RULES AND
RELATIONSHIPS
August 26, 2007
sermon given at St. Thomas Episcopal Church,
Medina, Washington
Hi. My name is Josh, and I’m a grammar snob.
Yes, you know the type. We nitpick about the difference between “that” and “who,” and we’d never use a preposition to end a sentence with. It’s a terrible thing. And it’s not just grammar, either. I’m also a punctuation snob. If you use the wrong version of “its,” I may not be able to restrain myself. Don’t you know a contraction from a possessive? Don’t make me get out my red pen, people!
This snobbery is one of my peccadilloes, and it’s a heavy cross to bear. It may not sound so bad to you, but don’t laugh! Once I was working with a teenage boy who was writing an article for a church newsletter. Obviously, he had never paid attention in English class. But he cared what he was writing about, and I missed that passion completely. I spent so much effort trying to get him to rewrite his article that he gave up and stormed out in a huff. We were never able to build a rapport again after that. I had let the rules get in the way of the relationship.
So Jesus was teaching in the temple one day. It was the Sabbath, the day of rest that is laid out in the Ten Commandments as one of the cornerstones of Jewish identity. No work was allowed on the Sabbath. This spiritual practice was a reminder that God created the world in six days and then rested on the seventh.
As early as the late first century, Christians began to move the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday to mark Christ’s Resurrection. So many Christians equate “honoring the Sabbath” with church attendance. Some Christians plan their careers so they don’t go in to work on Sundays, but they may still devote the day to cleaning the kitchen or mowing the lawn.
Many more people have work schedules that demand they give up their Sabbath time. One Sunday night my wife and I were trying to cook a stir-fry and realized we were out of soy sauce. No problem: I jogged one block to the little corner market and bought a bottle of Kikkoman. Thank God for the guy at the convenience store and his odd work schedule! My more relaxed schedule is made possible because he punches a time card on Sundays.
I love this prayer in our Compline service: “O God … watch over those, both night and day, who work while others sleep, and grant that we may never forget that our common life depends on each other's toil.”
And while we’re on the topic, I’m reminded of a cartoon in which a priest is being interviewed for a job. His interviewer asks, “I assume you have no problem with working on Sundays?”
Yes, many people must work on the Sabbath, whether it’s Saturday or Sunday. Jesus understood this, even in a world without convenience stores. In fact, Jesus is the ultimate realist in this situation. What counts as work? Does feeding your animals count? How about changing diapers? Should I just sit on my duff and watch bad reruns one day a week? I guess I should use the remote control, because that’s less work.
But I’m rambling. The point is that the Sabbath is a good vehicle for disciplined silence and prayer. But it is useless if it costs us an opportunity to show God’s love. A woman was in need, and Jesus attended to that need. He willingly broke one of the Ten Commandments because there was something more important going on. Immediately cured of her ailment, the woman began praising God.
It’s intriguing to note that the woman was grateful for what God had done … she didn’t give credit to the man Jesus, who had just laid hands on her. Jesus was such a clear icon of the Living God that, even when his human hands did the work, there was no mistaking the source. It was a powerful moment. So when the leader of the synagogue jumped all over Jesus for working on the Sabbath, he looked more than a little petty. As Jesus began calling him a hypocrite, it must have been clear to the healed woman that the Pharisees didn’t have all the answers.
But put yourself in the Pharisee’s shoes. In ancient Judaism, the very existence of someone with a disease was thought to be Satanic, hostile to God. So what if she were cured? What if she turned out not to threaten God’s holiness after all, but to help it shine through? And then, what if this miracle began to erode her confidence in the religious authorities? That would be awfully inconvenient to those whose cushy lives depended on her staying in her place.
I just returned from El Salvador. In that populous Central American country, 2 percent of the people control 60 percent of the land. And 90 percent of the people live at a level of poverty that, before this month, I had only read about. While eight financial conglomerates control the country’s commerce, most Salvadorans live in corrugated tin shacks without electricity or running water, the kind of homes that a hurricane or earthquake can destroy very quickly.
But what if those millions of poor people learn that they have been sustained by God ever since they were born? That they have dignity and human rights? That it is unjust for them to go hungry in a land bursting with natural resources? That peacefully protesting their government’s oppressive policies doesn’t make them terrorists? That those who have been oppressed for more than eighteen years do not need to wait one more day for their cure? That the blood of Abel, the innocent victim, is trumped by the blood of Christ, the resurrected victim?
In El Salvador, we met many people who are working to teach the poor these very things, sometimes in dangerous situations. If they succeed, the world of the comfortable and wealthy will have to change. So it’s no wonder that the rich work so hard to stay that way. And it’s no wonder that the leader of the synagogue did not want Jesus to cure this woman.
We are not often blessed with such stark realizations. And there will be plenty of other opportunities to hear stories from El Salvador. So for now, let’s get back to abundant America for a more immediate example from church life. We all have our worship habits and our pieties, and they are very important to us—so important that we may begin to treat them the way the synagogue leaders treated the Sabbath.
Do you genuflect? Do you cross yourself at the mention of the Trinity? Do you stand or kneel during the Eucharistic prayer? When you receive communion, do you place your right hand over your left, or vice versa? What if you came in one day and found the altar rail gone? What if the pews were replaced with chairs? Does it annoy you when people add feminine imagery into the Nicene Creed? Maybe guitars in church drive you nuts, or maybe the fact that we’re still singing centuries-old hymns instead of something currently playing on Spirit 105. Should a non-baptized person take Communion? Should we use incense? Icons? What should be the maximum length of the sermon?
And what about all those people who worship differently than you do? Are they wrong? How different does a religion have to be from ours before we feel it is unacceptable to God? How much can our own religion change before it doesn’t feel right anymore?
Our personal pieties can be life-giving and can bring us much closer to God. But let’s never, ever confuse them with God’s unchanging Word. Jesus says, “Love one another.” Those are our marching orders, and that’s how Jesus lived: suspending or breaking the rules whenever they stood in the way of the loving answer. So God help us also to let go of anything that might get in the way of that Love!
Our opening hymn today gave us some practical advice: “Let all mortal flesh keep silence.” Or, in layman’s terms: “Everybody shut up!” Be silent. Listen to God. Listen to others. Get out of the way, and let God work the miracles. A little Sabbath time, on any day of the week, is a great start.
Today’s reading from the letter to the Hebrews speaks of God as a consuming fire, terrifying and unstoppable. God is shaking things up on earth and in heaven, and everything we know will eventually come to an end. We have a few short years to be good to each other. Are we going to spend that time enforcing exclusionary rules, shoring up our wealth and comfort and self-righteousness, talking, demanding, shouting? Or can we let go of our fear and actively look for ways to raise people up?
God help me let go of the occasional misplaced apostrophe. Only then can I begin to deal with weightier things. Only then can I let go of the rules and start working on the relationships. Amen.