Religion of the Heart

Religion of the Heart
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
September 3, 2006
Song of Solomon 2:8-13; James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Song of Solomon 2:8-13
The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, there he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice. My beloved speaks and says to me: "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

James 1:17-27
Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God's righteousness. Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act--they will be blessed in their doing. If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, 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?" He said to them, "Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,

'This people honors 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: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person."

BEGINNING

So here you are. On the second Sunday of the semester, with all the available options for religious expression to be found on this campus you chose to be with us. Us, the repository of all that is good and true, the people of God, the One True Faith, The United Methodist Church.

Okay, I am kidding about that. We Methodists have never really been big on proclaiming ourselves the 'one true church'--that's something that goes all the way back to the beginning of the movement. But it must be said, that when we make a choice about a community of faith there is a lot to choose from.

One of the blessings of living in a religiously pluralistic world is the great diversity of religious expression that blossoms and the great number of options that are available to people in terms of their own religious journeys. And yet, we might ask without running the risk of being too insensitive, how does one know what true religion looks like? Is there even such a thing as "true religion"?

THE TEXT

It is a question that Jesus often faced . Jesus' ministry often encountered controversy about the nature of religion. In tonight's Gospel lesson, we read of an encounter that Jesus has with some Pharisees and scribes asking him about his disciples and the washing of hands . Mark points out in his gospel that it was the Pharisaic custom to wash hands before eating. It still is--you can read the prayer to be said for handwashing over the sink downstairs in the kitchen. The question is presented as a critique: why do Jesus' disciples eat with 'defiled hands'--that is, why does their master allow them to do this?

It should be pointed out that failing to do this was not a sin. It would merely have made a person ritually unclean. Christians often misunderstand Judaism on this point: impurity was not a category of sin, it was a ritual category. Being impure meant that you could not worship in the Temple without first being cleansed. This was not an issue that weighed heavily on the minds of the people of Galilee, who lived several days' journey from Jerusalem and only needed to be ritually pure for festivals.

The Pharisees were a sect that attempted to live out lives of holiness by even following the rules of purity beyond the confines of the Temple . In effect, they tried to go above and beyond the call. To that end, they embraced many traditions that were not in the law of Moses, such as washing of the hands. It is not clear why they ask Jesus this question. Was Jesus a Pharisee? Were they asking him because he was expected to follow these rules? Was it a question that they would have asked of any religious leader?

In any event, Jesus rejects the premise of the question. Jesus rejects the idea that one can be made impure by what one eats or whether one washes one's hands . He says,

"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: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person."

PURITY OF HEART

It is interesting that Jesus does not say, "Ritual purity is ridiculous." Contrary to many Christian statements about Jesus, Jesus does not contradict the law. Here he merely challenges the presumption behind an Oral Tradition about the law. He asks whether a person might actually be defiled by what one has eaten.

To make his point, Jesus notes that it is from the heart that evil intentions come and evil acts. It is these things that defile, not food or drink.

Jesus recognizes that the ritual aspects of his Jewish faith are just that, the ritual aspects. As with the prophets of old he reminds his listeners that there is a purity of heart that is the true heart of the faith of the people of Israel.

Isaiah 29: 13 And the Lord said: "Because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment of men learned by rote; 14 therefore, behold, I will again do marvelous things with this people, wonderful and marvelous; and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hid."

For Jesus as with the prophets of Israel, true religion--holiness--comes from the heart.

THE PAIR SO LONG DISJOIN'D

What does it mean to have a "religion of the heart"? I think "religion of the heart" sounds good to a lot of people because it sounds nice and personal. Individualistic. It doesn't require much except feeling.

For many, this might sound like another version of faith that reminds me of the lyrics from that old James Brown song : "The way I like it is the way it is. I got mine and don't worry about his." That is, religion of the heart sounds like it ought to be intensely personal, private. Emotional and comforting. The way that a lot of people talk about "spirituality".

