If you want to know what\u2019s about to happen in an Episcopal worship service, it\u2019s a good idea to pay attention to the Collect of the Day. It gets that name because it \u201ccollects\u201d the main idea of the day\u2019s worship. Today, when we prayed for God to \u201cincrease in us true religion,\u201d we were being prepared to hear about the contrast between the true religion of Jesus and the false religion that reigned in his day. The Pharisees, in their zeal for Judaism, had turned their religion from a means into an end, from an affair of the heart to an outward form of external observance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jesus was frustrated with the Pharisees, but I don\u2019t believe he held them in the contempt that many do today. Among the Jews of his day, they were the most faithful. Their religious system was designed to release the worship of the true God from the confines of the Temple and make it more accessible to all people their daily lives. They wanted to fulfill Jeremiah\u2019s prophecy:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nThe days are surely coming, says the Lord, when\u2026I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, \u201cKnow the Lord,\u201d for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s a high ideal and they did their best to fulfill it. With the best of intentions, they applied the law to every aspect of life, and most of all, they were scrupulous about honoring the food which they received from God. God had brought them to a land flowing with milk and honey, and they gratefully took to heart what the Lord commanded them to do in return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\ngive heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe, so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you. You must neither add anything to what I command you nor take away anything from it, but keep the commandments of the Lord your God\u2026observe them diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, \u201cSurely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
But something went terribly wrong. They were not respected as a wise and discerning people. They were treated with contempt, and they suffered under the yoke of Roman oppression. Jesus said they fulfilled, not Jeremiah\u2019s prophecy, but Isaiah\u2019s: \u201cThis people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We often diagnose the Pharisees\u2019 problem by making a distinction between law and gospel. The Pharisees, we say, practiced law, while Christians are free from the law. We are saved by hearing and believing the good news of Jesus Christ. This is a false distinction. The Law and religion are good gifts from God, and we are meant to practice them diligently. Both Paul and Jesus affirm that. But like all of God\u2019s good gifts they are subject to use or abuse, and they are abused when they\u2019re not practiced in the context of love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The trouble for the Pharisees was that their scrupulosity about observing the law led them to depend, not upon God, but on their own ability to channel their lives into certain predictable routines. That led them to abuse the law by using it to set themselves apart as better than other people. The name \u201cPharisees\u201d means \u201cseparated ones.\u201d Perhaps the contempt they\u2019d experienced from others led them to be contemptuous in return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Was Mark snickering as he explained the Pharisee\u2019s religion to his Roman readers? They \u201cdo 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.\u201d It sounds like Episcopalians ending up in hell for eating meat with their salad fork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it really isn\u2019t funny, least of all to those who seek to discover a true religion. If we\u2019re honest we must admit that no matter how hard we try we can\u2019t get it right, and that is bound to leave us fearful. If we miss the mark often enough, we may fear that we are headed for a bad end. In despair, we may seek reassurance in comparing ourselves to others. That\u2019s very thin ice because we can only compare our insides and their outsides. In that case, the best we can hope for is a dull and formal religion in which we become like Anthony Trollope\u2019s Miss Thorne, whose \u201cvirtues were too numerous to describe, and not sufficiently interesting to deserve description.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So as we prepare to gear up for the Fall, perhaps it\u2019s time to think about renewing your covenant with God. Why not set aside some time, and meditate on ways that you can be a more faithful and obedient Christian. The law and the rules are a gift from God, but they are not meant as an end in themselves. They can be, however, instruments for expressing your love for God. That is the first commandment. Love God with everything you\u2019ve got.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is, however, another gift, as important as the law, which shapes inward obedience the way the law shapes outward obedience. For the covenant you make is not just a covenant with God; it is also a covenant with God\u2019s people. In marking his covenant with us God gave us the laws to obey, but he also gave us a community in which to obey them. And that is the real difficulty of faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Someone once defined community as the place where that person you least want to live with lives. When that person moves away, someone just as bad takes their place. Some of us think that we can love Christ, even if we can\u2019t stand other Christians, but that is far away from true religion as the Pharisees. True religion produces love of neighbor. First John says, \u201cThose who say, \u2018I love God,\u2019 and hate their brothers and sisters,\u2019 are liars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, as you consider renewing your covenant with God, it is important to strive to be more faithful in your prayer, work, study, giving, service and personal discipline. Those things will make you a better person and help you love God. But you must also remember there is a second commandment that is equal to the first. \u201cYou shall love your neighbor as yourself.\u201d And God has given you a precious gift to help you keep this commandment. That gift is the people in your life that you really cannot stand. Without them you cannot truly learn to love God. Let us pray, then, brothers and sisters, that we may have the humility to forgive them as we have been forgiven and to love them as Jesus has loved us. That is the way of the true religion for which we have prayed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This sermon was written by Bunker Hill<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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