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St Clement Church Community Fourteenth after Trinity Sunday Service

Good morning to you all and welcome to our service.

The past few weeks with the Gospel readings from St John are finished, (for which, both the vicar and I are thankful … they were difficult!) St Mark will be easier, surely. Well, I thought so, until I read today’s Gospel reading – in its own way, it’s difficult too! Is that because I’m losing the plot, or is it because as I get older I don’t accept things automatically – I question more?

My love to you all

Liz

Let us pray:

We meet as family in the presence of our heavenly Father.

We meet as brothers and sisters in Christ, accepting the responsibility that this places upon us – to love one another as You have loved us. We meet as Your lights in this dark world, and pray that through our words and our lives others may be drawn into Your family, and accept You as their Saviour and Lord.

Amen

We say together:

In the meeting of our lives, be the focus of all that we are.

In the singing of the hymns, the prayers that we shall make,

the reading of your Word and the preaching of the same,

speak to us, encourage, and forgive us.

In the meeting of our lives, Lord, be the focus of all that we are.

Amen

Hymn: 285 For the beauty of the earth

Prayer of Penitence

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we have sinned against you and against our neighbour in thought, word, and deed, through negligence, through weakness, through our own deliberate fault.

We are truly sorry and repent of all our sins.

For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, who died for us, forgive us all that is past and grant that we may serve you in newness of life to the glory of your name.

Amen.

Let us pray our Collect for the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity

Almighty God, whose only Son has opened for us a new and living way into your presence: give us pure hearts and steadfast wills to worship you in spirit and in truth; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Amen

Readings:

Deuteronomy 4. 1 – 2, 6 - 9

James 1. 17 - 27

Hymn: 420 O Jesus I have promised

Gospel: Mark 7. 1 – 8, 14 – 15, 21 - 23

(Hear the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Mark.

Response: ‘Glory to you O Lord.’)

When the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.)

So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?’

Jesus said to them, ‘Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, “This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.” You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.’

Then he called the crowd again and said to them, ‘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. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornications, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.’

Reflection

Oh help! I thought, that completing the series of readings from St John’s Gospel would bring some relief; a new set of readings would not be quite so challenging; but today’s Gospel reading from Mark is, in many ways, not a lot easier!

Tradition – if one looks the word up in the dictionary, it says: transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation, or the fact of being passed on in this way.

I’m sure that all of us have family traditions of one sort or another. We do things because perhaps we did it once, thought it was a good idea and then continued to do it.

When my children were very small, every Christmas Eve, I read them, ‘The Night Before Christmas.’ As they grew up, they would fetch the book, hand it to me, and we would sit together for me to read it. This went on until they no longer came home for Christmas.

It became our tradition, but, that doesn’t make it a rule for everyone.

At least one part of today’s Gospel reading is relatively straightforward, although disturbing: Jesus explains where evil comes from.

It comes from within all those people who annoy you; who antagonise you; who frighten you; who threaten you … but … it also comes from within you … and me, too.

Of course, it takes a while for Jesus to get to that basic point.

Jesus is addressing three different audiences: a group of Pharisees and scribes who raise the question of defilement, the crowd that is perpetually present, and the disciples, who true to character in Mark’s Gospel, don’t understand.

The message is delivered differently to each of these groups, but its essence is the same: our very selves are defiled, made unholy, not by what we take in, but by the corrosion of the human heart. Jesus’ three different versions of this message build on one another, thus enabling a fuller understanding of what is at stake: we must prepare our hearts, and so ourselves, for the kingdom of God.

It begins with a tongue-lashing delivered to a group of Pharisees and scribes from Jerusalem. Their exchange begins with a question to Jesus about traditions, popular interpretations of laws given through Moses.

Jesus’ followers (Jews, all of them) didn’t adhere to the same purity practices. ‘Some’ disciples didn’t wash their hands in particular ways prior to eating. This really means little, as the wider Jewish population at this time1 didn’t exhibit strict consistency in such matters. Different Jews follow different traditions.

The scribes and Pharisees’ question implicitly criticizes those disciples. Even more, it indicts Jesus. Even though no Old Testament texts call for anyone to wash hands before eating, by Jesus’ day certain practices had arisen amongst some Jews. Why don’t all of Jesus’ followers abide by these more recent customs? What kind of teacher leads his pupils to violate revered elders’ teachings, that is, the legal interpretations affirmed by at least these scribes and Pharisees?

