Sunday 14 August 2011

Clean & Unclean

Address given at Templederry & Nenagh on 14th August 2011, the 8th Sunday after Trinity, year A.

To be ritually clean was all important to Jews of Jesus’s time.
Jewish law forbade anyone who was unclean from approaching God in worship, and such a person would be shunned by all pious Jews. They believed that a person or thing was made unclean by contact with a wide range of things, from a mouse to pig meat, to a dead body, a menstruating woman, or a gentile. And this uncleanness was, so to speak, infectious. If a mouse touched a pot, the pot became unclean and anything put in it became unclean. Anyone who touched or ate anything from the pot became unclean. And anyone who touched such an unclean person became unclean themselves.

No doubt these ideas had their ancient roots in sensible, practical hygiene. But by the time of Jesus they had nothing to do with good sense or hygiene. Religious leaders had elaborated in religious law a complicated system of purifying unclean things to make them clean, which included ritual washing of hands before meals. For the scribes and Pharisees, following the correct washing rituals had become as important as keeping every other aspect of the Jewish Law, including the Ten Commandments. The rituals had got quite out of hand.

This is the background to today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 15:10-20).
Just before the reading, a party of scribes and Pharisees from Jerusalem has challenged Jesus, saying ‘Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat.’ Jesus chides them, calling them hypocrites, for insisting people obey the details of a man-made tradition while ignoring the spirit of God’s law expressed in the Ten Commandments.

Then he turns to the crowd, telling them, ‘Listen and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out that defiles’. As he explains to Peter, ‘What ever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer. But what comes from 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.’

In other words, Jesus says, what matters to God is not ritual observance, but the state of our hearts, because it is the state of our hearts that leads us to bad deeds. No wonder the Pharisees took offence! If Jesus is right, their whole theory of religion is wrong, their rules and regulations about purity are pointless. Instead true religion requires them to look inside themselves, to control their human impulses which lead to bad deeds. It si these which offend God, which lead them into sin

We Christians don’t have rituals to purify ourselves as many religions do, including modern Jews, Muslim’s and Hindus.
Though that doesn’t mean we don’t have taboos – I’ve yet to see horse on the menu in Ireland, though it is a delicious meat!

But we have built up great edifices of ritual and tradition over time, as all religions have. No doubt ritual and tradition can be helpful – but only to the extent to which they help us look into our hearts and strive to live as God intends us to live, loving God and loving our neighbours as ourselves. In today’s reading Jesus teaches us that we must not let our rituals and traditions get in the way of this. But unfortunately ritual and tradition all too often do just that, causing disputes between Christians.

Some issues are quite trivial, such as whether or not to share the sign of peace. Others are more serious. Details of ritual and tradition keep Christians of different denominations from recognising each other’s baptism, or sharing in the Lord’s Supper. And our Anglican Communion is threatened by schism over disputes about the ordination of women and the acceptability of homosexual behaviour, in which people appeal to tradition to make their cases.

Christians engaging in such disputes should, I think, reflect on Jesus’s teaching in today’s Gospel. What matters is the state of a person’s heart, and the deeds it prompts, not their ritual observance and tradition.

And all Christians should also reflect on Jesus’s advice on how to deal with Pharisees.
This what he says: ‘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 the pit.’ In other words, he says, leave it to God to deal with those who wrong.

When we conscientiously disagree about what is right or wrong, we should not try to bludgeon our opponents into accepting our view. We must do what our God given conscience and reason tell us is right. But we should leave those with whom we disagree to go their own way. If that causes schism, so be it. If they are wrong, if they are ‘the blind leading the blind’, our heavenly Father will deal with them in his own way.

As he will deal with us if it is we that are wrong! We need to pray for guidance, and listen carefully to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, so that we do not fall into the pit like the Pharisees of Jesus's day.

Sunday 7 August 2011

Walking on water

Address given at Dunkerrin and Shinrone on 7th August 2011, the 7th Sunday after Trinity.

