Emmanuel Church, Bungay, Suffolk

The Minister's Sermons

"To the Heart of the Matter" by Revd Bruce Waldron - 14th August 2005 Psalm 133 Matthew 15: 10-28
Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, "Listen and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles." Then the disciples approached and said to him, "Do you know that the Pharisees took offence when they heard what you said?" He answered, "Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind.? And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit." But Peter said to him, "Explain this parable to us." Then he said, "Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile."
The Canaanite Woman's Faith Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon." But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, "Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us." He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me." He answered, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." She said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." Then Jesus answered her, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed instantly.
Jesus has just had an altercation with the Scribes and Pharisees. They've come up from Jerusalem to have a go at him, because his disciples don't wash their hands in the appointed way before eating. For some people, these are the kind of things over which angels fall from heaven.
But Jesus points out to them that they too change the law, when it suits them, and then adds the quote from scripture:
'This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.'
I get a distinctly uneasy feeling when I read this passage. How do I know that I'm not teaching human precepts as doctrine.
I try to be true to the Christian faith in all I say and do, and I know that I work at it, sometimes more successfully than others
But everything I say and teach has to come through my mind, with all its fallibilities, all its presuppositions, all it's blind spots and cultural bias. I can't say anything except through the medium of my English language, and we know that the way we speak both serves and modifies the way we think. Language is always a convenient vehicle for the culture it expresses.
How can I be sure that I'm not doing what the scribes and Pharisees were doing, but with a different set of blind spots to them? I expect they thought they were upholding God's laws when they gave Jesus a hard time. I try to be true to God too, and I wouldn't like to think that I'd be on the wrong side of the debate if Jesus turned up today, but I'm sometimes a bit scared I might be. How would I react if he turned up in the United Bungay Circuit, a preaching carpenter without proper theological education, not even licensed by the Bishop or Moderator, telling ministers that they'd got it wrong.
I think it is always healthy for us to be a bit humble, to always have a slightly sceptical eye upon the things we are thinking and saying. Our language, our thoughts, our insights into the being of God cannot be anything else than a finite probing into that which is infinite and always greater than our minds or hearts can imagine. So we should always be aware that we are, as Jesus put it, poor in Spirit. Blessed are the poor in Spirit, not the proud and arrogant in their thinking.
Language is a funny thing. The other day I said to a chap at the local garage in Bungay, "It's a warm one today isn't it?"
"Yeah, its nice", he said.
Now the thing is, in Australia, if you say "It's a warm one", being in a country rather over-endowed with warmth, that means you are feeling really hot and uncomfortable. I was. I'd been out on the pushbike and I was hot. In Australia, warmth and sunshine is something you try to avoid, there's far too much of it, and coolness and shade are what you try and find. If you went over to Australia and said, "Cor, a cool one today," you'd get a reply "Yair, not half bad hey!" In a country like England, where warmth is prized as a rare and valuable commodity, cool and warm mean something quite different to what I'm accustomed to, but I'm learning.
The words we use, and the way we use them, can turn meaning to entirely different purposes. Jesus said, "It isn't what goes into a person that condemns them, but what comes out of them" because what comes out of a person comes from the heart, from who they really are. The words, the actions themselves aren't quite the issue. It's the intention of the words, the source from which they spring, the effect they have, that discloses who we really are, at heart.
People can use very religious words and actions in a very destructive and hurtful way. People can use truthful words in a very untruthful way. We've all probably had that happen to us somewhere along the way. Someone has "just told us the truth as it is" and done a lot of needless damage.
In Christian thinking, truth is a means of liberation and healing. Not a weapon to inflict pain, because that's not being true to God.
Jesus encountered it time and time again, people using good words for very destructive causes, and it seems to be one of the practices that really made him angry, when people used words that were given as a means of blessing, and used them as a weapon of attack.
Our faith words must never, ever be used as a weapon, always as a source of healing, restoration, renewal, transformation.
So, how do we make sure that this is the way we use our words.
Every now and then, (you hear the expression often) "it just slipped out and I could have kicked myself."
What often slips out (and sometimes of course "it" is shoved out with the force of a battering ram), is often the reality that's going on in our heart whilst at the same time our head is saying "Oh you mustn't say that. It isn't nice. It isn't Christian." So we satisfy our heads by using the right words, and pander to our hearts by using them in a way that is quite un-Christlike.
It takes a lot of time before God in prayer and love for those sort of things not to "just slip out." And it doesn't mean a person is bad because it happens. It just means that we've got out of sync with God. Our head and our heart are in different places.
Jesus knew that when people's hearts were close to God's heart, so would their words be, so would their actions be, and also the outcomes from those words and actions. So the honouring of God happens not just with what we say, but with what we feel, what's the deepest intention of our being, for in the end, that will come out, no matter what words we use. Our words will expose our hearts, whatever we may consciously want them to do.
And anyway, God looks on the heart and sees it, rather than listening to the sounds we make. Whatever other people may construe, it's God who knows what's really going on, and God whom we have to answer to. We can put our foot in it verbally, we can stammer over our words and get them all wrong, but God honours what is going on in the heart, and will use it. That's why he referred to the Pharisees and scribes as blind guides. They were so stuck on the little things, the minutia of their faith, the external practises, the right words and actions, that they missed out on why these had been seen as important enough to become tradition.
They thought that the details of what they did was the aim and object, and forgot what the details meant; the symbol became more important than what it symbolized. I sometimes feel like this when people want to get a baby baptised and seem to not realize the miracle that it means, the faith that offers new life, new hope. They do the actions, but the real power of the symbol doesn't get a look-in, and the heart isn't right.
It is so important to stay with the heart of the matter, not the physical practise. Because - if the heart is right, the physical things, the words, the actions, the symbols, the deeds will all become life giving, healing, restoring. That's where Jesus wanted his followers to put their attention. The way our words come out and affect people is often evidence of what is going on, deep inside, where our interaction with God is occurring. That work, getting that part right, is more important than anything else. We must never forget it, or let it become secondary.
The next story in Matthew's gospel is the story of the Canaanite woman.
She had everything wrong. Her language, her culture, her nationality, her religious affiliation, her gender, all wrong. She is such a contrast to the Scribes and Pharisees.
What was right was her faith, her trust, her humility, and her love for her daughter. It was this that evoked Jesus involvement in her cause, and brought healing into her world.
May our faith, and our love, do the same.