Sermon: Big Power Lives in Small Words

Well, our gospel reading today comes from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 15, verses 1 to 20.

Matthew 15:1–20

I invite you to hear now the word of the Lord.

The Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?

For they do not wash their hands before they eat.

Jesus answered them, And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?

For God said, Honor your father and your mother, and whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.

But you say that whoever tells father or mother, whatever support you might have had from me is given to God, then that person need not honor the father.

So for the sake of your tradition, you make void the word of God.

You hypocrites, Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said, This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.

In vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.

Then he called the crowd 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 offense 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.

And 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.

This is the word of God for us, the people of God.

Let us pray.

O Lord, we ask that you would open our hearts and minds to hear you speaking to us today through these your holy scriptures.

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.

What do you do for a living?

You may be surprised to hear that many pastors dread this question.

Some pastors skirt around the truth and say something like, I'm in the nonprofit sector, or my favorite, I work for a global charitable enterprise.

Why would pastors do this?

Because you wouldn't believe the kinds of things strangers say to us when they learn about our vocation.

People's reactions range from surprise, you're a pastor, to amusement, wow, I didn't know a woman could be a pastor.

To curiosity, so what do you do when it's not Sunday?

Oftentimes, the responses are not so lighthearted.

I have spent a whole two-hour plane ride hearing someone's confession the whole time.

Sometimes people just completely shut down.

They have nothing left to say.

And I think this happens because we clergy represent an institution or a religion that is often perceived as judgmental, hypocritical, and obsessed with rules, and they want no part of it.

You guys have seen the studies, you've heard the statistics.

A recent Barna study told us that the number one reason non-Christians doubt Christian beliefs is, quote, the hypocrisy of religious people.

Whether or not this is true, we Christians are seen by outsiders as people who burden others with rules that we don't even follow.

Too often churchgoers equate being a good Christian with following the rules that have been passed down from generation to generation.

Just think of all the ways that Christians over the years have judged one another for what we wear, for who we hang out with, for what books we read, for what TV shows we watch, for what we eat or what we drink.

And the problem is we Christians can get so consumed with all these rules that we inevitably pay very little attention to the actual teachings of Jesus.

Love your enemy, turn the other cheek, care for the poor, seek the lost sheep.

Bill Willemond is a retired United Methodist bishop, and he tells a story about a pastor in a small town in Alabama, and this pastor felt called to reach the people outside of his church community, the ones who weren't coming to church, and so he decided he'd meet them where they were.

So once a week he hung out at the local bar.

Yeah.

So the church members in this small town in Alabama were not thrilled about their pastor being at the bar.

So the bishop inevitably got phone calls from his church members complaining about the pastor hanging out all hours at the bar.

So the bishop called the pastor.

What's going on?

And the pastor said, Well, you know, we've received several new members into our church community, all of them are new Christians.

And do you know where I met them?

At the bar.

So the pastor told the bishop, I'll stop going to the bar when Jesus stops going to the bar.

The point is, if the pastor had followed the rules of the community, he would have missed the opportunity to share God's grace.

But because the pastor was willing to break these human-made rules, he was able to do God's work.

Today's scripture from Matthew tells us that God does not really care about our rules.

It all begins with the Pharisees who come to Jesus to tattle on Jesus' disciples.

They are not ritually purifying their hands before they eat.

This was not about hygiene.

This was about a ritual ceremony of purification, a sacred rule in the Pharisees' tradition.

Now, before we caricature the Pharisees as legalistic or superstitious, let me explain why this was a big deal.

This hand washing rule was not something that you'll find in the scriptures.

It's not in the Ten Commandments or in Leviticus.

Instead, it was a rule passed on what was called the tradition of the elders.

It was an oral tradition of rules that dated back hundreds and hundreds of years.

To the Pharisee, this tradition was so sacred, it was believed to be kind of parallel to the laws in Scripture.

And the reason they believed these tradition of the elders was so sacred is because they really valued holiness.

And for good reason, because our scripture calls us to be holy as God is holy.