Jesus likens the ‘traditions of the elders’ to mere human precepts that misconstrue God’s ‘commandments.’ In no way does Jesus deny the validity of either the Mosaic law in general or its individual commandments; He rejects how certain interpretations – and so certain practices – may have deviated from or obscured the intent of the laws meant to safeguard purity.

Then Jesus calls the crowd again and says to them, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand.’

Jesus is speaking here to everyone who is gathered, including, the sick whom he has just healed and the people who had carried them to him. What they must understand is that it’s not what you take into yourself that renders you impure, but rather “the things that come out are what defile.” Whatever your practice, Jesus is saying, whichever traditions you do or don’t uphold, these aren’t the things that, by themselves, get you ready for God’s kingdom. And, you must be ready now.

As is to be expected, the disciples don’t get it! So, Jesus provides further explanation.

He explains that, unlike food that simply passes through one’s system, that which is produced in the heart affects the whole person. “For it is from within, from the heart, that evil intentions come.” Here, the heart is understood to be the centre of human will and rationality, in addition to desire. It is the place from which all our intentions arise. Jesus offers a list of evil intentions that, while not comprehensive, certainly reveals the depth of corruption that the heart suffers.

But, Jesus does not proclaim the heart to be utterly corrupt; good intentions can also come from the heart.

Jesus’ three audiences need to hear this word, so that in this crucial time no one is distracted by extraneous arguments. But all are focused on preparing their hearts, and thereby their entire selves, for the kingdom of God.

Every day a woman baked bread for members of her family and an extra small loaf for a hungry passerby.

She kept the extra loaf on the window sill, for whoever needed it. Every day, a hunchback came and took it away.

Instead of expressing gratitude, he muttered the following words as he went away.

‘The evil you do, remains with you: The good you do, comes back to you.’

This went on, day after day.

Each day the hunchback would take the bread and utter the words:

‘The evil you do, remains with you:

The good you do, comes back to you.’

The woman became annoyed.

‘Not one word of gratitude, just this silly jingle. What does it mean?’

One day, she was so exasperated that she decided to get rid of the hunchback. When she baked the extra little loaf of bread she added poison. As she was about to leave it on the window sill, her hands trembled. ‘Whatever am I doing?’

Immediately she threw the loaf into the fire and prepared another one and put it on the window sill. As usual the hunchback came, picked up the bread and muttered the words:

‘The evil you do, remains with you:

The good you do, comes back to you.’

The hunchback proceeded on his way, blissfully unaware of the war raging in the mind of the woman.

Every day, as the woman placed the bread on the window sill, she offered a prayer for her son who had gone to a distant place to seek his fortune. For many months, she had had no news of him. She prayed for his safe return.

That evening, there was a knock on the door. As she opened it, she was surprised to see her son standing in the doorway. He had grown very thin. His clothes were torn and in tatters. He was hungry, starved, and weak.

As he saw his mother, he said, ‘Mum, it’s a miracle I’m here. I was a mile away when, so famished, I collapsed. I would have died, but just then an old hunchback passed by. I begged of him a morsel of food, and he was kind enough to give me a whole loaf.’

As he gave it to me, he said, ‘This is what I eat every day: today, I shall give it to you, for your need is greater than mine.’

As the mother heard those words, her face turned pale. She leaned against the door for support. She remembered the poisoned loaf that she had made that morning.

Had she not thrown it into the fire, it would have been eaten by her son, and he would have lost his life.

It was then that she realised the significance of the words:

‘The evil you do, remains with you:

The good you do, comes back to you.’

Amen

We say together in faith

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.

We believe in God the Father, who created all things:

for by his will, they were created and have their being.

We believe in God the Son, who was slain:

for with his blood, he purchased us for God, from every tribe and language, from every people and nation.

We believe in God the Holy Spirit:

the Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come!’

Even so come, Lord Jesus!

Amen.

Hymn: 342 Breathe on me breath of God

Our Intercessions by Helen Dunbar

Let us pray for the Church and the world and thank God for his goodness.

We ask for your blessing and prayers on the worldwide Church, we pray for our own community here at St Clement and give thanks for all who come into this Church and all who minister here; we pray for Archbishop Justin, and also for our own diocese here in Truro and for Bishop Hugh. We ask God’s blessing on our own Revd Diane, for the very difficult areas of her ministry she sometimes has to deal with, and we also ask for God’s blessing on all her family.