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Sermon at The Church of
the Holy Apostles, New York City,
November 5, 2006, The Twenty-Second Sunday of Pentecost:
Year B
The Reverend Timothy L. Morehouse
Deuteronomy 6: 1 - 9
Psalm 119
Hebrews 7: 23 - 28
Mark 12: 28 - 34
Then the scribe said to Jesus, “You are right, Teacher. You have
truly said that God is One and besides Him there is no other, and
to love Him with all the heart and with all the understanding and
with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as one’s self.
This is much more important that all the whole burnt offerings and
sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said
to him, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.”
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit, Amen.
Our Gospel lesson, the end of which we just heard
again, provokes us to think about the relationship between our
ritual practice, the habits we rely on to connect with or to
prepare ourselves to connect with God – our prayers, our
celebrations, even the ritual of this worship service here –
provokes us to think about the relationship between our ritual
practice and the greatest commandments of Christianity: to love
God with all our hearts, understanding and strength, and to love
our neighbors as ourselves.
An encounter in which Jesus gives these two great
commandments happens in each of the synoptic Gospels. But only in
Mark does the question of religious ritual arise explicitly. In
Luke, and you’ll remember this, in Luke a lawyer stands up rather
than a scribe, and he says, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit
eternal life?” Jesus says, “What do you read in the law? What do
you read in the Torah?” And he says, “Well, love God and love
your neighbor as yourself.” And then he says, of course, “Who is
my neighbor?” And we receive the story of the Good Samaritan,
after which Jesus tells him, “Go, and do likewise.”
So, in that passage, we have a reflection on the
shema, the greatest law of Israel, actually it’s encased in a
little Mezuzah back on our door there – that greatest law
from Deuteronomy – Love your God with all your heart and all your
understanding and all your strength, and that additional law, Love
your neighbor as yourself. In Luke, the reflection on these two
laws leads to an imperative of social justice and of universal
care.
In Matthew, the Pharisees are gathered, and a lawyer
asks which command is greatest. Jesus says, “Love your God with
all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your strength,
and your neighbor as yourselves,” and then he says, “On this hangs
all the Law and the prophets.” So in Matthew, this formulation
could be understood to say, “Actually, everything we do in ritual
and everything we do in habit is important, but it grows out of
these two laws.”
Only in Mark does Jesus’ questioner comment really
positively upon Jesus and focus the question intensely on ritual
when he says, “Yes, that’s right, these two great loves are more
important that all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” So only
here could a person be tempted to think, “You know what? Love is
really more important than ritual.” And it raises a couple of
questions for us, the first of which is, “if this occurs is
slightly different ways in three Gospels, which one do we take?
And how do we take it?” And I think the tradition of the
Episcopal Church and the tradition of churches since the
nineteenth century is to answer, “Well, we can’t get back exactly,
to have a photograph of what happened in that conversation.”
We know that if three gospels wrote about it, this
conversation must have happened in some way between Jesus and his
interlocutors. So, there are different traditions that came up
about Jesus telling people about loving God and loving neighbor,
and actually, each of these probably has something to tell us out
of the way and the story that that original conversation got built
into the lives of those gospel tellers and the lives of the early
church – so – we use all three.
And today we have Mark’s version, which is especially
focused on the relationship between love and ritual. As you know,
Mark is a gospel of great conflict and action. It’s famously
remembered for using the word “immediately” something like forty
times. Jesus in this gospel is always acting and pushing, back
and forth against the people that he’s working with, and this
gospel today comes at the end of three other challenges that
seemed kind of hostile and testing. In the first one the
religious leaders simply asked him, “By whose authority do you do
these things – God? Or humans?” Jesus said, “Well, by whose
authority did John the Baptist speak?” Now, the religious leaders
knew that John the Baptist was pretty popular, so they wouldn’t
say “it’s from God” because they’d be afraid if they did that that
they would undercut their own authority – if they said “John
preachers from humans” then the people would be mad at them for
taking away John’s authority, so they said, “We won’t tell you,”
and Jesus said, “Well, then I’m not going to tell you by whose
authority I do these things.” He solved it.
He also solved the next question: “Do we pay taxes to
God or to Cesar?” “Show me that coin – OK – Cesar’s picture is on
it. All right, then pay what you owe to Cesar to Cesar and what
you owe to God to God.” Then, there’s another one: “In the
resurrection, if someone’s been married seven times, who will that
person be married to in the resurrection?” Another trap – Jesus
says, “People don’t get married in the resurrection, guess what.”
So that attack melts away as well.
This is the only case – then someone comes up and says
something supportive of Jesus. You hear how Mark introduces it –
Hearing that he had answered wisely, this friendly
interlocutor comes, and he doesn’t ask a hostile question.