And so the Pharisees wanted to be true to this calling, and they were almost obsessed with what made a person clean or unclean, which is the same words for holy or unholy.

And so they followed and cherished this tradition of rules that went above and beyond what the law required.

The thought went like this: if they didn't even come close to breaking the laws, then they could never be unholy.

This was how they knew to be faithful.

The problem is, there's a fine line between being holy and following rules.

A fine line between giving your heart to God and holiness and living rules to impress God or others.

The Pharisees were giving their lives to rules, and Jesus was not impressed.

Which is why he responds the way he does.

After the Pharisees complain about the disciples' deviant behavior, Jesus points out that the Pharisees' tradition goes against the law of God.

You see, their tradition allows people to give their property to the temple and be exempt from having to give it in care of their parents, which goes directly against the fifth commandment, to honor your father and mother.

And so Jesus says, you do away with God's law for the sake of the rules handed down to you.

He's trying to show them that their own consistencies, he's trying to show them their own hypocrisy as they strictly adhered to their tradition of the elders.

And then Jesus quotes Isaiah and tells them that God doesn't want their empty rules or their lip service.

God wants their hearts.

I think of it as I think about my marriage.

I don't want Kevin to just say all the words I want him to say.

I don't want him to just check off the to-do list I give him so that we have a happy marriage.

That's not love, right?

I want Kevin to be fully invested, to give his full hearted into it, be real and honest and authentic.

God loves us more than we could ever love a spouse.

And God doesn't want us to just check off rules to make God happy or to say the right things so that God will be pleased.

God wants us to be fully not just go through the motions of faith because we have to, but to give our full lives to Jesus.

And so Jesus called the crowds together and told them to listen up.

And he explained that God doesn't want their rules, which was a very shocking thing for a rabbi of that day to do because their faith was defined by their dietary laws and these behavioral rules that were meant to be followed in order to be considered holy.

Jesus shocked everyone when he said, It's not what goes into your mouth that makes you unholy, it's what comes out of your mouth that makes you unholy.

In other words, it's not what you eat, it's what you say.

His disciples were so shock so shocked by this, they figured they couldn't possibly have understood him correctly, because Jesus was upending everything they thought they knew about holiness.

And so Peter pulled Jesus aside and asked him to explain it further, and Jesus spelled it out even more clearly.

He said, What you eat goes through the body and into the sewer, but what you say and what you do, that has lasting consequences.

There is power in your words and in your deeds, and they come directly from your heart.

They reflect the status of your spiritual health.

They have the power to build up or tear down the people around you.

And Jesus wants his followers to be people who are holy in their words and in their deeds.

He doesn't want people who think they are holy because they are abiding by the religious rules of the day.

Here in Matthew's gospel, Jesus is redefining holiness.

Holiness is ascribed to us when we give our heart to God, when we allow God to make a home in our heart and direct our words and our deeds.

Jesus is telling anyone who will listen that God doesn't want your rules, God wants you.

God wants your heart.

Now I must confess that I am someone who actually really likes rules.

If I know what I can and can't do, I know how to succeed, I know how to be good, and this is why I empathize with the Pharisees.

And I also realize that I need to be constantly reminded of the gospel of Jesus.

Because as a rules follower, if left to my own devices, I would follow the rules until I believed I was good enough for God, which is laughable, of course.

But I think it's an impulse that is in most of us, and it's counter to the gospel of Jesus, because the gospel is about grace.

It's about God loving us before we can be holy.

It's about giving us forgiveness and mercy and welcome, free and unfettered, undeserved.

Through grace, God forgives us the unholiness and makes a home within us.

And when God makes a home within us and we give our hearts to God, God gives us new life in Jesus, a life of joy and purpose that shares God's love with the world.

This new life in Jesus is animated by the Holy Spirit that is at work within us.

And when the Holy Spirit is at work within us, our life overflows with what the Bible calls the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

This is what holiness looks like.

It is a life that is defined by the fruit of the Spirit, not by rules.

And this kind of holiness has the power to change not only our lives, but the world around us in the best possible way.

