Integrity and Cake
A sermon given by the Rev. Christine Gowdy-Jaehnig on September 1, 2024.
Year B : Proper 17
Song of Solomon 2:8-13 * Psalm 45:1-2,7-10 * James 1:17-27 * Mark 7:1-23
When my Dad was approaching his 80th birthday, he reflected on what he had learned over the decades, living as a disciple of Jesus. I was able to be present one Sunday when he shared his thoughts with his church congregation –at his pastor’s request. One revelation stood out to me. I knew that my father had found the faith of his childhood to be inadequate; nevertheless, he had learned what integrity looked like from his parents. They had lived their lives as Christians with great integrity. Integrity is not usually found on anyone’s list of qualities that they desire to develop, or which they admire in their heroes. Courage, certainly; perseverance, determination, likely; perhaps even patience and kindness, but rarely integrity. Although neither James nor Jesus use the word, our readings show they are very concerned about it.
James’ letter is the unloved step-child of the New Testament, hustled to the back so as not to draw attention away from Paul’s assertion that “we are saved through faith”. If some had had their way, including Luther, it wouldn’t be there at all. It mentions God and the Lord Jesus only once, at its opening, and is not concerned with theology or the gospel story, but with ethics/morals; it contains dozens of imperatives. So, why do we read it? James is a welcome corrective when we reduce Christianity to belief in a set of doctrines, and it provides some answers to the important question: “How then shall we live?” as disciples of Jesus.
All religions and cultures have purity codes. In the Bible, a lot of attention and ink are given to the word and concept of “purity” and its opposite “defilement”. Some of these rules are about who or what is worthy to approach God, or be in a sacred place. Some contemporary Christians focus almost exclusively on sexual purity, and the sexual purity of females in particular. Once as a teen LaDonna stood in the pulpit of her church. It was a “work day” when the women of the church were cleaning of sanctuary. They told her to get out and looked uncomfortable, for in her church women could not preach. If someone comes to church while drunk, others may feel that person defiles the sanctuary, even before they vomit and pass out. The rightness and wrongness of an action is often experienced at a gut level.
Purity and defilement show up in two of our readings today. Jesus is questioned about his disciples’ lack of handwashing before eating. This is not about hygiene, but restoring or ensuring ritual purity. The religious leaders are accusing Jesus of not following the Law. The Torah required ritual handwashing of priests, but the Pharisees thought all Jews should observe this and other rituals, seeing as how God calls them to be His “priestly people”. What this means is that the handwashing is a tradition, but based on a law.
Jesus’ response is sharp. He brings up the Corban practice of declaring one’s wealth to be committed to God and therefore not available to care for one’s elderly parents. Jesus comes down on the leaders for two things: First, for failing to allow those who have rashly made such a Corban vow from rescinding it because there is a law saying vows are binding. In the Corban situation two laws are in conflict. One is against rescinding vows and the other saying that parents are to be honored —this is one of the Ten Commandments! When there is such a conflict, too often the lesser law wins out. Jesus condemns them for choosing minor laws and practices over the heart of the Jewish religion which includes justice, mercy and caring for others. Jesus also chastens them for holding others to the letter of the law while weaseling out of following laws themselves. He calls them hypocrites, the opposite of integrity.
James wrote: “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.” Pure and purity are two of those challenging religious words that I stumbled over for years. I began to understand them only when I read the title of one of Soren Kierkegaard’s books: “Purity of heart is to will once thing,” And that, of course, is the will of God. To be united in that one desire and purpose is to be spiritually pure.
I’m guessing that not many of us would say we feel “pure”, with our wills completely aligned with God’s will. The life of discipleship is a journey towards this unity. When we give the Word implanted in us a home, when we hear and digest the Word, then we begin the transformation from one who is stranger to God or a slave who obeys God out of fear, to children of God who hear and do God’s will out of love. I find it helpful to think of thin religion and thick religion. A thin religion is like a sheet cake, which has a layer of frosting on the top. That frosting can be decorated and look delicious and beautiful, but it says nothing about the cake underneath, which might taste like sweet sawdust. Thick religion is like a fruit cake that has been soaked in rum. That rum has penetrated deeply into it, reaching and suffusing each bite with its flavor. A person with thick religion is homogeneous; there is a unity in their lives, while a person with a thin religion has not allowed their beliefs to sink deeply in and transform them. Those who hear but do not do have a divided self. There is a disconnect between who they appear to be and what they actually do and say, which comes from deep inside them.
There is no need to take a side between belief versus actions, word versus work, belief and conduct. The wholeness that comes through our deepening encounter with Christ unites these, for they are two sides of the same coin of integrity.
Wallace Bulbar grew up in the Baptist fold. He was taught that one of the six essentials of the Christian life was “bring your Bible to church.” In the pews were offering envelopes. On the outside there was a spiritual scorecard with a six point checklist. “I knew that as long as I was doing those things, I would stay on good terms with the Lord,” he wrote. Later, he grew to realize that there was more to Christianity than the personal piety of those six things. It’s not about whether you brought your Bible, but where your Bible brought you. If your beliefs had no influence on your actions in the economic, social or political realms of your life, then it was merely a thin layer of frosting.
Being the word person that I am, I looked up the meanings of the Greek words translated as pure and undefiled, and their opposite: defiled. What I learned was that if something is pure, it is unimpaired; if something is defiling, it is damaging and separating. The word religion means connect again; “re” means again, and “lig-” comes from the Latin word meaning to bind, or tie. Religion’s purpose is to re-bind, re-unite, connect us:
to ourselves -– to make us whole — like fruit cake!
to God —our creator and parent;
to each other —our siblings.
At our wedding, we sang a hymn we’ve never sung here at Grace. The lyrics include the words “Bind us together, Lord, bind us together / in cords that cannot be broken / Bind us together, Lord / Bind us together / Bind us together in love.” A pure religion is one that does its “job” uniting us so we are no longer at war within ourselves, binding us to God so Christ abides in us and we in Him; and drawing us together into the Body of Christ. And integrity is the bedrock of these relationships. A religion, its doctrine and practices, that separates and stands in the way of this process of reconciliation is impaired and defiled.
Whole and holy, living our faith with sincerity and moved to action by our faith, we have integrity. Paul was right; we cannot be saved by our deeds. James was right; we are saved for deeds. James said that God may be relied upon to continue to act in favor of his own creation, including towards His beloved children. We demonstrate our connection to God when we join our wills to God’s will and display God’s changeless goodness and generosity. This is done through personal piety, yes, through worship, prayer, praise and Bible-reading. But it is also done through ministering to and seeing that justice is done towards the most vulnerable people. In Jesus’ day that was the widows and orphans, in our day it may include those struggling with addiction and LGBTQ+ youth disowned by their families. James says that in doing so we are blessed. Pulled out of our self-absorption to be self-givers in the manner of Jesus, we experience a wonderful freedom. The spiritual life can be thought of as a spiral of enlarging and deepening that happens when we are both hearers of the word and doers of the word, and living with integrity. Like Jesus, the most authentic and integrated person.
Let us pray:
God, who gave birth to us by Your Word of Truth: Give us ears like yours that we may be quick to listen and slow to speak; help us discern the cause of our anger that we may act when it is sparked by injustice; and transform us through Your Word and Spirit until we are pure and reconciled to all. This we pray though Jesus Christ, whole and holy. Amen.