the scheme of things as being something that had been pre-determined.
- Pelagianism: This fifth century heresy (which was named for its chief proponent, a monk named Pelagius) maintained that human beings were essentially capable of improving their spiritual lot by their own means. The great western theologian, St. Augustine of Hippo,[2] struggled against this understanding by clearly stating that human beings’ sense of righteousness and of sin has been so deeply stained by our own tendencies to be able to sin that we are unable, absent God’s grace, to lift ourselves up from the depths of unrighteousness we find ourselves in.
In own our day and in our own lives,
we can benefit from the two lessons which arise from today’s gospel
reading:
- There is no such thing as a religious hierarchy, a scale of most holy,
somewhat holy and unholy persons. All of
us begin our journey with God starting from an unholy place. We are born in a state of loved by God, but
of being unholy by virtue of the stain of original sin, that ability we all
have to be able to do bad things. But we
become holy and acceptable to God by the grace and the goodness of God toward
us. Grace being defined as “God’s
goodness and love expressed toward us, even though we don’t deserve it.” As we pass through the waters of baptism, we
die to our old, unholy selves and we arise (as St. Paul says in his Letter to
the Romans, chapter six) to a new life in a resurrection like the Lord’s.
- Upward mobility is the goal of God’s grace toward us. God calls us to shed our old, unholy ways and to take hold of God’s grace. No one is beyond God’s reach and God’s grace. No one is permanently condemned to live in the place where God finds them. Everyone has hope through Christ. God’s work of reforming and remolding us begins on the inside of us, in our hearts and in our minds. (This is, of course, one of the great mistakes the scribes and the Pharisees made: They thought that everything had to do with outward actions.) Then, God’s work of redeeming and reforming works itself toward the outside of us, showing the proofs of God’s redeeming love by the things we do and the things we say, by the way we treat others with genuine, Christ-like love.
So may our prayer be that God’s
grace will convict us of the power of God’s love and God’s ability to offer a
new life, a life that destroys any notion that we are unworthy of that love and
that grace, a life that demonstrates that it is God’s power alone that lifts us
up from our place of alienation from Him.
AMEN.
[1] The earliest forms of Gnosticism arose
during the New Testament period, perhaps sometime in the first century. It effects lasted into the fourth century.
[2] Augustine was Bishop of the north African
city of Hippo who lived from 354 – 430 AD.
His feast day is August 28th.
He is regarded as being the foremost theologian of the western Church.
