Sermon

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Changing Hearts

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Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Changing Hearts

The Rev. Charles Hoffacker

Perhaps you have heard this statement with the blank filled in by one thing or another: Anybody who __________ is not a Christian.  This blank can be filled in by any of a number of phrases.

• Anybody who engages in homosexual activity is not a Christian.

• Anybody who refuses to tithe is not a Christian.

• Anybody who involved in violence is not a Christian.

• Anybody who votes for candidates I don’t like is not a Christian.

People fill in that blank in all sorts of ways depending on their beliefs, their insights, their prejudices.  Some of them may even be right in rejecting one sort of behavior or recommending another.  But all of them are wrong, dead wrong, when they express an opinion in this way.  Why?  Because they give the impression that Christianity consists in a certain program of behavior and nothing more.  They overlook how Christianity is more than morality, it is also spirituality.  They seem to want to have the leaves and forget about the root.

Something else also happens when we toss around statements in the form of: Anybody who __________ is not a Christian.  Often when we use this form, we are including ourselves as Christians, and excluding certain other people, known to us or unknown.  We are drawing a circle that contains the acceptable people, and we just happen to be on the inside.  Other people, perhaps many others, just happen to be on the outside.  And we do this on behalf of Christianity, in the name of Christ.

But does Christ exclude?  In the gospels, do we see Jesus drawing circles to keep people out?  No.  The only circles he draws are so vast that they welcome people in, among them people who have abundant experience being excluded by others.

Anybody who __________ is not a Christian.  I’m saying there’s a real problem with statements of that kind.  But please don’t miss the point: I’m not saying that anything goes.  I’m not saying that morality does not matter.  What I am claiming is that our Christianity runs deeper than our behavior.

There are certain kinds of behavior that are consonant with Christianity and certain kinds that are not.  Sometimes Christians differ over these matters to a small extent or a large one.  But even when there is disagreement, there remains a common belief that the issue is an ethical one and that somehow Christian faith addresses it.  But for all the care and the prayer we must spend on ethical issues and our need to discern what is God’s will for us, we must remember that our ethical insight and success—or the lack of them—is not alone what makes us a Christian.  Nor can we draw the circle on this basis, as we are tempted to do, to include ourselves and exclude those others we believe to be unenlightened.

For in fact, if we fill the blank with one item, then there’s no reason not to fill the blank in with a series—so that sooner or later you and I and every other person who may dare to claim the name of Christian are not allowed to do so.  We end up on the outside of the circle looking in.  As St. Paul reminds, “All have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

There is great joy for us, great relief, in the heartfelt realization that while our Christianity should shape our behavior, our Christianity runs deeper than our behavior.  Christianity has insistent implications for how we live each day, but Christianity is mysticism before it is morality, faith before it is action, the seed of a new life before it is the fruit of that new life.

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This is not a new problem!  In today’s gospel, we see part of it.  Some Pharisees and scribes criticize disciples of Jesus for failing to keep traditional practices.  They say, in effect, that those who fail to do these things cannot be people of faith.  These Pharisees and scribes are busy drawing circles, themselves on the inside, others on the outside.

Perhaps there are also people in that community who fill in the blank in the second statement and say: You don’t have to keep these practices to be people of faith.  Both groups miss the boat!  Both judge in terms of behavior alone.  They do not look at what underlies behavior.  The problem is not the practices themselves, but when interpretations of them obscure the real issue.

Jesus brings the conversation round swiftly to the real issue.  He says, in effect: Stop judging one another’s behavior!  Don’t be concerned with matters of morality alone!  Look at what’s underneath your own behavior.  That’s where the poison is.  That’s where you can make something happen.  Get new hearts, clean hearts, hearts of flesh rather than hearts of stone.  The disorder on the surface of your lives is due to the disorder within.

That’s why he came, you know: to help us change our hearts.

The changing of hearts is no easy business.  It’s mysterious as well.

It happens in an instant, yet it takes a lifetime.

It depends entirely on God, yet it depends entirely on us.

It makes us new people, yet we become the people we’ve always wanted to be.

The story is told of an old man who said, “When I was young, I wanted to change the world.  I found I could not do that, so I tried to change my community.  I found I could not do that, so I tried to change my family.  I found I could not do that, so I decided to let God change me.”

The strange thing is, God did change that man, and as a result, the world was changed.  It became a better place.

Come to the altar.  Jesus is changing hearts today, at the price of his cross.  He waits for us there.

Scripture quotations from the World English Bible.

Copyright for this sermon 2008, The Rev. Charles Hoffacker. Used by permission. Fr. Hoffacker is an Episcopal priest and the author of “A Matter of Life and Death: Preaching at Funerals,” (Cowley Publications).