• Love

After all, that's what we think of as love, right? Love is an intensely personal emotion . An inner state of being about how we might feel about someone else. Like the words of the Song of Solomon that we heard earlier.

"Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

That's a text you hear all the time at weddings. Probably because people still think that marriage has something to do with love. Well, I suppose it does--but not the kind of romantic head-over-heels love that people often assume.

We know that faith is about love and about the heart and it can be easy for us to think that if we are pure of heart , if we have strong feelings about God, if we are sincere in our beliefs that that is enough. That that is what faith is about.

We talk about professional athletes as having "heart"-- they often have their own particular brand of religion, too. The brand that credits Jesus for the touchdown. Is that what we're talking about here? Is exuberance the religion of the heart we are called to have?

• The pair united

Early Methodism was known as a 'religion of the heart.' It was not alone in this . Religions of the heart were rising all over 17 th and 18 th century Europe, largely as a reaction to the dry overly intellectual and often passionless forms of Christianity that arose after the Enlightenment. Methodism was part of a pietist movement, a movement of religions of the heart that began in Lutheranism but whose influence extended to, among others, the Moravians, the Anabaptists, and, according to one church historian, Hasidic Judaism.

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, and his brother Charles , who wrote nearly 9,000 hymns for the cause, were firmly committed to a religion of the heart . That being said, Charles made one of the most compelling statements about what it was the fledgling Methodist movement ought to do : "Unite the pair so long disjoin'd: knowledge and vital piety." That is, Methodism should not simply be a reaction to post-Enlightenment Christianity, rejecting rationalism in favor of experiential Christianity. Heart and mind united .

Our University Chaplain, the Rev. Dr. Joe Eldridge, often points out that on our own quad , the library and the Kay Spiritual Life Center form the poles of our university life: the intellectual and the spiritual. Knowledge and vital piety . Charles Wesley would be so proud that here , at this pre-eminent United Methodist university, this dictum was being followed--at least in the architecture.

• True Religion

There is, of course, more to a religion of the heart than balancing of intellect and emotion . The Epistle of James deals at length with the true religion of the Christian. It purports to have been written by James, the brother of Jesus, and if it turns out that it was not written by James, it ought to have been. For in its verses are captured the beautiful simplicity of Jesus' teachings, a focus on the ethic of caring and compassion for the "least of these". And a sharp critique of a faith that takes pride in itself but does not actually produce any visible fruit :

If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

For James, pure religion is religion of caring for others . It is not simply a faith of the heart but also the works of the hands . James writes that a faith without works "is dead."

Despite what we might think about the "heart" and about love in the modern world , despite the individualistic and personal connotations they may raise, the religion of the heart is not an individual enterprise . John Wesley wrote: "The gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social; no holiness but social holiness."

• Evangelical Christianity

This was the thrust of the evangelical Christianity that the Wesleys preached. The evangelical Christianity that called for prison reforms in Britain, that opposed slavery, that supported women's rights and minority rights, that built colleges and universities across the land. This is the kind of Christianity that was outward looking and served the world .

The part that is so often overlooked is that this kind of faith that transforms individuals , communities, and the world cannot come from a religion of intense emotional feeling alone . It cannot be sustained on what people in an earlier generation would have called "enthusiasm."

For, in the end, a religion of the heart is not about how much you love God but how much God loves you .

We don't 'care for the orphans and widows in their distress' because we have a strong feeling about God. We do it because we have been so loved by God, that not responding is unthinkable .

The real religion of the heart is a faith so grounded in the knowledge and the assurance that you are loved by God , that we become capable of loving others whom we meet. It is the love God has for us --and what that love can do in our lives-- that is the centerpiece of our faith, and the guide for our actions.

END

So, have you indeed found the one true faith? The community that is the repository of all that is good and true? I don't know. I don't think that any community can lay claim to that.

But if you find yourself in a community that knows how much it is loved by God, whose lives are transformed by that love, and who seek to live out that love with others, serving the needy and the oppressed... then I can say that you might be on the right track.

