Walking with God in the Way of Love

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston

September 1, 2024
Proper 17, B
James 1:17-27
Psalm 15
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Hey guys, don’t think about kittens jumping around in front of a scared looking puppy. Stop, I said don’t think about it. No kittens jumping. No scared puppy. Keep it out of your mind.

Failures. Kidding.

It’s hard not to think about something when you’re focusing on not thinking about it. Ok, now think about Jesus’ teaching in the Gospel we just heard. ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ Spending time in worship can be really good for us, and the worship God truly wants is caring for one another. Loving one another. Think about someone in need and choosing to help them out. Think about a time you were in need and a kind and loving person came to your aid. I’m guessing you weren’t just thinking about cats and puppies anymore, were you?

Jesus said that the things that defile a person are the harmful things that come out of our hearts. Fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly, these selfish things that we do are what defile us, not doing our religion wrong. 

So, I could preach about not doing those things, talking about each one in detail, and saying “That’s bad; don’t do it.” The problem is that sometimes the harder we try not to do something, the more we fixate on it and the harder time we have not doing it. Don’t think of the kittens and the puppy, right? And as soon as I tell us not to, we start thinking about it. 

Jesus giving us this list of things not to do is important and teaching we often need to realize that these things are harmful, and there’s more to the story. Jesus didn’t just say, “This stuff’s bad; don’t do it.” Jesus gave us a way of life so that we would not just fixate on harmful behaviors and end up doing them anyway. The way of life that Jesus gave us is the way of love. 

Now, following the way of love is part of why there so many are religious practices. Religious practices, at their best, are meant to help train us, to keep us walking with God in the way of love, walking with one another so the thought of harming one another would go totally against who we are. Unfortunately, we often forget that, and religious practices end up being ways we try to please God. 

As far back as human history goes, people have had belief in one type of god or another, and along with all of our various beliefs about God or gods, people have continually sought ways to please God. People have tried to get God on their side against others. People have tried to gain God’s favor so that crops will grow or natural disasters won’t happen. In all sorts of societies, people have done all sorts of things to appease their gods. 

Folks have sacrificed animals and various food on altars. Folks have burned things, said particular prayers at particular times, cut themselves, had ritual dances, even left out milk and cookies. 

What we find over and over in scripture is that God was never all that interested in any of that stuff. 

In Jesus’ day, the some of the religious leaders were pretty adamant about doing everything they could to try to please God. We heard today about the Pharisees who even went beyond the actual laws that they were supposed to follow and said that Jesus and his disciples were displeasing God because they were eating without washing their hands. There were a lot of laws about washing, about being ritually clean before God, but washing your hands before you ate wasn’t one of those laws. By tradition, they had added hand washing to the ritual purity laws. 

On the one hand, it was really helpful in keeping disease down. As far as societal health went, handwashing was fantastic. It just wasn’t going to make you more or less righteous before God.

All of those rituals and religious laws weren’t bad, but folks could miss the point, thinking the rituals were there to please God, rather than to be helpful for the people. The practice of keeping the laws, of following the ritual, with a mind toward connecting with God and trusting in God, can be helpful. You’re training yourself to trust in God in all things. The rituals and laws are like daily practice of trusting in God, unless they become things you must do lest God be angry with you.

Look at modern Christianity, guilting people for not showing up for church on Sunday. No wonder people don’t want to come…as though coming to church pleases God in and of itself. Worshipping together is meant to be helpful for us, joining together with one another, taking some time to pause in the business and struggle of life, to rest together, connecting with God. That’s a good way to practice religion…and it’s not going to make God happy with us.

What is the religion that pleases God? Taking care of one another.

The more we take care of one another, the more we see the absolute beauty and divine worth of every human being. When we see one another’s divine worth and care for one another, then we end up not falling into those destructive ways Jesus talked about: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, and folly. Rather than not thinking about kittens and puppies, we focus on loving one another.

Those vices that Jesus mentioned are all about selfish pleasure seeking with no regard to the hurt we do to others. Gaining immense wealth with no regard to how it hurts others. Taking and taking and taking, with no regard for anyone else. Taking people’s things and livelihoods. Taking the truth from people. Taking life from people. 

All of these desires we have within us, and acting on these desires is what defiles us, Jesus says. Acting on our selfish desires with no regard for others is what makes us ‘stained’ by the world, as James says. 

Look at religious hypocrites, which we all are at times, but think about the big examples. Huge mega-pastor televangel-whatevers who have an enormous following. They’re great at showing how religious they are and demanding that same religious purity from others, and then they get brought down by some big financial or sex scandal. We tend to call such people hypocrites, but the real problem is not the hypocrisy, but that they were chasing after the wrong things in the first place. It’s not as though their super religiousness was stained by their misdeeds. The point is that all of their religiosity that looked so impressive never much mattered in the first place.  

They were hearers of the word and not doers, at least in part because of a focus on doing all of their religiousy stuff right, trying to please God (or at least show off about pleasing God), rather than simply trying to love and serve other people.

True religion, according to James, is to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world. Being here, following other religious practices is training to trust in God, to love ourselves, to love others. When we do that, those selfish desires which live within us tend to fade away. We love and care for others, and that makes our religion true. Loving and caring for others is the religion that pleases God.

We don’t need to make grand gestures to appease God. We don’t need to be super religious. Just go with the simple notion that we all matter, that we all are of divine importance, and treat one another accordingly.