Instead, he throws him what they call in baseball or softball a
meatball – throws him an easy pitch. He says, “This guy’s doing
really well, let’s hear him comment on the Shema. What is
the greatest commandment, Rabbi?” And then Jesus then answers it,
he comes back with his affirmation: “Yeah, that’s right, even more
important than ritual practice,” and four times Jesus comes out a
winner in this chapter in the gospel.
And his answer is really a winning answer. In fact, all
of our ritual and all our habits should be based on love of God
and Neighbor. The problem is that this idea has often led (and I
know you know this), but it’s often led to a kind of a superiority
in Christian circles, especially when Christians think about their
relationship to Judaism: “Well, you know, there are all those laws
in Judaism, and people may keep the Sabbath and they may keep
kosher, but we love God, so we’ve really got it right.” As we
might suspect, this is an ill-founded attitude.
It is ill founded first of all because this formulation
in Jesus’ answer is quite typical of first century Judaism. Rabbi
Hillel also famously makes a formulation of the Golden Rule at
that time. It’s also ill founded because these sorts of tensions
among different groups of people exist throughout the history that
scripture portrays. One thing that we see throughout scripture is
that the priests that run the ritual are often in tension, or
let’s say, rubbing up against the prophets of Judaism or the kings
of Judaism. The priests of Judaism are quite often insisting on
ritual and the prophets are saying, “Love, then ritual.”
So this attitude towards love and ritual is something
that Jesus comes by quite honestly, but not something that we
Christians should feel especially superior about. In particular,
a superiority complex is especially ill founded among
Episcopalians because our tradition really values ritual – a kind of worship ritual in
particular – that’s very orderly, and thoughtful, and soulful.
Ritual is very important to us, which reminds me
of the old joke that the person who goes to Hell and is in a long
hallway – and there are many rooms in this long hallway in Hell, a
kind of Dante-esque picture – every group has its own room.
First, they open a door, and they look in here, and things look
great and there’s a white sand beach and there are all kinds of
scantily clad people having little drinks with umbrellas in them,
and everyone’s sitting and sort of tan and happy, BUT, there’s a
problem. The people in that room have horrified looks on their
faces, and the person says, “Who are they?” “Those are the
Puritans – the worst thing for them is to leave those long, very
modest tunics back in the seventeenth century, and exist here on
this scantily clad beach, so this is Hell for them.” So they
close that door and they walk down the hall and there’s another
door they open... They peek inside that door and there’s a
beautiful old dark bar – like a beautiful Maxfield Parrish murals
on the wall – every sort of imaginable bar food and drink there,
and there’s beautiful music playing – piano, jazz – and again the
people at that place are horrified. “Well, what’s wrong with
them?” He looks in there and says, “Those are all the people who
joined the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and they’re just
horrified, and hell for them is this place with all this food and
drink.” So, they’re walking down there, and this poor
Episcopalian is sort of being led down by his guide and they open
a door, and he gets a feeling that “This is the room where I have
to go – this is it.” He looks in there and it’s a sumptuous table
laid out – beautiful place settings, napkins, people about to sit
down to a wonderful meal – the best Thanksgiving meal, for
example, that you could ever imagine – very elegant. He thinks,
“This can’t be so bad,” but he looks again. These people are also
horrified, and the guy turns and says, “Is this my place? A place
for Episcopalians?” And the person says, “Yes, yes, this is the
place for Episcopalians, and they’re horrified because they’ve
just eaten their salad course with their dessert forks.”
Now, in the old days, I think that was a joke about
class, right? About class, and about money…but if you really
think about it, it really cuts another way when you talk about
ritual; we place a lot of emphasis on doing things decently and in
order, so having one’s salad with the dessert fork sort of stands
for any interruption in the way that we like our liturgy to run.
So, as it turns out, maybe our ritual is kind of important to us –
the ways that we pray regularly, privately or here. If we’re
lucky, the ways that we keep the Sabbath – I have a great rabbi
friend who keeps the Sabbath, and I’m always stunned and impressed
with what that does for him. He does no work at all – he doesn’t
even think about it - on the Sabbath. And ways that we here also
share scripture and we break bread together – these are really
important to us, because without that prayer, without rest,
without this nourishment in a thoughtful and orderly way, we are
probably less able to reflect on the love of God and to open
ourselves to the love of Neighbor. As Matthew’s gospel implies,
these rituals may even come from love of God and love of Neighbor.
I think we try to live a right balance between love and
ritual here at Holy Apostles – we like order, but we will never
have it at the expense of love. We’re not overly fussy here about
dress, but we do try to reach this reflective dignity in what we
do. We welcome all people here – those that seek Christ at this
table and in this ritual – but also those that just want to come
and have food...those who don’t want to worry about ritual, and
want love to work in their lives. And it’s also why we work for
full inclusion of all God’s people in the church, believing that
no one is ritually impure – no one is held outside the kingdom of
God’s love.