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*Religion of the Heart* Rev. Mark Schaefer Kay Spiritual Life Center September 3, 2006 Song of Solomon 2:8-13; James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 Song of Solomon 2:8-13 The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, there he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice. My beloved speaks and says to me: "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. James 1:17-27 Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures. You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God's righteousness. Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act--they will be blessed in their doing. If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world. Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, 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?" He said to them, "Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, 'This people honors 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: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person." BEGINNING So here you are. On the second Sunday of the semester, with all the available options for religious expression to be found on this campus you chose to be with us. Us, the repository of all that is good and true, the people of God, the One True Faith, The United Methodist Church. Okay, I am kidding about that. We Methodists have never really been big on proclaiming ourselves the 'one true church'--that's something that goes all the way back to the beginning of the movement. But it must be said, that when we make a choice about a community of faith there is a lot to choose from. One of the blessings of living in a religiously pluralistic world is the great diversity of religious expression that blossoms and the great number of options that are available to people in terms of their own religious journeys. And yet, we might ask without running the risk of being too insensitive, how does one know what true religion looks like? Is there even such a thing as "true religion"? THE TEXT It is a question that Jesus often faced . Jesus' ministry often encountered controversy about the nature of religion. In tonight's Gospel lesson, we read of an encounter that Jesus has with some Pharisees and scribes asking him about his disciples and the washing of hands . Mark points out in his gospel that it was the Pharisaic custom to wash hands before eating. It still is--you can read the prayer to be said for handwashing over the sink downstairs in the kitchen. The question is presented as a critique: why do Jesus' disciples eat with 'defiled hands'--that is, why does their master allow them to do this? It should be pointed out that failing to do this was not a sin. It would merely have made a person ritually unclean. Christians often misunderstand Judaism on this point: impurity was not a category of sin, it was a ritual category. Being impure meant that you could not worship in the Temple without first being cleansed. This was not an issue that weighed heavily on the minds of the people of Galilee, who lived several days' journey from Jerusalem and only needed to be ritually pure for festivals. The Pharisees were a sect that attempted to live out lives of holiness by even following the rules of purity beyond the confines of the Temple . In effect, they tried to go above and beyond the call. To that end, they embraced many traditions that were not in the law of Moses, such as washing of the hands. It is not clear why they ask Jesus this question. Was Jesus a Pharisee? Were they asking him because he was expected to follow these rules? Was it a question that they would have asked of any religious leader? In any event, Jesus rejects the premise of the question. Jesus rejects the idea that one can be made impure by what one eats or whether one washes one's hands . He says, "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: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person." PURITY OF HEART It is interesting that Jesus does not say, "Ritual purity is ridiculous." Contrary to many Christian statements about Jesus, Jesus does not contradict the law. Here he merely challenges the presumption behind an Oral Tradition about the law. He asks whether a person might actually be defiled by what one has eaten. To make his point, Jesus notes that it is from the heart that evil intentions come and evil acts. It is these things that defile, not food or drink. Jesus recognizes that the ritual aspects of his Jewish faith are just that, the ritual aspects. As with the prophets of old he reminds his listeners that there is a purity of heart that is the true heart of the faith of the people of Israel. Isaiah 29: 13 And the Lord said: "Because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment of men learned by rote; 14 therefore, behold, I will again do marvelous things with this people, wonderful and marvelous; and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hid." For Jesus as with the prophets of Israel, true religion--holiness--comes from the heart. THE PAIR SO LONG DISJOIN'D What does it mean to have a "religion of the heart"? I think "religion of the heart" sounds good to a lot of people because it sounds nice and personal. Individualistic. It doesn't require much except feeling. For many, this might sound like another version of faith that reminds me of the lyrics from that old James Brown song : "The way I like it is the way it is. I got mine and don't worry about his." That is, religion of the heart sounds like it ought to be intensely personal, private. Emotional and comforting. The way that a lot of people