August 30, 2015 – James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Another Reason for Francis to Facepalm?
Time after Pentecost – Lectionary 22 – August 30, 2015
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
I recently read a great article about Pope Francis with this title:
“Eight Things about Pope Francis’s Upcoming Visit to the U.S. that would make Him Facepalm”
(https://sojo.net/articles/8-things-about-pope-francis-upcoming-visit-would-make-him-facepalm)
Does everyone know what facepalming is?
This summer my 12 year old Theo had to teach me:
it’s when you slap your palm to your face in chagrin and disbelief.
Just to tease him with my being an old geezer I purposely call it palmfacing.
Anyway, what are things that would make Francis facepalm?
Things like ticket scams: once in a lifetime offers to see the pope in New York!
For a steep price, of course.
Or the logistics for his two day stop in Philadelphia coming with an estimated price tag of
$48 million, a city in which one in four people struggle with hunger.
The article speculates Francis may well facepalm at the notion of all the bling that
vendors are getting ready to sell in order to make a profit when he visits:
the couture rosaries, the “pick a saint” jewellery, the Pope Francis notebooks,
and, of course, the $25 cufflinks with a photoshopped image of Francis
visiting a Philadelphia cheesesteak diner.
But what may well make Francis facepalm the most are comments like this from
a popular Catholic Blogger living in the United States:
“I love His Holiness Pope Francis, but for a while now I have been feeling harangued by him . . . to practice mercy on the world; to welcome the stranger, to clean up the rivers, to bring about justice and peace in our time; to level the playing fields, visit the sick, and so on.”
As one person wrote me in response to this article:
The blogger might as well say: “I’m sick and tired of being a Christian! It’s so hard and really disrupting my life!”
Well, I suppose Francis can take comfort in the fact that
all these things would probably make Jesus facepalm too.
You only have to look as far as today’s Gospel to see that
Francis is in good facepalming company.
If there was a first century equivalent of the facepalm,
we can probably imagine Jesus doing it this morning.
The Pharisees are upset that Jesus and his disciples don’t wash their hands before eating,
which was considered by them a religiously unclean thing to do.
Jesus facepalms or whatever the Jesus equivalent is and retorts:
Uh-huh? Really?
In a portion of the reading from Mark that is omitted, he goes after them for a religious practice
known as Korban, whereby you could tag some of your wealth for a later offering.
This was a way wealthy people could declare their wealth as
an offering to God so they wouldn’t have to share it with their elderly parents in need:
It was a way of getting around the commandment to honour one’s father and mother by
caring for them in their need.
Jesus sees it as a way of neatly avoiding the clear injunction to care for parents in
whatever needs they may have.
Jesus is saying: you avoid God’s clear commands to care for the vulnerable by making
human traditions more important.
Because it’s hard following God’s commandments – it is disrupting their life!
He closes by saying it’s not what you eat or how you eat that defiles you.
It’s what comes out of you, it’s what comes out of your heart,
the actions that spring from your heart.
Jesus is certainly not saying that our hearts are totally and completely evil.
He’s just saying that our hearts certainly have the capacity to receive and pass on evil –
Just as they certainly have the capacity to receive and pass on good.
That’s just the way we’re made.
James writes the same thing this morning.
Every generous act of giving is from above, coming down from the Father of lights. He gave us birth so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures. So be doers of this word of truth, not merely hearers. Do not practice worthless religion, but faultless religion that cares for the vulnerable ones of the world, like orphans and widows.
Jesus was accusing the Pharisees of practicing worthless religion,
of flouting God’s clear desires when it suits them.
And he steers them toward a faultless religion that cares for the vulnerable: widows and orphans,
but a list today that might well include those things
the blogger criticizes Francis for constantly lifting up:
a world in need of mercy, strangers in need of welcome, polluted rivers in need of cleaning up,
the unjustly treated, innocent victims of war, the sick.
The thing is: in James and Jesus’ imagination, we pass on what we receive from God.
Every generous act of giving comes from above, writes James, coming down from the Father.
We, in turn, become the first fruits of that giving, becoming generous for others.
We simply pay forward what we have received.
Jesus notes our hearts are capable of receiving lots of bad from outside ourselves that
we can pass on – but that is not inevitable.
The bad things we experience and the bad things we witness do not necessarily make us bad.
Jesus disregarded all kinds of purity laws because he wasn’t scared of being contaminated by
the bad: he befriended sinners, he touched corpses, he embraced outsiders.
Jesus wasn’t worried about being infected by the bad;
he was more interested in infecting the bad with the good.
He wasn’t concerned with being contaminated by the bad,
but wanted to contaminate the bad with the good.
He wasn’t worried about the bad that flowed into him, but with the good that flowed out of him,
the good that he acknowledged came from a close relationship with God.
The good that he received he passed on fearlessly to those in need.
I read this week about the founder of the Weidenfeld and Nicolson publishing company.
In 1938 Christians helped him escape from German-occupied Austria where, as a Jew,
he was very vulnerable.
No doubt the Christians who helped him put themselves at great risk in doing so.
All these years later, Weidenfeld is paying forward what he received so long ago:
he has established a fund that has recently helped 150 Syrian Christians make
their way to safety in Poland, and he’d like to help 2000 more.
All because some Quakers and Plymouth brethren Christians fed him and clothed him and
helped him make his way to Britain almost 70 years ago. (Christian Century, August 19, 2015, p. 8)
The human heart is capable not only of great evil, but also capable great good.
In week in which we have been inundated by news of mass shootings in the United States,
I want to lift up not only the possibilities of the human heart, but the possibilities of God.
The human heart is a beautiful thing that is able to receive and pass on goodness.
It’s why we come with outstretched hands to this meal we will shortly share.
We believe we are being built up, week by week, into the people God longs for us to be.
People who become what they receive.
People of mercy, and care, and joy, and life.
People who freely feed others in the same way we have been freely fed here at this table.
People who freely forgive the way we have been freely forgiven at this table.
People who pass on joy the same way Jesus joys in feeding us at this table.
People who not only are bombarded by that which diminishes them during the week.
But people who come in order to gently receive gifts that will make a positive difference to
themselves and to all those they encounter during the week.
People who come to have their hearts infected with grace each week.
Infection often sounds like a bad word, right? It doesn’t sound good!!
But we do also use infection in a positive way: we do speak of infectious laughter,
and that, surely, is a good thing.
So be infectious! Pass on what you receive!
Our hearts have the capacity to infect others with joy and light and love and goodness.
Passing it on and paying it forward does come with a risk, as Jesus well knows.
But it’s worth the risk for a world in need, for the vulnerable that Jesus loves.
Because if there’s one thing we don’t need, it’s being one more reason for Francis to facepalm.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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