THOUGHT, WORD & DEED

An old Jewish joke tells of Judgement Day at the end of history. God summons all the people who have ever lived.

“Here’s what we are going to do” he explains. “Gabriel will read out the Ten Commandments, one by one. As he does, those who have broken them will have to depart into everlasting darkness.”

Commandment number one is read out and a number of people are led off. The same thing happens with each of the commandments until, having read eight of the ten, only a small crowd remains.

God looks up to see this handful of stern, smug, grim-faced, self-righteous, joyless miseries staring back at him. He pauses and contemplates the prospect of spending eternity with this lot,

“All right!” he shouts, “Everybody come back; I’ve changed my mind.” (From Steve Chalke : The Message of Jesus)

BOUND TO FAIL?

Today’s Gospel Reading shows Jesus at his most radical. The Jewish religious establishment, the scribes and the Pharisees, had developed a system of ritual acts that were designed to keep Jewish people pure and holy. These included rituals for washing and laws about which foods could and could not be eaten.

The food laws were seen as so important that Jewish men and women were prepared to die rather than eat forbidden food. Yet here Jesus is overturning all that by saying that it doesn’t matter whether or not you perform the rituals of washing and it doesn’t matter what sort of food you eat, these things can’t make you clean or unclean. Instead Jesus is proposing that we must control what’s in our minds to attain true holiness. And the reading from the letter of James emphasises that we must do more than just control our thoughts. We must be doers of the word, not merely hearers. We are being asked nothing less than to give the whole of our lives, thought, word and deed to God. I don’t know about you, but my reaction to this is that I’m absolutely bound to fail.

INWARD AS WELL AS OUTWARD

Now I’m delighted to be told that I don’t have to go through elaborate washing rituals or keep diligently to a strict dietary code to follow Jesus Christ, but those words of Isaiah “This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me”, is a stark reminder that what happens here in church on a Sunday morning is only a small part of what it means to be a Christian. We are asked to carry Christ around in our hearts all the time, on grim Monday mornings at work, or at exuberant weekend parties, when times are good and when times are bad. Here we are being reminded that Jesus Christ is vitally interested in what we carry in our hearts, he says

“For it is within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come”.

So our worship here can be as perfect as we can make it, but that is only the beginning. And I read the list of evil intentions and cringe “fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly”. Now I’m not about to confess which sins on this particular list I’m guilty of, but I will confess that I’m not innocent of them all, and I will also predict that over the coming week I will be tempted by more than one of that little lot. And I’m willing to bet that this applies to everyone here.

The message from the letter of James makes this Christianity business seem even harder. He’s saying that not only should our thoughts be pure, but that we also need to act on our beliefs, to carry out good deeds. We are to be “not hearers who forget but doers who act”. Now I know that there are a lot of good deeds done by the folk here at St John’s, but I’m sure that we all often feel that there is much more that we could do.

TOUGH RULES, OR JUST GIVING US TARGETS?

So the message we are being asked to consider this morning is a really tough one, and I think we could be forgiven for thinking that if this is what being a Christian is all about, then we are doomed to failure. How do we make sure that all our thoughts are pure, and that we are constantly looking out for goods deeds to do. Frankly the whole thing sounds exhausting and almost as hard as the legalistic rituals that the Pharisees were so fond of.

So what’s going on here? Well, I think that it’s at times like this that it’s important to remember that our blue-print for being a Christian is contained in the whole of scripture, not just in small sections. So when we are faced with readings like today’s, we also need to remember other teachings, like the saying earlier in Mark’s Gospel ...

“I came not to call the righteous, but sinners”.

It helps to remember that Jesus loved sinners passionately, remember his compassion for the woman caught in adultery, remember the number of times he prefaced a healing miracle with the words

“your sins are forgiven”.

Indeed one of the chief reasons that the Pharisees so despised him was that he seemed to actively prefer sinners to the righteous. And look at the people with whom he surrounded himself, a group of disciples who would all run away when he was arrested, who would go into hiding, some would run away from Jerusalem, Peter would betray him, Thomas would refuse to believe that he was alive, yet this was the group to whom he entrusted the preaching of the Good News, the beginnings of his church. Just like us they were fallible, sinful human beings.

And there is that wonderfully reassuring teaching

“Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest…For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

It seems somehow out of line with a long list of bad thoughts that we are to avoid and the exhortation to always be about good deeds. On the contrary that seems like a tremendously heavy burden for the imperfect human beings that we actually are.

A PATTERN FOR US TO FOLLOW...

So what are we to make of all this. Well, I’d like to suggest that this teaching is part of the blue-print for what it’s like to be truly human, that is, to be made in the image of God. This is the pattern for our thoughts and words and deeds when we are happiest with ourselves and with God. And Jesus Christ wants the very best for us, he wants us to live a truly human life, a life that truly reflects the image of God, because that’s what life is like at its very best.

Anthony de Mello tells the following story:

“Somewhere in the 1930s a manufacturing concern in the United States sent a machine to Japan.

A month later the company received a cable: MACHINE DOES NOT WORK. SEND MAN TO FIX.

The company sent someone to Japan. Before he had the opportunity to examine the machine, the company received a second cable: MAN TOO YOUNG, SEND OLDER MAN.

The company’s reply was: BETTER USE HIM. HE INVENTED MACHINE (From “The Heart of the Enlightened”)

We need to remember that Jesus Christ knows what he’s talking about because he invented the machine, the whole of creation, including humankind was made through him. We might feel that the standards of thought and behaviour he asks of us are way beyond our reach, but he asks us to aspire to them, to take small steps towards reaching them, to be aware of the broad picture of what we are heading towards. And the promise is, that as we try to walk his way, as we try to get control of our thoughts, as we try to love our neighbours by our actions as well as our words, we will become more truly the people that God intended us to be, we will reflect His image more clearly.

Now that will have a double effect. First it will actually be for our own greater happiness and well-being. If we follow our creator’s blue-print for our lives, then we will experience the well-being that our loving creator intends for us. And second, it will encourage others to get to know God better, perhaps to meet Jesus Christ for the first time ever. The early church grew because people were enormously impressed by how those first Christians lived their lives, by their love and compassion for each other. So our evangelism is much more effective when the pattern of our lives is in line with the pattern laid down for us by Jesus Christ, in thought, word and deed.

PLENTY OF NEW BEGINNINGS

And there is plenty of help available. Jesus teaches that that our prayers will be answered, “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” and for help along the way we are promised the Holy Spirit to live in our hearts, to strengthen and to comfort.

So, what about those occasions when we fail, those times when we are full of pride, when we envy others, when we act foolishly. And what about those times when we fail to carry out our good intentions, when we speak of good deeds but don’t do them? Where does that leave us with God? Well, fortunately, He has given us a way of being reconciled to him. Very simply, that’s what confession does. We tell God that we are sorry for what we’ve done and we ask his forgiveness. Then, metaphorically He stands us up, dusts us down and sets us back on the path we’ve strayed from, ready to try again to live according to the blue-print He set out, in thought and word and deed. With God there are plenty of new beginnings. So, we can say that despite how hard life looks at times, his yoke is easy and his burden is light

Penny Sayer
St John the Evangelist, Pevensey Rd, St Leonards on Sea