A sermon preached at St. Mary’s by Clare Hayns on 1st September 2024

Deuteronomy 4. 1-2, 6-9
James 1. 17-end
Mark 7. 1-8, 14-15, 21-23

“She’s sitting on a sofa facing the camera, a blank wall behind. Her whole head is covered. I can’t see her eyes or expression. I don’t know her age or her shape, her style or her plans. But I can hear her voice because she’s singing”

The Reverend Lucy Winkett, the vicar of St. James’ Piccadilly, who was speaking on Thursday on BBC Radio 4 Thought for the Day. She was  referring to a recent film clip of a woman from Afghanistan.

In defiance of the new Taliban ‘Vice and Virtue’ rules published last week, some Afghan women are singing. Not out on the street which is forbidden, but in their homes, published on social media.

The sound of a voice of a woman have been deemed, by these new rules to be ‘a potential instrument of vice’, and so women’s voices must not be heard in public. It’s the latest ruling by an evil and oppressive regime, which, step by step, is erasing the humanity of over half of their population. The Taliban is a very obvious, and extreme example of what happens when religion moves from being a liberating, life-giving way of life, into being an oppressive, exclusive and ultimately and ultimately destructive force. These brave women refuse allow the rules to diminish them entirely. We need to continue to remember them, and to pray for them.

Approximately 85% of the world’s population adhere to some form of religion, and all of these will have forms of traditions, rituals, and ways of behaving that build identity, create a sense of belonging, and help us express our worship, in many and varied ways depending on our culture and religion.

Before I go further, I want to say that tradition is a good thing. Humans need a sense of order to feel secure. We need laws to organise our society, we need doctrines to articulate our beliefs. Rituals can help us form healthy habits – we all clean our teeth every morning and night, a habit since childhood. And the same can be true for religious rituals.

Our gospel reading from Mark focusses in on a particular piece of religious and cultural ritual from the tradition of the Jewish people of that time. The pharisees were complaining Jesus’ disciples weren’t thoroughly washing their hands before meals, thereby not observing the tradition of the elders. The Torah includes many laws about purity and holiness, but there isn’t actually a biblical law about hand washing. There is a requirement for priests to wash their hands and feet with water before presenting a food offering to God (Exodus 30.17-21). And there is also a command (Exodus 19.6) that ‘You shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Exodus 19.6). The Pharisees, who were serious about their faith, had interpreted this to mean that all Israelites should be as holy as priests, and so all Jews should wash their hands before eating.

Jesus doesn’t condemn this.

What he challenges them on is their belief that washing the outside will make them pure inside; that this will make them acceptable to God. 

He challenges them that they are focussing on the wrong thing. Jesus was quick to point out that it was a cultural rule and not part of God’s law anyway:

“you abandon the commandment of God and hold on to human tradition” (v8)

Jesus refocussed their attention on what really matters. He tells them that it’s the heart, it’s how they behave, rather than the external practice that matters.

The commandment of God here is to “love God with all heart, soul, mind and strength (Deuteronomy 6.5) and to “love your neighbour as yourself” (Leviticus 19.18).

Jesus reminds them that purity doesn’t come from anything outside them, but comes from within, in the same way that impurity doesn’t come from anything outside them, but also comes from within. This is a reminder that how we behave is more important than how we look.

It would be easy for us to be a little bit complacent here. We’re not first century Jews worrying about ritual cleanliness. We’re not in Afghanistan preventing our women and girls from being fully human. But there will be areas of challenge here, and I believe for us as individuals and the church, there are areas in our common life where we focus on the tradition over the inclusion of others.

It is a challenge to look at the ways in which our own traditions or rituals might be getting in the way, rather than helping us in our worship. We can get so caught up in what we do, especially our traditions, that we can be in danger of forgetting why we do them.

The things that we do here in this place only matter if our hearts are focussed on Jesus and our worship of him. If what we do is simply a ritual or something that we have been taught is the right thing to do but we are just doing it for the sake of it or we value the thing itself over the meaning, then all that we do is worthless – nothing more than a re-enactment of something that once had a deep meaning.

And yet the reverse is also true. The smallest thing can have the greatest significance when our hearts are right.

The care taken over setting up the candles, the beauty of the vestments, the love expressed through good liturgy. When something connects us with God, that thing becomes Holy, it becomes sacred space or a sacred act. It is the heart not the action that matters.

There are bound to be things we do that we just don’t think about, but sometimes it’s worth examining them. Are they excluding others? Is what we do helping us to love God, or to love our neighbours.

When we ask people to sit and stand, how is it for those for whom standing is either impossible or painful? I’m going to change the way I ask from now on to be ‘if it is comfortable or you are able’.

In a minute, we will say a blessing over two wonderful people who have been married for 60 years, and I’m absolutely thrilled for Val and Roy. But how would we feel if this service was a blessing of members of our congregation of the same sex? The church now has prayers of love and faith which can be said with same-sex couples. We haven’t this yet here, but we need to begin thinking about this.

We need to be constantly checking if our traditions and long-held beliefs actually right, or are they excluding others, breaking God’s command to love.

Last Sunday, I was at the Greenbelt Christian arts festival and on the Sunday morning several thousand people gathered in a field for the communion service. It would have broken pretty much every tradition and ritual of churches up and down the country. The service was led by Christian rapper Guvna B, we all had to move places by several feet just as we’d found our seats (to remind us of those whose homes are precarious), bread was passed around by being hurled from the front stage. During the service a Christian drag artist called Flamie Grant sang a beautiful rendition of El Shaddai, one of the holy names of God.

There was much within this service which challenged the tradition of many of our churches, and I wouldn’t for a moment expect us to do this each Sunday, not unless I want to clear the church immediately!

But God was there. The Holy Spirt moved us.  

In our second reading James reminds us that we are to be doers, not just hearers, and our actions matter. It’s not enough to just come and say the words and then forget all about them for the rest of the week.

God is a relational God. God does not want our rules and rituals, he wants us. That is not to disparage the traditions that enable us to draw close. But it is the closeness that matters more than the thing itself. And how we love one another.

Today I want to encourage you. I want to encourage you to draw near to Jesus. Don’t just go through the motions but really draw close. As you cross yourself, sing the hymns, when you join us in prayer, when you come to the communion rail, think about why you are doing these things. Let them draw us closer to Jesus, as Jesus draws closer to us.

Let’s just take a moment to bring all of ourselves before him now in prayer.

‘heavenly father, we thank you for the love for each and every one of us. Help us to draw close to you, not letting our rituals and traditions get in the way of what really matters. Amen.’