“Do This in Remembrance......”
James 1: 17-27, Mark 7: 1-7, 14-15, 20-23
As Jesus broke bread and shared the wine for one last time with his disciples he gave them a command. It wasn’t “Think about this forever,” or “Believe the teaching inherent in these symbols,” or “Reproduce the emotions of this moment as often as possible,” though he may very well have wanted his friends to do those things. But his specific command was “Do this. Do this in remembrance of me.” Christian faith is a faith of doing. Oh, it’s not to the exclusion of thinking and believing and feeling, and I’m not trying to undo the Protestant Reformation by promoting the idea that we can do something to make God love us, or save our souls by doing the right thing (“works righteousness” as it’s sometimes called.) We’re saved by God’s grace, not by anything we can do to justify ourselves, as Martin Luther, John Wesley and a host of our ancestors have taught. But having said that, let me say again that Christian faith - faith that is real, life-changing, deep, and lasting - will be a “doing faith.”
The Letter of James reminds us of this, with the words “But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves,” and today I want to share with you two thoughts about doing the faith, the first being that we need to do our faith so that we can remember it, and in the process, remember who we are. James says that someone who hears the word of God but doesn’t put it into practice is like a guy who looks in a mirror and sees himself, but walks away and forgets what he looks like. That may be an odd example for us who look into mirrors or other reflecting surfaces more times than we can count each day, but just try to imagine it. If you had looked into a mirror only once in your life, or if you looked in a mirror once a year, would you really have an accurate mental picture of what you look like? I’m sure you wouldn’t. It’s the repeated looks, time and time again, that have enabled us to know our own appearances (for better or worse!).
It’s doing that helps us to remember, to hang on to something – a mental picture, a skill, a habit, a way of life...... When I need to learn something new on the computer my kids can generally tell me in two sentences what I should be doing, but that doesn’t work for me. I need to sit down, and have them guide me step by step as I do it. And once I’ve done it a few times, I’ll remember...... If someone describes a shortcut through the city you will probably forget it, but if you drive that route you’ll know it cold. You’ll have made it your own...... And if someone has an experience of the grace of God? If they are forgiven after a shameful failure, if they are delivered from a serious trouble, if they are surprised and blessed in ways they couldn’t have imagined – is there a way to keep that experience of grace fresh and alive? Yes – doing. We need to do forgiveness, do prayer, do mercy, do charity, do worship – we need to do all the aspects of faith - so that we can remember God’s grace and strengthen our life with God, this life which grace has opened.
I believe it was Mel Brooks who once quipped “I’m Jewish but I’m not a practicing Jew. Why should I practice something I’m already good at?” The Letter of James says that if anyone thinks they can be a living Christian without practicing, they’re deceiving themselves. It’s being a doer of the word, not just a hearer, that makes it real, that helps us to remember the faith and in the process remember who we are.
And here’s a second, somewhat related thought: Doing the faith not only helps us to remember it. It also helps us to deepen it, to move beyond the surface into a heart-felt, life-changing reality.
That’s one of the issues in our gospel reading today, the narrative that begins with some Pharisees criticizing Jesus because his disciples had not performed all the proper religious hand-washing ceremonies before eating a meal. Pharisees were sect within Judaism, a group of believers who strove with great earnestness to keep the spiritual disciplines and customs of their religion, and in this sense they were “doing the faith,” at least at one level. These were serious, well-meaning men, but they saw the disciples eating without doing the rituals that the Bible and tradition had passed along and they were upset. It’s as if we had a volunteer mission work team out somewhere and at the lunch break our people grabbed their sandwiches, bowed their heads privately for a simple silent prayer and started to eat, and some observers got upset, saying “Wait a minute! You’ve forgotten how we do things on this mission. We always join hands to affirm our sense of community, and we sing the Doxology to give our praise to God, and we do it loudly as a witness to the people around us. How can you call yourself a mission volunteer if you forget these important traditions?”
So Jesus is taken to task for his followers’ supposed lack of spiritual discipline. In his response Jesus doesn’t say that those rituals are wrong or irrelevant, but he tries to get these antagonists to think beyond the surface level – beyond the exterior matters of proper ceremony to the inward matter of one’s heart and mind and soul. In effect, he says “You’re washing your hands, and taking care of the surface, but are you doing anything about the interior of your lives? That’s where all the trouble is brewing. Out of your hearts come the things that are really unclean – robbing, killing, immorality and all sorts of evil. What are you going to do about cleaning up that interior mess?” To us he might be saying “How are you going to clean up that interior space where you keep on thinking like a racist..... where you are obsessed with that great god called “money,”...... where lecherous, lustful ideas have free reign....... where envy and jealousy are warping your life......? What will you do to clean up that mess?”
The Pharisees may well have argued that by keeping the rituals and traditions they were trying to change their interior lives. That’s what we hope will happen when we practice Christian disciplines of prayer, meditation, fasting, worship and scripture study. The problem is that we sometimes get stuck on the surface - satisfied in just doing the tradition, or just doing some spiritual discipline – rather than having a wide open desire to “do the word of God,” in all its complexity, with whatever the consequences may come. Little transformation occurs within if we never get past the surface level of piety, tradition and comfortable custom.
But God often changes peoples’ hearts through experiences, as people do the things of faith in ways that open up their inner selves. You can talk about forgiveness, but the experience of confessing to someone you have harmed, asking for their forgiveness, and receiving it – that’s another matter entirely. Something happens inside when we do our faith in this way...... You can talk about the needs of the poor, and being less selfish, but the experience of going to serve in the homeless shelter or the lunch box, or on a mission trip - that’s another matter entirely. Something happens inside when we do our faith this way....... You can talk about trusting God to provide, but the experience of giving money sacrificially to your church, or to any place in which God’s work needs support – that’s another matter entirely. We learn at the interior level when we do our faith – when we do forgiveness, do mercy, do trusting, do the faith.
In a few minutes we will be sharing the Communion, and heeding the words of Jesus. We’ll eat the bread and share the cup, “doing in remembrance” the things he specifically mentioned at that last supper. But as we leave this room and go on with life I urge you in remembrance to “do the faith,” and “do the Word” wherever you go, in whatever it requires, and in whatever parts of your life it impacts. Go to do forgiveness, do mercy, to kindness, do justice, do healing, do peacemaking – do these things in remembrance, as brothers and sisters of Christ.