Have you ever been out on the water at night in a small boat in a gale? I have, and I can tell you I was terrified!
I was a teenager, and it was a wild night. To get back to the cottage on an island in Lough Derg, my mother and I had to row less than a hundred yards. It was blowing a gale, with a big sea running, and waves breaking. With one oar each, side by side, we pulled against the wind, inching forward, sometimes being thrown sideways as the wind caught the side of the boat, shipping water all the while. We made several attempts and were thrown back, but eventually we made it to calmer waters, and arrived safely on the other shore. By that time I was shaking like a leaf, terrified. My mother probably was too, though she never let me see it of course. It taught me a lesson I’ve never forgotten: respect for the water – it’s not our native element, and we underestimate the power of wind and wave at our peril.

Today’s reading from St Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 14:22-33) brings this memory back to me. The same event is recorded in Mark’s and John’s Gospels. I feel I can identify with the disciples, even though I suppose I wasn’t in real danger, as they must have been. The Sea of Galilee is renowned for the fierce and dangerous storms that suddenly appear out of nowhere, and abate just as quickly. I see it in my minds eye as rather like our Lough Derg – it’s about 40% bigger in area and wider, but not so long. And sailors know how quickly a squall can blow up on Lough Derg.

The disciples had got into trouble in one of Galilee’s notorious storms.
Immediately after feeding the 5000, Jesus sent the disciples off in a boat, while he told the crowds to go home, and went off up the mountain to pray by himself.

The disciples had set out in the evening light, unaware of the coming storm. Mark tells us that Jesus ‘saw that they were straining at the oars against an adverse wind’. I imagine the night was bright and moonlit for Jesus to be able to see the little boat.

‘Early in the morning’, Matthew tells us, Jesus ‘came walking toward them on the sea’. The Greek words translated as ‘early in the morning’ literally mean ‘in the 4th watch of the night’. In those days, with no clocks, time during the night was counted in 4 watches of 3 hours each. So sometime between 3 and 6 am, Jesus, walking on the high ground after praying all night, saw the little boat struggling through waves and spray, and came down to help.

But what is this about Jesus walking on the sea?
Should we imagine Jesus far from land, in the middle of the lake, walking on the water, stepping over the waves? This is how most Christians have imagined the scene, I suppose, and many artists have depicted it. But we should be aware of a possible problem with translation here. The Greek words translated as ‘on the lake’ could equally mean ‘towards the lake’, or ‘at the lake’, that is by the lake shore.

The truth is that there are two perfectly possible interpretations of this passage. The first describes Jesus miraculously walking on the water in the middle of the lake. In the second, the disciples’ boat is driven by the wind to the shore, Jesus comes down from the mountain to help when he sees them struggling in the dim light of dawn, and Jesus walks through the surf towards the boat. Both interpretations are equally valid. Some will prefer one and some the other.

When the disciples saw Jesus they were terrified, believing him to be a ghost, until Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid’.

However we interpret the Greek, the significance to the disciples is perfectly clear: In the hour of their need, Jesus came to them, to help and reassure them.

Only Matthew adds the detail about Peter trying to walk on the water too.
It’s a charming vignette, and so in character for Peter, from the other things we know of him. He was brave and impetuous, but he often found it hard to live up to his good intentions. Remember, it was Peter who swore undying loyalty to Jesus only to deny 3 times that he knew him just a few hours later.

When Jesus said ‘Come’, Peter bravely ‘got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus’. But his courage failed him and he started to sink. ‘Lord, save me!’ he shouted, and ‘Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

Whether Jesus was miraculously walking on water, or whether he came through the surf on the shore to help the disciples in the boat, Peter surely learned this: It is not always easy to follow Jesus, but Jesus is always there to catch you when you stumble and sink.

Finally, is there anything we can learn from this story, 2000 years on?
Well, surely the same things that Peter and the disciples learned! They were privileged to know Jesus the man and to sail the Sea of Galilee with him. But we are privileged too to know the spiritual reality of the living Christ.

In life the wind is often against us. Life for every one of us sometimes feels like a desperate struggle, with ourselves, with our circumstances, with temptations, with sorrow, with the consequences of bad decisions we have made. But none of us need struggle alone. In the hour of our need, Jesus will come to us as he did to the disciples long ago, to help and reassure us. Just listen for his voice saying, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid’!

If we seek to follow Jesus, we will find like Peter that it is not always easy. It will test our faith at times. Our faith will not always be enough and we will have doubts. But when we feel ourselves going under, if we cry out ‘Lord save me’, Jesus will be there for us, just as he was for Peter, reaching out his hand to catch us. Jesus is always there to save us when we are sinking. Just listen for his voice saying, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’