And as for me, when I came to this place, the
relationship between ritual and love suggested itself
immediately. And not just to me! As my bishop said, “having gone
to a Unitarian college and raised a low-church Presbyterian, how
are you going to make it at this place with this formal ritual?
How are you ever going to learn to do this?” Well, for me, that
presence of this love here is what really enabled that to happen.
As I learned all of the details, I also was supported in love, and
unless you think that stops, I’m going to tell you a little
secret, and Bill, I’m going to tell something on my myself that
you were not here for, but you may enjoy hearing: a couple of
weeks ago, we blessed the pledges with holy water. I know Liz
will remember this, and I know Denise and Randy will remember this
even more strikingly. As you guys know, when we bless pledges we
have a ritual tradition – sprinkling with holy water and smoke,
right? This happened two weeks after the blessing of the animals,
and things have been pretty hectic at my other job as chaplain at
Trinity School lately, and Kara and I are about to have a child,
so our apartment’s been torn up and my mind has been many places –
so that after the blessing of the animals here at church, Father
Morehouse takes the bucket for the holy water up to school, where
he’s going to have the blessing of the stuffed animals the next
week for Lower School chapel. Well, we did that, and then there’s
a big memorial service at church, and he brings the flowers in for
the memorial service and sets them neatly in front of the bucket.
Mmmm…ok.
Two weeks later as he’s leaving his office on Friday,
and probably should have been thinking, “You know, I need to bring
that bucket down here, because we’re going to need to bless those
pledges,” he instead leaves the bucket in his office. And then
suddenly the church service is under way, and we’re about done
with the Second Lesson, and Denise kinda looks over at me quietly,
and says, “do you know where the bucket is?”, knowing that as soon
as the sermon’s over we’re going to bless these pledges.
Knucklehead that I am, so absentminded, I said, “No, I have no
idea where the bucket is,” and meanwhile, Randy is pulling his
hair out back there in the sacristy, and then it kind of floats
into my mind, “Oh my goodness! The bucket is locked very safely in
my office on West 91st Street.” And so, we had that
day a kind of – you may remember it – a kind of Celtic innovation
in out ritual. I turned to Denise and I said, “Denise, I have the
bucket in my office; we’re not going to have it. Instead, you and
Randy go outside, get a fresh green sprig that you find in our
garden, you go to the back, and when the time comes to bring it,
bring up the baptismal font – the same water we would have used
anyway – and bring that sprig and we will use that, and I don’t
think Liz will mind!”
And it turned out beautifully - that change in ritual,
because I was supported by the love and care of my colleagues, and
the people I work with here. I could go away that day not feeling
like I had completely failed and made a huge blunder. And I don’t
think anybody forgot the bucket yesterday at the Presiding
Bishop’s investiture – I’m sure that everything was fairly well
ironed out. But given our joy and even deep disappointment with
the events of General Convention, where she was elected this
summer, I think it’s hard to say, ritual or no ritual, where
she’ll go as she leads the Episcopal Church forward in these days
of strife in the Anglican Communion. But I do move forward – I do
move forward in these early days with a tentative hope. It’s not
based on the beauty of her investiture – not based on that rite
they had at the cathedral – but it’s based more on a little talk
that she gave just after her election. It was posted yesterday on
the website of the Episcopal Church, and today it’s been removed
and replaced with the talk she gave yesterday, so I wish I had
made a copy of this for you.
Anyway, in the summer at the convention, she gave us, I
think, a little window into her soul, and it was a very
interesting moment. In that talk, she talked about going out very
early in the morning for a run, a jog. And she jogged by an
interstate and went out into a park and found a great place to
jog, and there she was. In that half-light of the morning, as she
was coming back, she talked about seeing people in the hotel,
people along the way, and she talked about that slight distance
that you get – one person to another – that slight fear that she
may have felt as a woman running alone, early in the morning –
that slight fear. And she talked about that as the real emotion –
the real spiritual ill that we need to overcome, that fear that
comes to us in the anonymity of modernity, that fear that comes to
us in the intimate distances of globalism. She didn’t say this,
but I can imagine since she was an oceanographer, she is also no
stranger to the fear that we feel about the separation of humans
from the natural world. And she asked the delegates and clergy to
face that fear and reconcile it with love. So, as a woman, the
first to lead a province, any province ever of the Anglican
Communion, as a scientist, an oceanographer, to discover the deep
presence of God in the life of the sea, as a healer, someone who
knows that she has big work in front of her – she did in that
moment hit upon what’s perhaps the greatest human impediment to
God’s kingdom, and that is fear.
Perfect love casts out fear, and the rituals of our
lives have helped amplify, give order and expression to that love,
and it is that love itself that gives them their power. God’s
love for us, in Christ, our love for God tacked on the door back
there... God’s love as we sing and pray, and our love for each
other.
So God bless the Presiding Bishop and the Episcopal
Church; God bless Holy Apostles, and God bless each of us as we
seek to follow this love into God’s kingdom.
Amen.
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