Pulling Toward God

We are out of bread!  No!  It’s not that we don’t have any communion wafers, or that the cupboard is bare or that we are about to go hungry…  We are out of bread meaning that the recent five weeks of gospel readings from the gospel of John’s Bread Discourse are finished.  We are changing themes today.  Sometimes our gospel readings are a bit obtuse, or sometimes Jesus turns our traditional thinking on its head.  But today it is pretty clear…  Jesus doesn’t like all the rules and regulations of the scribes and Pharisees; their teachings are a problem.

To put that in historical context remember that there are some 613 laws in the Old Testament Hebrew teachings.  The book of Leviticus, part of the Jewish Torah, goes on and on with many rules and regulations about behavior, worship, dress, food, etc.  To be fair many of them were very common sense and had a very logical foundation: not eating pork due to trichinosis in those days; not eating scavenger seafood like lobster and shrimp due to contamination of the water (probably E. Coli and Salmonella), the kosher separation of meat dishes from dairy dishes.  The scribes and Pharisees were very ‘legalistic’.  Remember them repeatedly testing Jesus with specifics on the rules; when they handed him the coin and asked him to whom they should pay homage; or the woman whose husbands kept dying and she married seven brothers and they wanted to know with which brother she would be in heaven. 

So Jesus calls them to task: ’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.’

Are you a rule follower?  Are rules, for you, a guide, or a set of absolutes?  Most of us fall into one of the two camps.  As I have lived in Europe a lot of the past decade I have noticed some trends.  In Spain, for example, they don’t cross the street against a red light.  If the light at a crossing is red most are going to wait until it turns green to cross.  In Italy it seems to be quite a bit more relaxed.  The French are very prescribed about their dining hours.  Don’t expect to wander into a restaurant for lunch at 2.35 or 2.40.  The French have lunch from 12.00 to 2.00.  Period.  Check the hours before you go!  Several years ago a friend who had lived in Florence for many years, wrote, and I edited, proofread, a cute book titled Italian Food Rules.  It was a bit tongue in cheek, but fun.   She outlined Italian ideas of not having cappuccino, or any coffee in your milk after midday.  You don’t eat fish with cheese.  Never use a knife with pasta.  You get the idea.

‘This people honors me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.’  ‘Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?’  It turns out that some of the disciples hadn’t washed their hands before eating and were thus ignoring oral traditions handed down from various teachers.  But they weren’t really breaking Jewish law.  Over time the rituals had taken on a life of their own, and received an undue level of attention.  And Jesus is really responding that.  ‘This people honors me with their lips but not their hearts…

We have had our own rules in the Anglican Church.  For years women had to wear a head covering.  For a very long time it was felt that if you arrived late to church, after the beginning of the reading of the gospel, you should not partake of Holy Communion.  Some churches are obsessive about moving the Altar Missal from one side of the altar to the other when changing from Old Testament to Gospel readings.  In America we aren’t supposed to wear white after Labor Day, which is tomorrow.  Worldly rules.  Worldly concerns.  Versus godly concerns.

A number of years ago a nurse at the Catholic hospital where I worked, knew that I had been ordained as an Episcopal priest and engaged me on Ash Wednesday in a discussion about the Episcopal faith tradition versus the Roman Catholic tradition.  She quizzed me about our exact Anglican/Episcopal rules for fasting during Lent —could we eat fish, just no meat, or did we have to be totally vegetarian, and for how many hours and on which days.  Just Fridays or all of Lent?  Was it ok to wipe the ashes off your forehead on Ash Wednesday or did you need to leave them on until they just wore off?  My reply to her had to do with realigning the heart toward God by practices that are individually meaningful to the person, that required some type of sacrifice or consideration or intention.  It is, I suggested, not about the rules but about the intentions.  I explained to her that our tradition encourages fasting and making confession and other practices not as a prescribed set of rules but rather as practices to help put us in touch with our faith, our internal being, and to know God better.  I think she was only partially satisfied by the answer.  She wanted a firm set of rules that she could follow quickly and keep a tally.  That’s really much easier.

One of my favorite authors, David Brooks of the New York Times and bestseller writer of nonfiction wrote a few  years ago a book called The Road to Character.  David Brooks talks about our resumé virtues versus our eulogy virtues.   Our internal personae and our external personae.  The resumé virtues are the ones you bring to the job market and that contribute to external success.  The eulogy virtues are the ones that get talked about at your funeral — being kind, brave, honest, or fearful, and what kind of relationships you formed; the core of your being.  While most of us would say that our eulogy virtues are more important, our conversation, actions, and social interactions may belie that.  In it Brooks tells the life stories of a number of significant historical figures and recounts their struggles on their individual roads to character — social rights activists, civil rights leaders, political leaders, religious figures, sports heroes — Dorothy Day, Dwight Eisenhower, Augustine of Hippo, Joe Namath, and others.  A fascinating read.  And a deep introspection.  Quoting Brooks, “Most of us have clearer strategies for how to achieve career success than we do for how to develop a profound character.”  Rules or motivation?  Brain or heart?

Jesus tells us over and over again that the worldly pursuits are what limit us, and He wants us to turn our hearts to God.  ‘…their hearts are far from me…’ he says in our gospel reading today.  So what is important?  Where are our hearts?  We have over three thousand years of religious rules, from the Ten Commandments, to the extensive regulations in Deuteronomy, to Paul’s exhortations.  But Jesus really sums it up with what we call The Summary of the Law.’  ‘Love the Lord your God will all your heart and soul and mind.  And love your neighbour as yourself.’  That’s it.  Two things.  Really pretty easy.  It is about turning our hearts to God.

I have heard it said that prayer is not about praying a set of requests, a number of petitions, a list of ‘give me’ or ‘I need’.  But rather prayer is about aligning oneself and one’s heart toward God.  A very good analogy is being in a rowboat somewhat away from the shore.  And your oars are gone.  Throwing out an anchor toward the shore you don’t pull the shore to you; rather you pull yourself toward the shore.  Likewise with prayer to God.  We are pulling ourselves toward God.  Aligning our wills to God’s.  That’s what Jesus is teaching us in this lesson.  He is encouraging us to live into, not our resumé virtues, but rather to live into our eulogy virtues. 

Are rules a guide or a set of absolutes?  It doesn’t really matter if they help pull us closer to God.  For where your treasure is there your heart will be.

Amen.