St. Mark said, “When the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them.”
My goal today is simply to disclose a couple of things that might legitimately change your life – might change my life.
The first revelation probably won’t change your life like the second one. But I still want to disclose it, because it is related to the second thing I have to say. The first disclosure goes like this:
According to a January 2020 YouGov poll of more than 20,000 Americans, four in ten admitted to not (!) washing their hands after using the bathroom (I promise this will morph into a sermon at some point). Said another way, forty percent of you here today and watching online don’t wash your hands after using the bathroom (some of you are turning red at home; relax, we can’t see you). So that’s the first disclosure I wanted to mention today.
Before I let you in on the next disclosure, however, I want to ask you how this knowledge makes you feel inside? How does it make you feel instinctively – impulsively and instantly without any real thought? If you’re a committed handwasher, you might be tempted to feel like non-handwashers are nasty, hideous people you want to avoid, especially if they are working in a restaurant making your dinner. That is certainly a justifiable sentiment at some level, but with human nature being what it is, I’m never really sure where the line between genuine personal safety and congratulatory self-righteousness really lies. On the other hand, if you’re among the 40 percent who don’t wash your hands, or if you just run cold water over your hands when someone sees you leaving a stall in a public restroom at the football game or concert, you probably feel at least some measure of guilt or discomfort right now, because you’ve been told over and over to wash your hands – and now it feels like you’re being outed publicly and all!
Let me tell you a true story. A few weeks ago, I noticed a new hand-washing sign in the airplane lavatory on a Delta flight from Atlanta to Sarasota – a brand-new sign in a brand-new plane, in fact. The sign is affixed to the mirror, and it reads, “Wash your hands as long as it takes to sing the “Happy Birthday song twice.” I was only half-way through my first attempt at Happy Birthday when the captain came over the PA, saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, please return to your seat and fasten your seatbelt. There is some rough air up ahead.” I had a problem on my hands (no pun intended). What was I supposed to do? At one level, I wanted to observe the “tradition of my elders” – you know, follow the rules – but I also had a choice to make, and I had to make a choice. The rules, indeed, the ruler, said sit down – federal law (!) – but the rules also said wash my hands (“federal law requires you to follow all crewmember instructions and posted placards”). What would you do in a situation like that?
Being a lifelong Pharisee and expert in bending the law to suit my own ego, I decided the best fix was to go with the Applebee’s and TGI Friday’s version of Happy Birthday from 1987. Remember that one? It’s all about the tempo:
Happy, happy birthday,
Blah, blah blah
So happy, happy birthday,
From all of us to you! Hey!
And when I finished and sat back down, I actually started to feel pretty darn good about myself. Isn’t that a sad, pathetic commentary on my life? I sat there thinking I was somehow vindicated and semi-virtuous because I’d followed the rules.
But the real story is that I couldn’t care less about those rules. I just wanted to manipulate them to give my own self-righteous ego a little pat on the back. Have you ever added bumper lanes at the bowling alley just to say you got a strike? Have you ever taken an extra mulligan when nobody was looking so you could get your name on the club leaderboard?
My personal favorite happens in the Costco parking lot down on South Tamiami Trail, especially when it’s so busy we all have to park in Naples. On busy days I’ve noticed that most folks leave their empty carts all over the place – in the bushes, up on the curb, in the ditch and so forth, because the cart return can be another 250 yards back towards the building. And when I see that going on, that’s when I really get “holy.” No matter the sweat involved, I slowly and methodically guide my cart down the middle of the street all the way back to the official cart return area so I can back up traffic for everyone to see me do my part! Externally, I want to look good in front of people, but internally, do you think I really care about the fate of a Costco shopping cart? What a total farce!
When you survey your whole life, from stem to stern, do you have defiled hands or clean hands? Be honest about it. Are you known in your family and circle of friends as the rule follower par excellence – the one who has always done everything the right way to get where you are? Have you always taken the right steps as you’ve moved further and further down that yellow brick road towards the reward you deserve – to approval in the eyes of others and in the eyes of Almighty God?
In Lon Allison’s recent biography of Billy Graham, he has a great little section on what Billy Graham called “casual” or “cultural” Christians. These are persons who “don’t necessarily practice Christian faith, but they say they are Christian because of heritage.” “They also believe,” Lon says, “their level of goodness is enough to be approved by God, and [they] believe that if they died they would go to heaven because of their perceived degree of goodness.”
But thanks be to God the gospel of Jesus Christ is altogether different. The gospel is not about and is in fact squarely opposed to any “perceived degree of goodness.”
In Fleming Rutledge’s latest book, Means of Grace, she writes:
CS Lewis gave a wonderful title to a chapter in one of his books: “Nice People or New Men? (question mark). His point was that the gospel does not confer blessings on nice people. The gospel radically challenges “nice” people to become new people
Thanks be to God that even Elton John – hello! – Elton John (!) finally fessed up and came clean in “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” And he told the truth: “Goodbye yellow brick road. I’ve finally decided my future lies Beyond the yellow brick road.”
The second thing I have to disclose today is this. The only way to have a genuinely satisfying life lies squarely off the beat and path – far off the high street – indeed well beyond the proverbial yellow brick road. The permanent joy that comes from new personhood in Jesus Christ is only available at the intersection of glory and agony – accessible only on the blood-soaked pavement beneath the cross of Calvary, at the crossroads of grace and gratitude where we finally and once and for all accept that the gospel – the ministry and work of Jesus – is a gift for those of us who are burned-out, flamed out, and worn out…because when He died – oh when He died – something really and truly happened and actually and totally changed the cosmos.
In the ultimate plot twist of all, our sin and shame – our despicable, defiled hands and lousy and laughable lives – were totally and irrevocably redeemed, because “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
“Therefore,” as St. Paul saith, “since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Sermon preached by the Rev. Charleston David Wilson
Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
14th Sunday after Pentecost
August 29, 2021