Wet Feet and Holy Hearts: Embracing Messy Faith

The holy Gospel according to Matthew, the 15th chapter.

Glory to you, O Lord. Jesus 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 him 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. Then he said, are you also still without understanding?

Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters

the stomach, goes 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, sexual immorality, theft, false witness,

slander. These are what defile a person, but to

eat with unwashed hands,

does not defile. 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 master's

table. Then Jesus answered her,

Woman, great is your faith. Let it be done for you as

you wish. And her daughter was healed from

that instant, from that moment. The Gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, O Christ. You may be seated.

Girls, I say, You're just gonna have wet

feet. That's a literal thing I

said to my daughters earlier this summer, and here's the context,

if that doesn't make any sense at all. Here's what happened. Last year,

my parents-in-law, they moved from Virginia to Thomasville,

North Carolina, and in their move, they had to downsize,

get rid of lots of their stuff, and one of the things that they got

rid of was an old family canoe. That they gifted

to us. And it took, oh, well over

an entire year, but this summer I finally worked

up the courage to strap that thing to the roof of our van and

go to the boat launch on the other side of Spencer on

the Yadkin River. And when we got there, there was

a friendly fisherman who helped take it off the roof of the van and place

it in the muddy, murky edge of

the Yadkin River. And I said, girls, the time is nigh.

Climb on in. Maybe it's because

it was muddy and they couldn't see the bottom, or maybe it's because we were

talking about snapping turtles the whole way from our house to the boat launch,

but they didn't want

to get their feet wet. And so they tried to climb in,

both of them, from the back of the canoe as it's sitting there, and if

you ever tried to do that, you can imagine what is happening, right? The boat

is like going like this and that, and that's when I scream out to them,

I say, girls, you're just going to have to have wet feet.

In other words, if we are all going to stay dry, if the

bag of snacks that is already in the canoe, if my backpack with my

wallet and my phone and our changes of dry

clothes are going to stay dry,

if we were going to enjoy this time together paddling

up and down the river, darn it,

we were going to enjoy it, they were going to have to come to terms

with the fact that our feet were just going to have to get a little

wet and dirty in order to do so. Wet,

dirty feet. Was the price we were going to

all have to pay to have a classic daddy-daughter

summer adventure that no one was gonna forget.

In our gospel lesson today, Jesus talks with the crowds and

his disciples about an issue that has come up between

him and the Pharisees, and the topic of the day,

the topic of concern, was about cleanliness.

But this isn't some sort of neat and tidy cleanliness that we're talking about,

or, uh, the type of cleanliness— I came in this morning, Miss Stacy

was here already getting things in order. I asked her how her weekend was

and she says it was great, spent all weekend cleaning the house.

That's great. That's not what we're talking about. What we are talking about

is the Pharisees saw Jesus and his disciples not

washing their hands before eating,

and they were upset that they were being sacrilegious,

that Jesus and his disciples were perhaps trying to undermine the

holiness of God. You know what?

The Pharisees, they had a pretty good point. The Pharisees,

these— this group of people that comes up again and again in the Gospels,

they come from this ancient line of priests But they are famous for interpreting

God's law for the current day and

age, taking old laws, applying them to today.

And one such law that God gave long ago said that priests

needed to wash their hands, make themselves holy before

entering the temple, before entering the literal dwelling place of God,

to make themselves holy before encountering the divine.

The Pharisees reinterpreted this law by

thinking, why reserve this practice just for priests

or just for priests at the temple? Why doesn't everyone

wash their hands at certain times, especially before a meal?

Because if they did this and instituted this practice,

it would have this beautiful acknowledgment that all things

in everyday life were sacred and holy gifts from God,

right? Not just for priests, not just at the temple, all things

at all times and places. Not a bad

idea. And the Pharisees saw

Jesus and his disciples not doing this and

they were worried. They were worried that

that perhaps they were being lazy or sacrilegious.

But here's the thing, Jesus and his disciples

in our passage are not debating the importance of

holiness, right? Getting close to God is

kind of Jesus' whole thing. What Jesus

is worried about is that when these type of rituals become the only

thing, that they're given the greatest importance.

These dogmatic practices could get in the way of other more

important parts of living lives that honor God. For instance,

Jesus was concerned that the utter insistence on washing hands

or being overly concerned with what we eat could

put up walls, walls between people, between clean and unclean.

