Distractions by Marie Alford-Harkey, M.Div.
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Sermon Proper 17B
Song of Solomon 2:8-13
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Marie Alford-Harkey
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford
August 30, 2015
Back in the late nineties I fell in love with the Franklin planner system. Do you all know about these? It’s supposed to be a system that allows you to organize your life according to what matters most to you. They even had that tagline on the box: “What matters most?”
At any rate, I dove into the world of the Franklin planner head first. I loved it. I bought the book that went along with the system and went through all the recommended steps to identify what mattered most to me and what were my ultimate goals in life. See, the idea was that if you did all this, and then worked your way down from your values to your major life goals, to goals for the next 10 years, 5 years, etc, that by the time you got down to your day to day life, you would be doing that things that would eventually lead you to accomplishing your goals. You would be doing “what mattered most.” So your daily tasks were divided into 4 quadrants based on how they aligned with your goals and values – important and urgent, important and not urgent, urgent and not important, and neither urgent nor important. You were supposed to be weeding all of the unimportant stuff out of your life.
I loved the whole system. I had this thick notebook of monthly calendars and daily task lists, and daily calendars, and a section on my goals and values…. Oh it was good stuff. And it worked great for me – for like 3 months. But pretty soon, for me, it came to be all about the lists. I loved making those daily task lists and then marking things off them. Sometimes, I would write something I had just done on the list, just for the pure pleasure of checking it off. I loved those task lists. The goals and values pretty much went by the wayside.
My love of lists, and checking things off them wasn’t new, however. I can remember how, as a young teenage Christian, I would look at lists like the list of sins in today’s gospel, and start checking things off. Fornication, – nope (I was like 14), theft – nope, murder – nope, adultery –nope (again, I was 14), avarice—weeelllll…., wickedness-hm, yep, most probably, deceit – oh yeah, that too, licentiousness – no idea but sounded like it had to do with sex so I figured I was safe, envy – oh yeah – lots of that, slander – um, definite possibility, pride – yep, folly – most definitely.
What I liked about those lists of sins in the bible was the idea that I could figure out how I measured up, or didn’t, based on which sins I had or hadn’t committed. Much like the Pharisees in the gospel, I was completely missing the point. That’s actually the whole purpose of the Pharisees in this story. They are Mark’s literary device to illustrate what it looks like to completely miss the point.
The rules that they were following did originally have a point – they were to show that they were set apart as people of this particular God. But somewhere along the way, these people forgot what the purpose was and became far more concerned with the lists of rules and laws that had their religion had developed over the years than with knowing God and being God’s people. They got distracted. Just like me and my planner – they forgot what mattered most and focused on the lists.
It’s so very human, though – just tell us what to do, and what not to do – what are the rules? We’ll makes lists, check them off… we’ll try really hard. But that’s not the point. Back in Deuteronomy, God’s exiled people are told that they will once again follow all of God’s commandments and prosper. How can God promise such a thing? Well, Moses tells them, following God’s commandments is not too difficult for them, it is not beyond the people. No, Moses’ message from God is that the word of God is in your heart and on your lips. The word is very near to you. This is true for all of us, for we are all God’s people.
This is the point. Jesus chides the Pharisees with words from the prophet Isaiah, saying that they have strayed from what is in their hearts – “these people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far away from me.” And Jesus adds, “you abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”
You abandon the commandment of God – which is in your heart.
When Jesus turns to talk to the assembled crowd, this is the point of the list of things that defile a person – that the people have abandoned what is in their heart – the Word of God. They’ve gotten distracted. They have forgotten what matters most. So their actions and their character reveal it. All those sins that Jesus names – they come from inside, from forgetting what matters most, from being distracted from God’s very essence, God’s word, that is in us.
I wish I could say that this doesn’t happen to me – that I always maintain my connection to what matters most to me – to the Word, to God’s very self that dwells in me and in each of us. I wish I could say that, but it’s just not true.
A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine posted a crowd sourcing question on Facebook for her sermon on “junk food theology.” She asked, “What’s the craziest thing you were ever told or expected to believe?” There were tons of responses, and I added a long one. I could have written about at least 10 or 12 examples of faulty theology that I have moved away from as I’ve gotten older. A while later, she posted again. She thanked all of us who had responded to her first question – and there were a lot of responses – and then she asked, “Now – what are the things about faith that you’ve rediscovered? Today, what is at the heart of your faith?”
I sat there and stared at the computer for a few minutes. “I ought to know the answer to this,” I thought. I began to try to construct a “right” answer in my head. What was good Trinitarian theology? What about the Nicene Creed? How could I sum up the Anglican theology that I learned and loved in seminary? My thinky brain went nuts.
And then I stopped myself. She hadn’t asked for that. She had asked a very personal question – What is at the heart of your faith?
So I made myself stop the hamster wheel that often takes over my brain. I stopped trying to find the right answer and I looked deep inside and asked myself that question – today,what is at the heart of your faith? At the heart? Not what would be the acceptable answer to someone else, but what is, honestly, at the heart of my faith? And that’s where I found the answer – in my heart, not my spinning brain. It came out easily and fully formed, because it is the word that is very near me. I wrote, “My faith is in Jesus who came among us as human and by the very act of incarnation redeemed humanity. My faith is in God whose love for all of us is impossibly extravagant. My faith is in the Holy Spirit, who dwells in and among us, breathing God’s breath into us.”
That moment and that statement were so profound for me. I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I paid attention to the faith that is in me – to what matters most to me. I got caught up in going to seminary and pursuing my call and working for justice and all kinds of things that are informed by that faith, and many more that are not. Somewhere along the way, I got completely distracted. And what happens when we do that? When we forget what matters most? Well, the power of that list of sins that Jesus gives in today’s gospel is that they are so us – so human – so particular. Have I been envious? You betcha. Greedy – yep. Deceitful – yep. Foolish – absolutely. Prideful – without a doubt. Whenever I am not connected to the Word that is in me, those very human sins show forth in my life.
And the opposite is also true, of course. Lately, I have seen no better example of someone who connected to the essence of God inside himself than Jimmy Carter. This man’s character has been revealed in his actions for a very long time. Right after his presidency, he founded the Carter Center to advocate for human rights. He’s a key figure in Habitat for Humanity and has continued to build houses well into his 80’s. He is devoted to Jesus and to human rights. He left the Southern Baptist church – a church his family had been a part of for three generations – over its opposition to women as pastors. But he didn’t leave his faith. As we all now know, he still teaches Sunday School.
And now we see his grace in the face of his diagnosis of brain cancer. He talked to the media about how he felt when he got the news. “I was surprisingly at ease. I was pleasantly surprised that I didn’t go into an attitude of despair or anger. I’m thankful. And hopeful.” This reveals a man who absolutely lives from his heart – who is connected to the Word that is in him.
Of course he’s not perfect – none of us are. All of us forget the faith that is in us – all of us are guilty of any number of the sins that are listed in today’s gospel. All of us, to some degree or another get distracted from living from our hearts, where God’s word dwells.
But here’s the Good News. God does not get distracted. God’s character is completely consistent with what is in God’s heart. And that is extravagant, perfect love for each and every one of us. So when we realize that we’ve been far from the word that lives in us, when we come back from our pride or our greed or our foolishness or even worse sins, God is there, waiting to welcome us, arms wide open saying, “Look! Here is my beloved!”