Faith from Within
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
August 31, 2003
Song of Songs 2:8-13; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
I. INTRODUCTION
I have a number of women friends who ask me a lot for relationship advice. Those of you who don’t know me well enough, don’t know why that’s so funny, but trust me–it is. I was talking with this one friend of mine who asked me for some advice about a guy she was seeing. She was really confused about what was going on in this relationship. She couldn’t figure out where she stood. This guy said all the right things. He talked about family, children, a house, marriage, and a lifetime together. All the kinds of things that suggest a man is willing to make a commitment. They had had a number of conversations where he had said these things, almost casually, as part of conversation.
My friend was duly perplexed when his actions didn’t really line up with his words. When they would have the deeper conversations about where the relationship was going, he suddenly became a lot less articulate. At those times he would say things like, “Well, we’re having a good time” and “I like being with you.” As we were talking it became clear that it was almost as though this guy had gotten ahold of some list of ‘Things to Say to Make Women Believe You are Committed to Them.” He seemed to drop these comments at opportune moments, casually. But when she would ask where the relationship was going, he lacked the words to describe it.
He had figured out the external things to say and do. But he lacked the internals, the fire inside, to carry him through an actual commitment. He had merely learned the rituals, the things to do and say to make it look like an actual commitment.
II. THE TEXT: EXTERNALS & INTERNALS
It’s an interesting phenomenon–not entirely unheard of in the area of religion. That is what is going on in the New Testament lesson we heard earlier.
A. The Oral Law
There were four or five sects of Judaism in the first century: the Pharisees (the rabbis), the Saducees (the priests), the Essenes, the Zealots, and the Nazarenes (the early Christians). The pharisees had a particular way of viewing their Judaism. They believed that God had revealed an oral tradition as well as the written one that Moses had received at Sinai. In their religious thinking, the oral interpretations of the law were as authoritative as the written material in the Holy Scripture. One of the things in the oral law concerned the washing of hands before the meal.
It is important to note here that the pharisees were in fact the liberals of their day. They were concerned with trying to interpret the Torah to make it liveable. Much of the oral tradition was designed to do this–to fill in the gaps and make things workable. Now the problem that Jesus encountered is that his disciples are being criticized for not washing their hands. This could quickly have become a sectarian dispute–an argument over proper interpretation. But Jesus tips it on end. He doesn’t criticize the practice of washing hands, he says that if you are looking to find what defiles a person, it’s not what goes into a person but what comes out of a person.
B. Judging the value of faith from without
You can’t get a handle on somebody’s faith by looking at certain externals. You’re not in a position to judge the faith of the disciples by ritual observance. A faith from within.
C. Avoiding the anti-Judaic trap
At this point, we have to avoid a certain anti-Jewish trap, that we as a church have fallen into for the past 2000 years. Because what Jesus is not doing here is saying, ‘All those rituals are silly stupid religion.’ In fact, what he is doing is reminding them of what it was Judaism believed: that the rituals were the outer expression of an inner faith. It was what you did to put the world on notice that you were Jewish. It was what you did to live out the covenant. He was not saying that Judaism was silly–as far too many Christians have done, pointing at Jews and mocking them for being too ritualistic and not as ‘spiritual’ as Christians–rather he was saying that unless faith starts from inside, no amount of outside stuff matters, and all you’re left with the externals.
III. EXTERNALS WITHOUT INTERNALS
A. The modern corrolary
1. What things do we use to judge the faith of another?
So that we don’t get stuck in that trap, it’s good to think what the equivalent charge to us would be. If Jesus were to walk in this room right now, how would he charge us? We often read the scriptures like we’re the disciples when in reality we are the pharisees. What are the externals that we use to judge others? Whether a person goes to church or not. Our manner of dress, perhaps. The quality of our hymn singing. All the little things that we get hung up on that look like religion, but are merely the surface. How do we avoid the pitfall of judging faith by externals, particularly the faith of others?