Instead of this beautiful ritual meaning that all things and every time

was a sacred and holy gift from God, the ritual

could become a way to focus on our own righteousness,

to judge those who don't live up to it.

In other words, the focus had turned inward, on ourselves, on personal,

self-obsessed piety, on trying to keep ourselves holy

and sealed off from a dirty world.

In his conversation with his disciples, Jesus says that we

should not be focused on this sort of

outside-in holiness but

instead focused from the inside out. We should not be focused

on protecting ourselves from the world but rather think about what we put

out into the world and whether what we put out into

the world is holy and good or is not.

Because after all, this sort of outward facing is the direction

that God faces. God is not

turned inward, God is turned eternally outward

toward us, toward all creation.

Here's what I mean. Before the dawn of existence itself,

when there was nothing, it was just God.

There was no world with chaotic thunderstorms. There weren't any plants

and animals messily eating one another. There were no humans struggling

to love each other and often doing a really bad job

at it. God could have kept everything simple,

kept everything in, kept everything much

cleaner, but that's not what

happened. Luckily for us,

in the largest act of divine love, God poured forth all of

existence. God took all that was inside himself and turned it

all outward.

That's how we got this beautiful, messy world.

Even when sin scarred the world,

God didn't back away, right, finding it too

dirty to get involved. It's exactly the opposite.

God decided to come down to us, become incarnate in

the life and ministry of Jesus,

When Jesus was born, it wasn't in bubble wrap,

hermetically sealed, worried about spoiling his

perfect divine righteousness. When Jesus was conceived,

it was into a messy situation; an unwed

mother, a father scared that others might think that

their relationship was unclean and unholy.

When Jesus was born, eventually born, it was in a barn, right? In a

feeding trough for animals.

When Jesus chose a profession,

it wasn't some scribe with ivory hands in some tower. No, it was

a carpenter covered in sawdust

and sweat, working with earthly elements.

When Jesus called his disciples, he ended up with a bunch a fisherman,

smelling like fish guts and wet feet.

When Jesus was healing, he would comfort lepers covered in contagious boils.

When Jesus taught, he would go find the poor and the prostitutes thick

with the dirt that society heaped upon them.

And at the end of today's gospel, Jesus heals the daughter

of a Canaanite woman.

Breaking down centuries of cultural mudslinging between Jews and

non-Jews. When Jesus died,

it wasn't peacefully at home in his

bed with family and friends.

It was on a cross in the heat of the midday sun,

a convicted criminal sentenced by earthly rulers,

surrounded by an angry mob.

Jesus wasn't worried about

getting his feet wet and dirty.

And the truth is, just like Jesus and his ministry that

took him from solitary carpenter to the teacher of great crowds

of people, This fact remains

true. The more people we

invite into our lives,

the messier it gets.

The list of evil intentions that comes from our hearts that Jesus rattles

off in our gospel, they're all

products of a world where we are not cleanly sealed off

from one another. Go down the list, murder,

adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness,

slander, these are all products of being in relationship

with other humans. They are the price of getting our feet

wet. Now this goes back,

this goes back to the very beginning, right? If it was just Adam

in the garden,

Then there was no one to lie to. Simple, easy,

clean. As long as Cain

was an only child, there's no Abel

to murder. And with every passing

generation, the world gets a little more complicated, a little

messier.

Yeah, it gets messy on the outside, but it also gets messy in our

hearts. When we open up our hearts to someone,

we are also opening ourselves up to the human brokenness that is

present in their lives as well. Only by

loving another person can we learn about heartbreak and loss.

Only in handing over trust to a friend or colleague

or confidant can that trust be broken.

Only in comparison with others do we fall prey

to self-doubt, envy,

or pride.

Relationships, families, friendships,

churches, communities, nations, they're all

messy inside and out.

Life. It's messy.

But following Jesus is not about separating ourselves

from those considered less holy or unclean,

turning inward and worrying about our own spiritual cleanliness.

True faith and faithfulness is

not about clean hands,

but a heart cleansed.

In a life shaped by the radical,

self-giving, outward-facing love of God in Christ.

Ultimately, as we go about our life in this messy

world, the only thing that will make

order of the chaos,

create meaning in the mess,

wash away the dirt, It's the

saving love of Jesus Christ and the cleansing waters of our baptisms.

In following Jesus, in mimicking his

outward-facing life,

we're gonna get our feet wet in that muddy Yadkin River,

but in doing so, just think, About the adventure that

we're gonna have.