What will you give your heart to this fall?

Preached by Rev. James Murray at Dominion-Chalmers United Church,

Labour Day Sunday, Sept. 6 2009. Texts: James 2:1-17 Mark 7:24-37

In one of my former churches, the chancel was dominated by a huge stained glass window. The window was twelve feet wide, and thirty feet wide. The image in this window was the risen Christ. It was a beautifully dramatic window. The only thing I didn’t like about this image of the risen Christ was how it portrayed his feet. His feet were perfectly clean. The nail marks were missing. And these perfect feet were pointing down, which meant Jesus was floating in mid-air.  The risen Christ appeared to be above the world, and untouched by this world. For me it was a very disturbing image of the risen Christ.

Today’s gospel lesson gives us a very different image of the earthly Jesus. Today we catch a glimpse of Jesus at work. Today we see the sweat on his brow, we can hear the frustration in his voice, we feel the effort he puts into his ministry. When Jesus arrives in the town of Tyre, he wants to slip into town unnoticed. We feel his disappointment when  he realizes he can’t keep his presence there  a secret. His quiet dinner with friends is interrupted by the arrival of an uninvited guest. A foreigner, a woman from the Syrian region of Phonecia interrupts the dinner party with a request for Jesus. This foreign woman wants her daughter healed, and she won’t take ‘NO’ for an answer. We hear Jesus getting testy with her after she challenges his initial rejection.  In a patriarchal culture, for a man to be shown up in public by any woman was a shameful moment. Yet Jesus overcomes this humiliation and agrees to heal the woman.

The next day Jesus heals a man who is both blind and unable to speak. He heals the blind man by putting his fingers in to the man’s ears. Jesus then spits on the man’s tongue. Now I don’t know about you, but the thought of someone sticking their dirty fingers in my ears, and spitting on to my tongue grosses me out. It would have grossed out the people of that day as well. Then Jesus lets out a deep sigh as he prays for the man’s healing. Like a carpenter, Jesus is putting his back into it. All of this work involves lots of emotional & physical effort. Jesus is getting intimate and dirty. This is definitely not a picture of Jesus who is untouched by this world. This image of Jesus shows him being emotionally & physically invested in caring for others.  Caring for others means getting your hands dirty.

This morning we also heard from the Letter of James. James the Just was the brother of Jesus, and he was killed in 62 AD by King Herod.  James is one of the earliest writings in the New Testament. Scholars believe it was written either at the beginning or Paul’s missionary work, or just at the end of Paul’s work. It definitely predates any of the four gospels. The letter of James is unique because it represents the Jewish Christian point of view. Paul’s letters were written to appeal to Greek point of view. In the Jewish religious tradition, it is our behaviour that matters most. In Greek philosophy of Plato, it is the ideal, the thought that counts. For James, it is of ultimate importance for our behaviour to match our beliefs. There must be a seamless integrity of thought & action.  You can’t be loving your neighbour if you show favouritism to the rich.

You can’t be a Christian if you ignore the plight of the poor. For James, religion is about getting your hands dirty, without becoming as dirty as the world.  

There is an important verse in James I would like you to see. It is Chapter 1 verse 27.

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

James believes we are called to live well in the world. We are to daily seek to make it a better place. We can’t deny the dirtiness and pain of the world. We are not called to float above it, untouched by it. We are to face the reality of the world, yet not be overcome by it. We are in all things to seek to help. We can do this, because God is the fellow sufferer who understands.

Karen Armstrong started out her life as a Roman Catholic nun in England. After leaving her order, she became a religious historian. After visiting Jerusalem, she expanded her focus to look at the three monotheistic religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Over the past twenty years Armstrong has gone on to become a leading scholar in comparative religion. Armstrong is starting to promote her next project, which is the Charter for Compassion. Out of her work, Armstrong has learned how compassion is celebrated in all major religious, spiritual and ethical traditions. While it is at the heart of all of these traditions, compassion is not the only thing that matters in religion. And as much as we like to talk about how important compassion is for us, we must humbly remind ourselves that religious people do not have a monopoly on compassion. We aren’t the only people who care for others in this world.  But like the Apostle James reminds us, the Golden Rule is our prime duty. The Golden Rule cannot be limited to our own political, religious or ethnic group – it is how we are to deal with our own kind. It is also how we are to deal with people who are different from us.  Armstrong makes the point that in our divided world, it is only compassion which can build common ground. Armstrong believes only religion has the power to build the kind of peace and understanding we need so we can all get along today. She says “The task of religion is to help us live creatively, peacefully, and even joyously with realities for which there are no easy explanations.”

On Labour Day, we are invited to celebrate the work we do, the difference our labour makes. It is the beginning of the school year. It is the beginning of the social year as well. Our activities start afresh after the all too brief summer’s rest. So here are some questions to reflect upon as you ponder the purpose you find in your labours during this new season of activity.

   1. What will you give your heart to this fall, as you choose how to spend your time?
   2. Is compassion be at the heart of everything you do?
   3. Jesus wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty as he lived out his faith.  
How will a Christ- like love of neighbour guide the work of your hands?