We’re right in the middle of the political season, aren’t we? Last week the Republican National Convention met and this week the Democratic National Convention will meet. We are having our annual Diocesan Convention in a couple of months. It’s not nearly on the scale of the Republicans and Democrats, but the Church is no stranger to politics!
As usual at this time of year, the Bishop’s office sends out a packet of materials to prepare us for the convention: where it’s going to be, hotel accommodations in the area, meal options. And there’s a whole page of rules—rules on how resolutions are made, how discussion takes place, who may vote, how votes are counted, what we do if there isn’t an election on the first ballot, and so on. It’s a legislative body, and so things need to be spelled out as clearly as possible so that everyone is on the “same page.” The rules are essential in order to conduct the business of the diocese. I am sure that there are strict rules regarding the conducting of business in both the Republican and Democratic Conventions.
Whenever groups of people get together, there tends to be rules, even in the most informal of groups. Sometimes the rules are written down; sometimes they are just understood. In some groups you simply don’t talk about certain topics. It’s an unwritten rule, but a rule nonetheless, and a rule which everyone knows. Let’s say a neighborhood group gets together from time to time, with a mix of Democrats and Republicans. Politics is just something they don’t talk about. It was tried once and didn’t work. The subject never comes up again. It’s not written down anywhere, but it’s a rule.
The children in our community just started school. I’ll bet that in every classroom they were in the teacher laid down the rules on the first day.
And often bodies of rules are flexible. As people meet together, something negative happens that could have been prevented had there been a rule. So a rule is made to cover the situation if it ever happens again.
And, of course, there are rules with respect to the exercising of our faith. For instance, there is a canon, a church law, that states that every member of this Church (That is, of The Episcopal Church) shall be present in church for worship every Lord’s Day, unless for good cause prohibited. The Ten Commandments are rules with a capital R, and our Lord summarized all religious rules with the rule to love God above all things and our neighbors as ourselves. The liturgies in the Book of Common Prayer are under the rules of the Church—when the mass is celebrated, these are the texts that are to be used. There are rules within the liturgy, called rubrics (the directions that are in italics), which we must follow. In fact, you might be interested to know that if the rubrics aren’t followed, your rector can be brought up on charges before the Bishop. I’m not aware of that having been done anywhere of late, but it’s a rule!
Some people are more aware of rules than others, some more concerned about them than others. Such has always been the case. The Pharisees were all about the rules of the Jewish faith. They were a sect within Judaism that believed that following the rules set down in the Torah, the first five books of our Old Testament, should be done to the letter. That was no easy task, for there are 613 laws in the Torah. Just to know what the rules were was a challenge. They believed that Israel’s predicament of being ruled by foreign empires was the direct result of Israel’s not following the commandments of God. They also believed that if they could follow all of the commandments to the letter, in every situation, that Israel would be restored as a sovereign nation through God’s sending of a Messiah. In fact, the whole Messianic Hope was developed by the Pharisees. That’s why they were so interested in Jesus, why every crowd that came to listen to Jesus had a liberal contingent of Pharisees, for the Pharisees thought that Jesus might be the Messiah. That’s also why they were so concerned when Jesus’ disciples appeared to be breaking some of the rules.
Let’s be clear. The disciples weren’t breaking the commandments when they didn’t wash their hands. They were breaking the Pharisees’ interpretation of the religious law. The Pharisees had a huge body of rules, which were outside of scripture, on how to follow the law in every situation. For instance, one of those particular rules exempted people from helping their parents when in need, if the money they could have spent on helping their parents was given to the Temple. Jesus saw that as a true breaking of one of the Ten Commandments: Honor thy father and thy mother. He said, quoting Isaiah, “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.”
The Pharisees were majoring in the minors. They were straining at gnats and swallowing camels. They were so concerned about the outward practice of religion, that they completely lost sight of the purpose of the faith, that purpose being the changing of the human heart. Every human being, every child, every man, every woman, is inclined to look at life from a self-centered point of view. How can I get what I want, what I need? Just because we’re religious doesn’t change that point of view. In fact, sometimes it makes it more difficult to discern, if we think God is actually directing us to the fulfillment of our selfish ends.
I’m reminded of a story about Mark Twain. “A businessman notorious for his ruthlessness announced to Mark Twain, ‘Before I die I mean to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I will climb Mt. Sinai and read the Ten Commandments aloud at the top.’ ‘I have a better idea,’ said Twain. ‘You could stay home in Boston and keep them.’” (From The Little Brown Book of Anecdotes) This man thought he was religious, but his religion didn’t have any effect in how he conducted his business.
Our faith hopefully makes us aware of our inclination to self-centeredness and helps us to overcome it, but beware! The minute we think we’ve got it down is the minute we may be blinded the most to our own motives. The irony is that we can see it fairly clearly in other people without noticing it in ourselves. Hypocrisy is something that can be so evident in the life of someone else, and so obscure in our own.
Jesus makes it clear that what we need is a heart devoted to the love of God and neighbor. That devotion doesn’t come naturally, but only by the grace of God. As the Collect for today states so beautifully and succinctly, may God “graft in our hearts the love of (his) Name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and bring forth in us the fruit of good works.”