MUMC Sermon-09/03/06

03 September 2006

The Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost

Do This

James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

The Reverend Richard E. Allen, Jr.

On NPR’s “All things Considered” one afternoon last week, commentator Andrew Lam spoke about becoming a vegetarian for a month. His commitment, he explained, was not for reasons of health or nutrition, or even religious convictions. He became a vegetarian, quite simply, to remember his grandmother, herself a committed Buddhist, by remembering the simple meals they shared over ten years ago. For him, mealtimes with her, though quite simple, had been occasions of special blessing. So, when he woke one morning and realized he could no longer recall the sound of her voice, he decided to revisit those mealtimes as best he could. It was something quite specific that he could undertake. He could not, he discovered, think his way back to his connection with his grandmother. His body as well as his mind needed to be involved. Quite literally, he needed to DO something.

It seems odd, doesn’t it, to seek connection with a memory by becoming a vegetarian? Yet the spiritual and the physical cannot be separated. Our faith teaches that much. Our faith, informed by our earliest Biblical stories, reminds us: we humans are neither disembodied spirits nor disembodied minds. To be human is to be both of the flesh and of the spirit. We are, for better or worse, body and soul.

Recall the story of who we are. Recall God’s taking the clay of dust and water, the physical elements of the body, and breathing into humanity the breath, or spirit, of life. The literalists wrongly assume that the creation stories in our Bibles are about HOW God creates. So they fight battles with evolution and strain to make theology into science. There’s more at stake than that. The story of creation is really not about HOW we are, but about WHO we are. We are human beings, say our scriptures, an odd balance of body and soul. Never the one or the other, but always the two: clay and breath; dust and spirit; body and soul.

So it is that we Christians did not, with the Greek philosophers, affirm the immortality of the soul. Instead, we believe in “the resurrection of the body,” for without a body there is truly no human life, no person. To believe this is the only way to remain true to our Jewish forebears, who teach that a human being is unique in the universe, reflecting the Spirit of God in an animal form. We are body and spirit.

Because of this odd dual nature of our lives, we find that the path to true humanity is a wholeness where body and soul balance in mutual respect and cooperation. Spiritual lives are shaped by the disciplines – the basic bodily disciplines, of diet, exercise, and sleep. Why? Because being fully and deeply human means living in harmony with body and soul. Food is important to spiritual maturity, and prayer is vital to bodily functioning. In any spiritual exercise, the body participates, eagerly or grudgingly. Either way. But, either way, we cannot escape the truth that we humans live as body and soul, neither one nor the other.

It’s not a surprise, then, that faith has a bodily component as well. Or, in the words of James from today’s epistle lesson, we, the body of the church, are reminded: “be doers of the word, and not merely hearers” (v. 22). Then, as the portion we read today concludes, the admonishment to do the faith is relentless: “If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless” (v. 26). Do you see the connection? As embodied spirits, we cannot be religious (that is, truly spiritual), without engaging the body, as James says, by “bridling our tongues.” “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world” (v. 27).

If all that seems too philosophical, the epistle lesson starts with something we easily understand. How do we learn to give? That’s easy. Listen to James. “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above,” says the writer of James, “coming down from the Father of lights….” We are given life, he says. That is what God does. God gives a gift; the best of gifts, life itself. And faith, too. Both are generous gifts of a God who acts on our behalf. Think of all God does for us. And, by implication, we are called to be and to do.

What we do shapes who we are; and what we do also exhibits who we are. We know the truth of that. Labor Day weekend, like every Labor Day, is really about celebrating both our occupations and our vocations – how we occupy our waking hours and what we feel most passionate about. The very common question we ask when meeting each other is simple: “What do you do?” Asking about vocation is not only a way of making conversation. Knowing the answer to “What do you do?” is also a way of coming to know a person’s deepest passion. My wife is one of a growing number of vocational counselors people who help others match their deep passion with the need to earn a living, helping them match their being with their doing, their vocation with their occupation. It’s really a match of how one fills one’s heart and with how one fills one’s time.

The gospel lesson for today is easily misunderstood, but one way to understand it is to see it as encouraging a congruence of body and soul. Mark, the writer, has his own reasons for accentuating this as a dispute between Jesus and the Pharisees. Sadly, misinterpretations of such disputes have had tragic consequences for the people of Jesus in Christian history. There’s such a gap between our time and theirs, that we no longer appreciate that Jesus and the Pharisees had a common purpose, loving God and neighbor more deeply. It’s our purpose, too, of course. For we share with both Jesus and the Pharisees a rich common heritage.

An Episcopal priest, commenting on today’s gospel passage helped me understand this tension with the Pharisees as, in part, dramatic tension. Speaking of the Pharisees, he says, “In the Gospels I think of them the way I do the teams that play the Harlem Globetrotters. They’re not supposed to win. They are just there so the real stars can show their stuff.” Without getting into the nitty-gritty of their spirituality, it’s clear that they and Jesus argue, as many Christians do today, as much because of all they share in common as for the bit about which they disagree. Jesus’ main concern is not unlike their own. “Listen to me, all of you, and understand,” says Jesus. “there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” (Mark 7:14 -15) Did you hear? Jesus says, what we do is important, because of the deep connection of body and soul.

As many of you know, in the early hours of Friday morning I sat with the family of Stew Barney after his death. His body had at last failed him; his life with us was over. In the shock of that moment, his family did what so many families do at such a time. They remembered his life. They talked about what he meant to them. They remembered him in what he did with them. I later reflected that I still do the same when I think about my own father. I think about his driving the boat on the river, coming home from an afternoon of fishing, or sitting in his favorite chair, reading a mystery novel. I remember him by what he did with me.

This Labor Day weekend a religiously significant question is a simple one, “What do I do?” Answering that will go a long way to help you discern how you are investing your life; and for whom; and for what purpose.

Perhaps commentator Andrew Lam is a Christian. Perhaps he’s Jewish, or neither one; most likely he is Buddhist, as was the grandmother his meals help him remember. This much is clear: he’s onto a spiritual truth that we Christians claim with him. Remembering his grandmother by rejoying the vegetarian meals he had shared with her years before, he honors the deep connection of body and soul. Today you and I come to another meal, inviting us to remember Christ’s love for us in all that he did. Jesus loved, and loves, in his teaching, in his laughter, in his confrontations of the hypocrisy of those he loved the best (which these days, of course, includes us as well). We recall his love by what he did on the cross, too, opening his arms wide to a violent and destructive world. It was an act of love, evident in what he did that day.

So we come to this table to share a meal. Here we remember him, in a very special way. As he said to his first disciples, he says also to us. “Remember me,” he says, “whenever you do this.” What we think about as people of faith is truly important. But, so to is what we do.”

We who claim the name of Christ today are asked to wonder. We call ourselves “Christian.” But what do we DO?

Amen.