Love Is Our Religion

The Rev. Brad Sullivan

Emmanuel Episcopal Church

July 19, 2020

Proper 11, A

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

“Love Is Our Religion”

I spent last week at Camp Allen for Jr. High camp, and it was a great week.  There was lots of physical distancing, masks worn by all, and activities done outside which had previously been inside.  They did a great job of safety while still making it feel like camp; it was really wonderful, and kids who had spent years away from or largely ignoring their faith were brought back to their faith in powerful ways.

Our theme for the week was The Way of Love, which is Presiding Bishop Curry’s way of talking about they way of Jesus.  Our teachings at camp were about turning back to the way of Jesus when we realize we’ve been living in a way that isn’t really about love.  We talked about how we can continue to earn together the ways of Jesus, and how we can bless others and share with others the healing we have found through the way of Jesus, the Way of Love.

I taught on how we can be a blessing to others, and noted that the first thing we need to do is to recognize our own blessings.  In order to be a blessing to others, we can ask ourselves every day, for what am I grateful?  These daily gratitudes can be grand in scale or very small and simple, and if we write them down and then make a practice of sharing these gratitudes with others we begin each day by blessing others and being blessed by them.  

Then we also get to work daily on what we’re wrestling with.  What’s got us upset, angry, anxious, resentful, afraid?  Then, rather than focusing on some other person or situation that’s got us upset, we look inward to understand “What’s going on inside of me that I’m so bothered by whatever it is.”  We work on healing ourselves so that we can then bless others with peace in our hearts.  Otherwise, acting out of our anger and our hurt, we tend to fight against someone or something and bring more harm and hurt into the world.  In the Way of Love, we’re called to recognize our blessings, find peace within ourselves, and then be a blessing to others.  

The campers seemed to really dig that idea and seeking to be healed within oneself before trying to be a blessing to others, and one night, one of the boys cabins asked me to do “priest on a hot seat,” where they asked me any questions they wanted so they could learn more about the faith and hear some thoughts on issues they were wrestling with.  

What do I think about Christians who are against various groups of people?  I said, “I believe they are faithful in their beliefs, faithful to what they’ve been taught, faithful to their understanding of scripture.  I may disagree with them and often do, but I am not going to condemn them or declare them not to be Christian.  I will say that while I think they are wrong, they are also striving to be faithful.”  Now, that response goes against my initial instincts which are to fight against them and start a ruckus over how wrong they are. 

It is easy to feel righteous and even to feel like we’re doing good by fighting and speaking against those whom we feel are wrong and those we perceive as being hateful to others.  Speaking against those others and spending all our time fighting against them however, is not the way of Jesus, the way of love.  

If I’m spending all my time fighting folks who are against people that I claim to love, then I’m not spending that time loving those whom I claim to be defending.  

So, back to the question I was asked at Camp, rather than spend my time condemning the groups of Christians whom I felt were wrong, I spoke out for those people who were condemned by other Christians.  That was a loving response which may have helped some of the campers themselves realize they belonged to Jesus and weren’t condemned or cast out.

Let the weeds grow along with the wheat, Jesus said, so that we don’t all get damaged by pulling the weeds out.  Imagine if everyone who wanted to pull the weeds out of society or out of the church was able to do so.  There wouldn’t be any wheat left.  Everyone would be pulled up and cast out because everyone is a weed in someone’s eyes.  So, Jesus said to let them grow together, and leave the weeding to God at the end of the age.

We’re God’s garden after all, and rather than leave the weeding to us who are tossed about by our emotions and our brokenness, we leave the weeding to God who is not only loving, but who is love itself.  I can trust love to do the weeding.  There are parts in me that need to be weeded out.  There are parts in all of us that need weeding.  There are certainly parts of society that need weeding, so we leave the weeding to God who is love, and we follow in the way of Love, focusing on loving and blessing, rather than constantly fighting against others.  

So, in that vein, one final story from camp.  For one of our prayer activities, we taught the campers about and had them walk a labyrinth.  Now, many of the campers walked the labyrinth in a slow, fairly contemplative way, traditional of a labyrinth walk.  Some of the Jr. High boys, however, kind of skipped through it, walked backwards, shuffled, and goofed their way through it.  

My initial reaction was, “Well, they’re doing it wrong; they’re not taking it seriously, and I should correct that.”  Thankfully, I didn’t.  Rather than see them as weeds in the Labyrinth walk, I pointed out that for some of them, goofing and enjoying their was through the labyrinth was prayer.  I realized that the traditional ways and structures of prayer in the church don’t work for everybody.  Some of these kids needed to have fun, and that fun with their friends was prayer.  What those kids then heard was not, “we’re weeds and doing it wrong.”  Instead, they heard that they are wheat, and they belong just as much as their friends who could walk more contemplatively.  

Later that night, one of the boys talked with his counselor, his cabin mates, and me about how he had felt God walking along side him during the Labyrinth walk.  His full group of cabin mates all got to be there with him in that.  They all got to be wheat together with him.  If I had declared some of them as weeds?  How much would have been missed, how broken would that cabin had been with some of them feeling like they didn’t belong when their friend told that he had walked with God?  

We’ve all got weeds within us.  We are also all wheat.  God, who is loving and who is love itself will sort that all out.  We are not weed pullers; that is not our religion.  As disciples of Jesus, (and quoting Ziggy Marley), “love is [our] religion.”  Our place is to love one another, both the weeds and the wheat, and to grow together in the Way of Jesus, the Way of Love.