talk about "spirituality". • Love After all, that's what we think of as love, right? Love is an intensely personal emotion . An inner state of being about how we might feel about someone else. Like the words of the Song of Solomon that we heard earlier. "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. That's a text you hear all the time at weddings. Probably because people still think that marriage has something to do with love. Well, I suppose it does--but not the kind of romantic head-over-heels love that people often assume. We know that faith is about love and about the heart and it can be easy for us to think that if we are pure of heart , if we have strong feelings about God, if we are sincere in our beliefs that that is enough. That that is what faith is about. We talk about professional athletes as having "heart"-- they often have their own particular brand of religion, too. The brand that credits Jesus for the touchdown. Is that what we're talking about here? Is exuberance the religion of the heart we are called to have? • The pair united Early Methodism was known as a 'religion of the heart.' It was not alone in this . Religions of the heart were rising all over 17 th and 18 th century Europe, largely as a reaction to the dry overly intellectual and often passionless forms of Christianity that arose after the Enlightenment. Methodism was part of a pietist movement, a movement of religions of the heart that began in Lutheranism but whose influence extended to, among others, the Moravians, the Anabaptists, and, according to one church historian, Hasidic Judaism. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, and his brother Charles , who wrote nearly 9,000 hymns for the cause, were firmly committed to a religion of the heart . That being said, Charles made one of the most compelling statements about what it was the fledgling Methodist movement ought to do : "Unite the pair so long disjoin'd: knowledge and vital piety." That is, Methodism should not simply be a reaction to post-Enlightenment Christianity, rejecting rationalism in favor of experiential Christianity. Heart and mind united . Our University Chaplain, the Rev. Dr. Joe Eldridge, often points out that on our own quad , the library and the Kay Spiritual Life Center form the poles of our university life: the intellectual and the spiritual. Knowledge and vital piety . Charles Wesley would be so proud that here , at this pre-eminent United Methodist university, this dictum was being followed--at least in the architecture. • True Religion There is, of course, more to a religion of the heart than balancing of intellect and emotion . The Epistle of James deals at length with the true religion of the Christian. It purports to have been written by James, the brother of Jesus, and if it turns out that it was not written by James, it ought to have been. For in its verses are captured the beautiful simplicity of Jesus' teachings, a focus on the ethic of caring and compassion for the "least of these". And a sharp critique of a faith that takes pride in itself but does not actually produce any visible fruit : If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world. For James, pure religion is religion of caring for others . It is not simply a faith of the heart but also the works of the hands . James writes that a faith without works "is dead." Despite what we might think about the "heart" and about love in the modern world , despite the individualistic and personal connotations they may raise, the religion of the heart is not an individual enterprise . John Wesley wrote: "The gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social; no holiness but social holiness." • Evangelical Christianity This was the thrust of the evangelical Christianity that the Wesleys preached. The evangelical Christianity that called for prison reforms in Britain, that opposed slavery, that supported women's rights and minority rights, that built colleges and universities across the land. This is the kind of Christianity that was outward looking and served the world . The part that is so often overlooked is that this kind of faith that transforms individuals , communities, and the world cannot come from a religion of intense emotional feeling alone . It cannot be sustained on what people in an earlier generation would have called "enthusiasm." For, in the end, a religion of the heart is not about how much you love God but how much God loves you . We don't 'care for the orphans and widows in their distress' because we have a strong feeling about God. We do it because we have been so loved by God, that not responding is unthinkable . The real religion of the heart is a faith so grounded in the knowledge and the assurance that you are loved by God , that we become capable of loving others whom we meet. It is the love God has for us --and what that love can do in our lives-- that is the centerpiece of our faith, and the guide for our actions. END So, have you indeed found the one true faith? The community that is the repository of all that is good and true? I don't know. I don't think that any community can lay claim to that. But if you find yourself in a community that knows how much it is loved by God, whose lives are transformed by that love, and who seek to live out that love with others, serving the needy and the oppressed... then I can say that you might be on the right track. Back to Sermons page Back to AU UMC Home Copyright © 2006. Mark A. Schaefer No part of this text may be reproduced or otherwise disseminated without the express written consent of the author.

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