IV. WESLEYANISM
A. John Wesley’s experience
John Wesley, the Anglican priest who founded the Methodist movement was a religious go-getter. He was the guy that most pastors would love to have in their congregations, especially as a lay-leader. In his mid to late 20s, he was up every morning at 5 o’clock to study scripture. He journaled. He went to worship and took regular communion. He attended prayer meetings, Bible meetings. He was the model church member. And yet, the entire time Wesley felt he was missing something. He felt he could not work hard enough to gain that sense of assurance of God’s salvation. He felt that he couldn’t experience God.
He had relationships with a number of Moravian Christians from Germany. One of them asked him if he knew he was saved. Wesley replied that he did. But his friend continued, “Do you know it?” And Wesley could not answer. One night he was at a prayer meeting in Aldersgate street in London (this is the story that explains why there are so many churches named Aldersgate United Methodist Church). At this meeting, someone was reading Martin Luther’s preface to the book of Romans. And Luther was talking about salvation by grace through faith when Wesley suddenly got it. He’d been so busy, trying so hard, he had a whole covenant of things he would do everyday, that he had forgotten the simplest truth that God had already saved him. That God had already acted in Jesus Christ to give him and me and you salvation. He’d been trying to earn it–by focusing on the things that we do in religion.
What’s so fascinating about Wesley is that he’d had this experience, when his “heart was strangely warmed”, when he was converted and came to have assurance of his salvation, and the very next day, he went out and did all of the same things he had been doing. Only this time he didn’t do them as one laboring under a burden, but as one who is joyous, as one whose faith began within and was trying to work its way out.
That’s what Jesus is trying to remind his fellow Jews about–the Law is not a burden, it is a joy. If you don’t start with that premise, you’ll never get to that point.
V. INTERNALS WITHOUT EXTERNALS
A. Wedding
There was a wedding here today at 5pm. If you could have seen the grin on the groom’s face and the smile on the couple’s face. The wedding is fun and not because of the music or the flowers, but because of how happy those two people are and how much they want to share it. I was at a wedding last night on Long Island that started around 11:30 at night. It was a Persian Jewish wedding, and let me tell you, the Persians know how to party. The banquet began at around 12:30 am. And they danced and danced and danced. The band played non-stop. And they were twirling and dancing without end. It became clear to me that people who have experienced that kind of joy will spend a lot of money, and expend a lot of time and energy to share that joy.
It’s the same with us. God has already done something so incredible for us. We don’t have to do anything. It’s the joy of recognizing that God has done something so amazing for us that transforms us, that changes us, that turns us into the people we were trying to be when we were working so hard–because now we’re coming from a place of joy. It’s one thing to work till three o’clock in the morning, it’s another thing to party till three o’clock in the morning. It doesn’t take any less energy, but we find the energy for those things we enjoy.
It is the same with our religious life and with our faith. It doesn’t start with the outside stuff, it starts with the inside. The simple recognition of what God has done–that through Jesus’ resurrection we have been given proof that God is changing our world and is at work in our world. We have been shown the sign of hope.
C. Wearing one’s Christianity on one’s sleeve
How happy should that make us? We should be dancing in the aisles and shouting Hallelujahs all the time. And most of all we should be finding a way that that faith comes back out. We’ve got to learn how to wear our Christianity on our sleeves a little bit more. How do we do that?
VI. VARIETY OF CHRISTIAN EXPRESSION
How did Jesus do it? He went to synagogue to worship. He took time by himself to pray. He was compassionate toward others, healing and feeding others. He spoke out against injustice. There are a whole host of ways to start living out our faith and we don’t need to start setting up ways to judge each other about how we’re living out our faith. Because God has given us a variety of different talents and a variety of different gifts and God expects us to use them differently. Some of us are better at worship. Some of us go to seminary and learn how to help other people do that. Some of us are better at leading Bible studies or praying on their own. Some people are compassionate and want to reach out to an individual in need. And others will get 50 of their closest friends and protest something they think is unjust. And all of those are externals that come from a faith that is within
VII. CONCLUSION
All of those come from a faith that starts from inside, that is such a joy and so powerful that it cannot be kept there for long. We are a community that gathers out of joy–out of the joy of the resurrection. A community that began with the fear of 11 men transformed by an encounter with the risen Christ into a joy that pervades our lives today. We can help others see the faith that we have, if first we cultivate that joy within.
