[GENESIS 45:1-15]
[PSALM 133]
[ROMANS 11:1-2A, 29-32]
[MATTHEW 15:10-28]
He was an “agent provocateur” long before Jesus appeared on the Sanhedrin’s radar. He had been quietly but visibly reinterpreting the foundational rules of Jewish society. Jews at the time, lived lives guided by many rules of ritual cleanliness. Who or what was ritually pure involved everything in life, not just food and inanimate objects but men and women of their own community. Then here comes this itinerant teacher, this man who wants to turn all of their guidelines on their ear. He is a rabbi, someone to be listened to for interpretation of those rules and he tells that that it isn’t about what goes into the mouth of a person that defiles them, it is what comes out of their mouth! In other words, their words and how they speak to each other and to strangers is more important that meat and cheese being served on the same plate. Or that is someone is ritually impure because of what they do for a living or are from a family of only certain means – Jesus quietly shows they are still people of value. People that deserve to pray and be listened to by God! People who merited to belong to the community and deserve to be loved.
When Jesus speaks about “what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart and this is what defiles it – for out of the heart comes evil intentions.” I thought of Charlottesville.
You see, I used to live in Charlottesville and as the commentators started talking about the tearing down of General Lee – I knew exactly where that was because my toddler daughter Hannah and I used to walk by that statue after our weekly library visits while I enjoyed my independent coffee shop coffee (pre-Starbucks)!. When White Supremacists gathered for a rally recently– I was shocked that they had a permit and permission to parade on the University campus. I was angry when I heard of these people gathering in Charlottesville – but I was not surprised. For all its beauty and architecture, Charlottesville has a history of being a segregated town in Virginia. I know, I have seen it myself. I can remember going into a major chain restaurant (thank goodness, it is now defunct) and being seated in the best seats in the house, up the front by the big windows. From there the view is very clear. All the white patrons sit up the front in the nice seats and all the black patrons are seated in the back beside the kitchen.
It was so obvious that we kept our eyes on it at subsequent visits, to make sure it was an ongoing issue. It was. And one day, as my friend Lizzie, a barrister from England and I were being seated up front, I tapped the arm of the hostess and said, “no, we’d like to sit in the back near the kitchen”. She was incredulous and after confirming with me, she indeed sat us there. The air conditioning didn’t really overcome the heat coming out of the kitchen, so it was much hotter than the seats up front. The servers don’t come around as often; I guess not expecting the tip to be very high. Our food came same as usual but what was different were the looks we got from people. The black patrons sitting with us, smiled huge smiles and understood exactly what we were saying in our quiet way. I don’t know if the white patrons noticed anything, because for them, nothing had changed. However, for us, everything had changed – our perspective had changed. It was the last time we went to that chain for about 25 years. When we revisited Charlottesville, the restaurant had changed hands and there were many black patrons in at the time we dined in the restaurant’s new incarnation.
I was disgusted to follow the tragedy and death of Heather Hyer. Say her name aloud. Say Heather Hyer’s name in the company of those young civil rights workers from the Freedom Summer of 1964. James Earl Chaney from Meridia Mississippi and Andrew Goodman and Mickey Schwerner from New York City were murdered while trying to register African Americans in Mississippi to vote. Heather and all the other martyrs who have fought racism must be remembered. I don’t even know the name of her murderer. But I do know that Heather believed that “if you aren’t outraged, you aren’t paying attention”. Her mother Susan Bro urged the large crowd at Heather’s memorial service, to “find in your heart that small spark of accountability and you will find the courage to speak up.” She went on to say “We don’t all have to die to achieve our goals, we can do it together”. This is what Jesus was teaching, about community. He urged his disciples to look beyond the ideas of ritual cleanliness and the Mosaic Law which spoke of something as “unclean” if it was unfit to use in worship to God. Being “clean” or “unclean” was a designation governing the ritual of corporate or community worship. For example, there were certain animals, like pigs, considered unclean, and therefore not to be used in sacrifices and there were certain actions, like touching a dead body, that made a living person unclean and unable to participate in the worship ceremony. A skin infection could make a person “unclean” and a woman was unclean following childbirth. Jesus followed up on Mosaic Law calling His people to separate themselves from the impurities of the world with the idea of living spiritually pure and seeking to be holy, living a life worthy of our calling. He associated with people far outside his station – people who would be considered forever ritually unclean, like lepers, tax collectors and adulteresses.
You don’t have to think of murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness or slander to have “evil intentions” as they are named here. I’m quite sure the organizers of the rally in Charlottesville weren’t thinking of murdering Heather, but they were thinking of evil intentions such as inflicting fear and intimidation on innocent people. The considered and planned ideas to drive down other people, rather than to lift them up. These are the evil intentions in the heart that Jesus is talking about.
He is also talking to us in our lives today. How do we defile the community? Are there times when what comes from our hearts, is not clean. It is of the intention to drive someone down, when I could be raising someone or some purpose or idea up!
We are blessed when we identify with another person’s woundedness and we raise them up to God. How many times do we wonder how do we lift this person up to God? We pray for them, but what else can we do – we can listen. Just being a person who cares enough to listen to another’s woundedness, is where Jesus enters in. He enters in, when we just recognize that another person is in need, another person needs to be heard and acknowledged. Jesus has a new commandment and it is easy to interpret, unlike the ritual cleansing rules – Jesus just wants us to show love and compassion to everyone we meet. In John 15:12 He lays it out “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” Heather did, and so did James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Henry Schwerner, Medgar Evers, Fred Hampton, Harry and Harriette Moore, and Dr. Martin Luther King.
Jesus said “I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another”. As Anglicans we have made our Baptismal Covenant saying “we strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being”. This is the way we chose to interpret Jesus’ command. The challenge of course, is to live out our baptismal promises every day. It is a way of life to give oneself to. Our lives these days are so hurried. Too fast, always on the go until, if you are like our family, eventually you flop down in front of the TV and either vegetate or fall asleep. We need, I believe, to salvage a few minutes every day for introspection. How AM I doing? Was I the person I strive to be today or was I so hurried, I lived without intention today. Did I take the smallest opportunity to lift anyone up? Did I take a moment with Jesus to talk about who I am and who I want to be? See if you can scratch together 5-6 minutes each day, for a little evaluation, summation, inspiration and resurrection.
God bless you on your journey to bring justice and peace to all people and dignity to every human being.
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