Brothers and sister in Christ, we know that it is a gift of the Holy Spirit when we are able to sit here in church and focus and listen well as God’s Word is spoken to us. And sometimes our lives can be such where focus is very difficult.
In our gospel reading there are specific details about how pharisees and scribes feel about ceremonial washings and how Jesus’ disciples appeared to them to eat with defiled hands- that is hands that were not ceremonially cleansed, or vessels like copper pots that were not ceremonially cleansed. Without a doubt this is not one of the most exciting or captivating gospel readings. No miracle, no apparent connection to Jesus’ amazing love for us on the cross.
Yes, there are implication for our Christian life and worship as Jesus talks about the danger of outward acts of piety without love for God in our hearts. However, it is not the most important gospel lesson we have had this summer. How relevant can a disagreement about the needs and motivations for ceremonial washing be for us when we have gone through a week as a nation with bitter sorrow, knowing that countless American citizens are essentially hostages under a ruthless and dangerous regime?
Perhaps it is a little difficult to be all that concerned about a disagreement about cleansing with water, when we have every reason to believe that thousands of Afghan citizens who helped the U.S. Army in the last 20 years have a bounty on their head and records from the government in the hand of those who consider it a duty to Allah to exact vengeance on such people. How do we focus on God’s Word when the world we live in is so chaotic- where everyone seems to do what they see right in their own eyes without any fear of God?
Yet the Holy Spirit is present with us as we gather for worship. We have been brought here to die to our old self and any expectations of how secular government should be for us, so that we can be born anew in God’s kingdom- a kingdom which is not of this world.
Yes it may be hard to focus at times, yet God’s Word is always relevant for us. Because we always have a choice whether we are to put our hope in the promises of God or in the traditions of man.
In our Introit there is a statement of faith that is as relevant as ever to our lives- regardless of what government should collapse next. “Lord I love the habitation of your house and the place where your glory dwells.”
There are a lot of things that Americans say that they love.” Chocolate, the blooming onion ring appetizer you can get at some restaurants, going down a water slide at a water park. But usually when we say that we love things we mean we enjoy them.
I enjoy Taco Bell. It probably would be incorrect grammar to say I love Taco Bell. Or maybe its not grammar that’s not quite right about these things we say, maybe it is our theology. How does what we say compare to what God’s Word says?
The Psalm verse does not say, Lord I enjoy the habitation of your house, Lord I generally prefer the habitation of your house as long as there are not too many things going on in my life. It says ‘Lord I love.’
It is not the building we love. It’s the promise that the Lord comes to us in this building in worship, that His glory dwells with us, we love that He is there for us no matter what when we approach Him in repentance and faith. That is what we love.
We love because He first loved us. By our human nature we are enemies of God. Yet by faith we can come into the Lord’s presence not begrudgingly, but with love and commitment and passion, because we have been given new life in Christ, because the part of us that fights against being in the Lord’s house has been drowned in Holy Baptism.
Even as we live in our Baptismal New life in Christ, we still face choices about if we are to love the traditions of man, or if we are going to love God’s Word. In our gospel reading we hear how the traditions of man became just as or more important to the pharisees than God’s Word. They challenged Jesus: “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”
As a way of promoting their self righteousness, the people took up traditions such as hand washing and other cleansing of common everyday materials, as if there actions of making things clean could make them all around better people and more holy. And they used their tradition of upholding these practices as grounds to shame and taunt Jesus and his disciples for not practicing them.
Isaiah chapter 29 describes this outward show of allegiance to God while the heart is elsewhere “Because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men.”
Jesus quotes this passage and correctly applies the meaning of drawing near with mouths and lips as a type of false worship: “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.”
Jesus then says: “You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” The traditions of men were more dear to their hearts. Instead of saying Lord I love the habitation of your house, they were saying, Lord I love what we have done with this house and how we do things better than other believers. When they made it about themselves they left the commandments of God. Instead of loving God’s Commandments and loving where God’s glory dwells they loved how good they were at their own traditions.
We have some good traditions of how we do worship. The traditions are good. But if we only see the traditions and miss the glory of God present with us, we are missing the point. It is God’s Word that we need to treasure. And may Lord have mercy on us that our traditions communicate God’s Word more than our pride in ourselves. As Dr. Fickenscher of Concordia theological Seminary has observed in our worship theme readings this morning: “There is plenty to love and rejoice over God’s Word, without teaching as doctrine the words of man.”
There is indeed so much joy in God’s Word, that we do not need to ever put our chief focus on how well we practice traditions of piety. The appointed verse for this Sunday comes from Jeremiah chapter 15: “Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O LORD, God of hosts.”
We can be thankful that in our congregation and in our denomination we do not tell people they need to work harder to be saved, or that people need to have the right emotion and feeling within to be saved. Because we understand the clarity of scripture, and the sufficiency of scripture to save us- we do not feel a need to adopt traditions where we are seeking an emotional experience or another word from God by trying to find evidence or seek signs in the world around us that how we are acting as a church is Godly.
We believe in the power of God’s Word as an instrument of the Holy Spirit to forgive our sins and save us. Other church bodies may see the Bible as full of important information that we are given so that we can live our lives according to God’s Will. But they do not see the Bible as what has the power to save us.
In this time in our nation when people focus so much on what our feelings tell us, it appears everyone seeks to do what is right in their own eyes. in this time when so few are listening to God’s Word, the traditions of man are more popular than ever.
May we so love your Word that they are for us our joy and delight. May we see that we are here in worship not to follow the dictates of our hearts, but to follow God’s heart because we have been called by name. As we sung in our hymn of the day, may we treasure the catechism as Luther taught, not to get lost in traditions, but to follow an order of Christian life that always treasures and gladly receives the gift of Jesus to us.