Growing up each summer, I spent a week at a Christian summer camp.

And each day, as part of our summer camp activity, we would gather for a worship service.

And there'd be a worship band that would lead us in a few songs, and there'd be a pastor who would lead us in the service and preach a sermon.

And the first couple of services at this summer camp were always a little bit awkward because, as in any public worship setting, there's always implicit rules like when do you stand, when do you sit, what do you do with your hands?

Do you close your eyes?

Open your eyes.

You know, all the rules that we might have learned over the years, but when you're a self-conscious preteen at a summer camp, those rules really stress you out.

Because you don't quite know what to do all of the time.

And those rules would keep me from really engaging in worship, from really allowing myself to connect with God.

There was a counselor who was there every summer at this camp whose name was Graham.

He was a lovable, goofy, deeply spiritual guy.

And all of us campers were shocked by Graham because when it came time to worship, he didn't follow any of the rules that we felt bound by.

He didn't care what he looked like or if he was doing what everybody else was doing, and he certainly didn't care how he sounded.

He sang so off-key and so loudly that all of us would look around to figure out who sounded so bad.

But then the strangest thing happened.

Once we figured out it was Graham who couldn't sing worth a lick, his off-key singing helped us to loosen up.

Who cares how we looked or how we sounded?

God didn't care.

And we'd never be as bad as Graham, anyways.

And so I learned how to let go, how to just be present to God, to pay less attention to what was happening around me, to the rules that I might or might be breaking, and to focus fully on God.

Well, years later, I was in a different setting with Graham in a normal, non-camp worship service, and he was sitting right behind me.

And as we stood to sing the first hymn, I could hear Graham singing behind me, and I realized that he actually had a beautiful, well-trained voice.

This was when I realized that his off-key singing at camp was entirely on purpose.

He intentionally broke the rules so that all of us self-conscious preteens could feel free to worship with our whole hearts.

This was a small, silly thing that Graham did, but it had a huge impact on me and on my willingness to be authentic and vulnerable with God.

And I believe that our world needs more grams.

Our world needs more Christians who will sing off-key for Jesus.

Andy wanted me to make sure I told the choir, you don't count.

You gotta keep singing on key.

Find your other ways to sing off-key.

But our world needs more people who will sing off-key for Jesus because they've given their heart so wholeheartedly to God.

So freely are they living a life of grace that they are unconcerned with following the rules of a good Christian, and instead they are passionate about living, loving boldly and following the actual teaching of Christ.

So the question that I want you to ask yourself today is this Are you trying to impress God with a rule-abiding faith?

Or are you giving your heart fully to God?

The answer to this question is to pay attention to the words that come out of your mouth and the deeds that mark your life.

For what you instinctually say and do, it tells you a lot about the spiritual health of your heart.

As Jesus taught us, our words and our deeds, they flow from your heart.

You can know that your heart is devoted to God when more often than not your words and deeds reflect the fruit of the Spirit rather than the ugliness of our world.

And just to remind you what the fruit of the Spirit are, and if you know them, say them with me: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

These are the evidence of a heart dedicated to God.

This is holiness.

If your words and deeds do not reflect the fruit of the Spirit, that is your indicator that you may be too focused on rules and rituals and need instead to focus on offering yourself without abandon to God.

And if we're honest with ourselves, we'll find that the need to rededicate our hearts to God is a regular one.

It's a daily one.

And so today I invite you to join me in rededicating our hearts to God, not to rules, but to the grace and the love of God who is at work in our lives and the world around us.

So I'm gonna give you a few moments, a few moments of silence for you to consider the spiritual health of your heart, the words and the deeds that flow from it, and then I will lead us in a prayer of rededication.

So let us go to God now in silent prayer.

And now I invite you to pray with me in the quiet of your heart.

Jesus, we admit that we have set kept some of our hearts from you.

We do not always give you the fullness of ourselves.

We dedicate our heart and life to you today.

Make a home within us.

Heal our hearts, fill us with your life.

May our words and our deeds reflect your love and grace.

Amen.