Posted by stpauls on August 30, 2009 under Bible Readings, Webmaster Blog | 
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 ~ Gospel reading for August 30, 2009
Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?’ He said to them, ‘Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,
“This people honours me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.”
You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.’
Then he called the crowd again and said to them, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.’
‘For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.’
Posted by stpauls on under Sermons |
One of my favourite hymns is “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” It is a very little known hymn here in Canada, because it is sung predominantly in African American congregations in the United States. In fact, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” has been dubbed the “Negro National Anthem.” Initially, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was a poem, written to commemorate Abraham Lincoln’s birthday in 1900. It was set to music soon thereafter and became quickly popular among African Americans. It is a religious hymn, but has a deep and profound social, political, and societal relevance.
Let me recite the first stanza of the hymn:
Lift every voice and sing,
‘Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on ’til victory is won.
Like so many other hymns coming from the black experience in North America, this is a hymn filled not just with hope for the future. This is the song of a people who are liberated. This is the anthem of a people who will not give up. This is the cry of people who will not be put down anymore. This is the chorale of a people who have experienced healing and salvation already. Yes, this is a political manifesto, but this is also the hymn of a people who have experienced the liberating message of the Gospel. For those singing this hymn, the Gospel of Jesus Christ indeed has become the Good News of God, the good news that liberates, that heals, that overcomes darkness and fear, and that turns things around in body, in mind and in soul.
Unlike so many hymns of the era from within more established classes, this is a hymn that does not just speak of a hope for a better life in heaven, neglecting the social, economic, and political realities. Neither does this hymn limit Christianity to a set of proper behaviour in this life, which was quite common among the power-elites in North America of the time. This hymn is neither saccharine, nor moralistic.
But for the African American tradition, the Christian message has a holistic claim, as it seeks to engulf and penetrate every fibre of our being and as it turns human beings around not just in our behaviour, but in who we are in our entirety. “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is not just on people’s lips. It is in their hearts: As those despised by the racist cultures in the United States and in Canada of the time, black Gospel musicians knew that salvation wasn’t just something left for Sunday mornings, a societal pastime, a topic of polite discussion over coffee, cucumber sandwiches, and sherry. But the liberation of body, mind, and soul takes hold of who you are, causes maybe even hardship and tears, but ultimately it was worth every single effort and sacrifice.
The descendents of slaves forced from the shores of Africa to this part of the world could see themselves in the Hebrew slaves of Egypt and in the exiled people of Israel, who filled the rivers of Babylon with their tears. No wonder, then, that African Americans and Afro-Canadians claimed for themselves the biblical story as a story of God’s liberation as a story of freedom in body, mind, and spirit offered by Jesus the Christ. And this understanding of the Bible is closer to God’s truth as revealed in Jesus Christ than the saccharine gibberish and the moralistic gobbledegook so often preached from pulpits that either do not want to deal with the eternal salvation offered to our souls in Jesus Christ or that neglect to fully embrace the Gospel, which speaks so insistently about the liberation of the marginalised, the poor, and the oppressed.
Here is the final verse:
God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.
For the last decades, and particularly over the last few years, we in the Anglican Church have been fighting over the issue of human sexuality. Some say, we have become too soft on morals or are neglecting the biblical witness. Others say, we are not listening to the movement of the Spirit among us, who pushes and prods us into a new direction. A third group argues that the pure fact that we are fighting is not very attractive, is not very conducive to bringing in new members. And many have attributed our decline to this debate.
But I wonder if that is true.
I wonder if we can really blame the decline on our current debate. But I believe that we lost it when we decided to turn Christianity into a morality-based religion and when, in the words of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” our hearts became drunk “with the wine of the world” and pushed our faith to the margins of our lives.
It really isn’t about our current debate. The seeds of the crisis were sown by the conformity and the complacency of the church in the 1950s. The problems we face today are seated in our obsession with morality and conduct, in our reliance on the traditions of the past without reclaiming them over and over again for us today, and in our status as God’s elite, as God’s frozen chosen! You know the joke: What does hell look like for Anglicans? In hell, Anglicans have to eat salad with the dessert-fork…
For too many years, Anglicanism has been associated with the rich and famous. We are used to having power way beyond what our membership implies. In addition, Anglicanism became all about doing the right things.
Going to church turned into a cultural “thing” akin to drinking tea, playing cricket, going to the opera, and keeping a stiff upper lip. The moral ideals and needs of the upper class triumphed over the radical challenges of Jesus. Cultural supremacy made us forget that we are called to be members of the Christ’s royal priesthood “from every tribe and language and people and nation.”1 Faith no longer penetrated the whole of our being, no longer called us to love of God and to justice for our neighbour. It became all about rules and regulations rather than about our relationship with God and with one another. The church forgot that the Gospel is more than a nice story, is more than a code of conduct, is more than a cultural attribute. Modern Anglicanism failed to remember that the Good News of God in Christ offers radical freedom for body, mind, and soul.
Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and the reformers of the English Reformation did not lose their lives for this kind of church! The Book of Common Prayer was not published so that we can all relax and enjoy the ride. But the Book of Common Prayer was written in the vernacular, so that its impact as a book of prayer for all people would be most profound, most far-reaching, and most universal. To reclaim the Bible and worship for all believers in “a Tongue as the people understandeth”2 was an attempt to make accessible the life-changing message of the Gospel for all in all aspects of life. The heart of the Reformation was liberation!
And of course, this is exactly what today’s reading from the Gospel of Mark talks about. Jesus offers not a code of conduct, rules and regulations, a new law, but Jesus offers life, life abundant and life eternal. And following this life is a radical departure from the life we live if our hearts are “drunk with the wine of the world.” It is a turn-around of 180 degrees.
Falling into the arms of the living God doesn’t mean we can have a wee bit of religion, maybe 200 g or 300 g, mixed in with a pound of cultural identity. It is not about following a prescribed set of rules that makes us abstain from “fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.”3
But falling into the arms of God means that God takes hold of us completely in body, mind and soul. It means being penetrated by God’s healing and restoration in every fibre of our being. It means worshipping God and singing God’s praises not just with our lips, but also with our hearts. It is about becoming fully God’s possession.
The Christian tradition calls this sobering from the wine of the world “metanoia.” It is a complete re-orientation, a complete re-direction from the ways of the world. Yet, this is not a horrific or horrible thing. But it is our hope and our salvation. Through metanoia, we can reclaim the amazing and awesome beauty that God intends for each and every one us. Metanoia allows us to experience and to realize the abundant and indiscriminate compassion and love of our God for you, for me, and for all of creation. Metanoia will restore us to our rightful place as God’s beloved children at the table in God’s kingdom. Metanoia offers life.
I do believe that many of us here have at St. Paul’s experienced Metanoia. Not unlike our African American and Afro-Canadian brothers and sisters, many of us experienced captivity and oppression. Yet, at St. Paul’s Anglican Church bodies find liberation, minds find rest, and souls find salvation – every day of every week of the year. This sacred place in the West End and its ministries have offered relief for many as we have been true to our God, and true to the radical message of the Gospel not just with our lips, but also in our hearts. Here, freedom in body, mind, and soul is offered and found – and not just in some distant future, but here and now.
This does, of course, not mean that we are perfect. There is still much to do. We are needed. There is a job waiting for us. We are not done.
So then, from the depth of our hearts:
Lift every voice and sing,
‘Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
1 Revelation 5.9
2 39 Articles of Religion, Article XXIV
3 Mark 7.21f
[The Reverend Markus Duenzkofer delivered this sermon on August 30, 2009.]
