August 31, 2003

Twelfth Sunday of Pentecost

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

 “Coronary Care”

     Ahhh…Labor Day weekend, the last hurrah for the vacation season, a time for picnics, relaxation, recreation.  I guess we’ll do some of that at our house.  I also hope I get to spend some time with one of my favorite forms of relaxation and recreation - working on my old boat.

     Some of you probably know I have a weakness for wooden boats, the older the better - leaky, creaky, paint peeling old wooden boats.  There’s something heavenly about the smell of old varnish, mildew and motor oil all mixed together.  So, it should come as no surprise that I plunked down a whopping $550 about eight months ago for a 1961 Chris Craft.  It’s a big old lunker, twenty three feet in length and eight feet in beam.  Its canvas decks were peeling like a bad sunburn and had rotted through in several places, the bottom was pretty sound but the cockpit soul had to be replaced.  The hull had to be scraped down and painted and the roof patched up.  All the gauges and most of the wiring had to be replaced, the exhaust system, cooling system and fuel tank, pump and lines had to be replaced too.  Also, the carburetor, distributor, intake manifold, starter and generator.  So now you can see why I got the boat so cheap!  They say boats are just a hole in the water you throw money into, but I’m proving them wrong - mine is still on the trailer - you don’t have to have it in the water to throw money into it!

     Oh well, it’s a hobby.  I work on it here and there, now and then and consider it my relaxation therapy.  In that sense it has been a pretty good investment.  I just hope it floats!  More than that - I hope it runs!  You see, I haven’t started the engine yet.  The heart of the machine has not yet been given CPR.  Everything else in the boat has been restored or replaced, but I haven’t yet turned that key.  There are still a few more details that need to be done before I do - so I’m close -  I just hope that when the big moment comes, she comes to life!

     I fellow walked by the boat the other day as I was working on it and said, “She really looks great!” (boats are always a “she”), but so what if she doesn’t have a pulse?  It will be pretty ridiculous if I restore the old boat, spruce it all up, make it shine and then don’t get it running.  It would kind-of defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it? 

     The Apostle Paul used to say, “Faith without works is dead.”  More than showing up and going through the motions, faith is supposed to be alive, supposed to have a pulse, supposed to be the outpouring of a living spirit, a heart beating with the love of Christ.

     Jesus and his disciples were tired and dirty and hungry from a long, dusty journey.  The verses just before today’s lesson tell of how they had been traveling from town to farm all over Gennesaret.  They were so hungry, they ignored the traditional Jewish ritual of hand washing and just dove right in, dirty fingernails and all.  Of course, there was something of a personal hygiene concern there, but people in those days really didn’t know anything about germs.  The real issue that griped the Pharisees, was the willingness of Jesus and his disciples to drop centuries of religious tradition for the sake of fast food.

     But in their disgust with what they thought was the height of irreverent behavior, the Pharisees had missed something.  Jesus seized the opportunity:

“Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,

‘This people honors me with their lips but their hearts are far from me!’.”

 He added, “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…evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” 

     Keeping the traditions, the rituals, maintaining the façade, slapping on a fresh coat of paint, none of this amounts to much if the heart isn’t alive with the love of Christ.

     Oh, but the old traditions have such a grip on us!  They are comfortable and sure.  We are too often like the house painter who got a new job painting lines on the highway.  The first day he painted three miles of lines, the next day two, but on the third day only one.  When his boss complained about his diminishing productivity, the man explained that it is difficult to paint the same amount every day when each day you get further and further away from the bucket!  He didn’t have to move the bucket when he painted a room in a house, but a new situation required letting go of the old ways of doing things.

     We have a wonderfully forgiving God - that Jesus came for our salvation is proof of this.  So there is hope for us even if we are old stuck-in-the-muds…but doesn’t that grace of Christ so freely given to us come with a purpose?  Isn’t it to kick-start our faith?  Isn’t it CPR for dead spirits?  Isn‘t it to cause our hearts to beat full with Christ‘s love, alive with the Holy Spirit?

     We have a big old church here.  We have this huge façade of granite and mortar and stained glass windows and wood.  It exudes centuries of tradition and that can be good, for the faith of those who have gone before has brought us to this time and place…and thanks be to God for them.  But we now have this generation in which to live and generations yet to come depending on us to share the Good News of Jesus Christ in today‘s world.  They are depending on us to be alive with faith, to be the heartbeat of the gospel here and now.

     Forty years ago this past Friday, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. addressed thousands of people gathered for a civil rights demonstration on the lawn in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC.  He gave a speech that may well be remembered as the greatest speech of the twentieth century, the “I have a dream” speech.  He said, “I have a dream that one day my little children will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”  We have certainly come a long way since 1963, but we are still dreaming for that day to fully come.

     It will, if we can get past the façade, past the color of skin, the labels we apply, the exterior shape and color of things to the heart, to the living soul, the God-given spirit.  It will, if we will let go of all that gets in the way of this and allow ourselves to go there.