Rev. Tara Barber
The Community Church of Sebastopol
September 7, 2003
Mark 7: 24-30
All right. You heard the words. Sabbath season is over. Labor Day weekend is here, and we’ve got to get to work. Shall we review our to-do list?
Starting with the book of James – which by the way, reads more like a Greek code of ethics, than a letter. Martin Luther thought that the book of James should be stricken from the Bible because it emphasized what we need to DO, and Luther was afraid that we would forget that it’s what God does that is important, nothing that we do can earn God’s grace.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to the to-do list – with help from the book of James One:
w Be quick to listen
w Be slow to speak and slow to anger
w Rid yourself of sordidness and rank growth of wickedness. – that means refrain from dirty, unpleasant or morally degrading behavior
w Welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls – in other words – pay attention to God speaking in you – because it is God’s wisdom in you that will bring healing.
w Be Doers of the Word not merely hearers that deceive themselves.
w Look into the law and persevere – take action
w Bridle your tongues
w Care for widows and orphans
w Keep yourself unstained by the world.
w Just do it. (Okay so Nike added the last one – but it somehow seems to fit)
Do you have all that? Wait there’s more: From the fifteenth Psalm, we hear who can live in God’s sanctuary. Those who –
w Walk blamelessly
w Do what is right
w Speak the truth
w Do not slander or do evil to their friends, nor take reproach against their neighbor
w Those who despise the wicked
w And honor those who fear the Lord
w Who stand by their words even if it hurts
w Who do not lend money at interest and do not take bribes
w These people shall never be moved.
Whew. And the call is to do all of these things all of the time. In other words – to be perfect. I don’t know about you, but if this were a magazine quiz or a pre-test, I wouldn’t be scoring in the upper percentile. I wouldn’t even get close to perfection. Who is perfect, anyway? What does the world tell us about perfection? Naturally, I turn to the media to find perfection. And then I turned to my two favorite authors – Kathleen Norris and Anne Lammot – to help me figure this out. When I look at the magazines, listen to the radio, and walk down the street, I hear the same names again and again. Tiger Woods, Ken Griffey Jr. – at least before he left Seattle, Brittany Spears, and of course, Martha Stewart. They are perfect.
This doesn’t seem to jive with what the scriptures are saying to us, though. We have mis-understood the perfection that the Bible is talking about. Martha, Ken Griffey, Brittany – their perfection is about being flawless. Kathleen Norris helped me to understand that Biblical perfection is not about flawlessness, instead, Biblical perfection is about being mature, open, aware – and loving.
Anne Lammot writes of a day when she and her son Sam were at the beach near San Quentin prison. It was the day that they saw the ugliest real-life thing that her five-year-old son had ever witnessed. Of course, that’s not why they went to the beach. They had gone with their dog Sadie to throw sticks, build in the sand and listen. “The sound of the surf,” she writes, “the big washing machine of ocean, sometimes seems to rinse out my brain, or at any rate, it expands me and it slows me down.”
On this day as they sat near the steps, a man with a big golden retriever walked by and stood looking out over the ocean. Sam’s dog Sadie walked over to greet the golden retriever. The man tugged gently on the retriever’s leash to get his dog to walk down the beach, but the dog turned to Sadie one more time and took a step toward her. And the man bent down and picked up a stick from the ground and smashed it into his dog’s rib cage. The dog flinched but didn’t even yelp. Sam did, though. Anne writes, all I could do was whisper, “No.” Sadie looked at the other dog and then raced over to Anne and Sam. The retriever turned to watch her, and the man hit her again in the ribs. Then they began to walk down the beach.
She continues, “I knew on the beach that Jesus would have stepped in to save the dog, and he would have been loving the dog beater as he did so. (Jesus) would have been seeing the dog beater’s need and fear.
Well, like the author, I am certainly not there yet. She writes, “I myself am a bit more into blame and revenge; also, I’ve found that self-righteousness is very comforting. But Jesus is quite clear on this point. He does not mince words.
(Jesus) says you have to love the whiners, the bullies, and the people who think they’re better than you. And you have to stick up for the innocent.”
That day on the beach, though, Anne sat, “frozen, like in a dream where your feet weigh fifty pounds each and the danger is almost upon you. Sam began to cry. I put my arm around him, but he shook it off. “Do something,” he whispered. “Do something.”
By this time the man was further down the beach. Suddenly, he yanked his dog into a standing position and held her there. He pulled back on the leash even harder so that her head tipped all the way back and her nose pointed straight into the air. Sam cried out again.
“Stop,” I quietly called to the man. “Stop,” I said again, a bit louder, but still squeaky. I was trying to love him but get him to stop hurting his dog, but neither was working.
Another mother and her children were nearby, and witnessed the whole thing. The other mother shouted at the top of her lungs like a warrior, “Stop! I am going to call the police now! I am going to have you arrested.”
“You say something, Mama,” whispered Sam, and this is what I said. “I am going to call the police, too!” The man laughed.
I sat down on the sand breathless with shame and failure. God, I thought, some defender of the weak (I am). “Why did you let him get away?” Sam demanded.
“I was just so afraid, Sam.” I confessed. Sam sighed with exasperation. I felt very low. Sadie, Sam and I got up to take a walk down the beach, subdued and confused. I felt such a sense of my weak exposed self out in the open. I bent over and picked up a dozen small white agates and held them lightly in my coward’s palm.
Once I had seen a friend of mine save a child from under a rearing horse.
I had always imagined I was capable of this, too. But now I could see I wasn’t. Please, I prayed. I didn’t even know what I was asking for, but please (God).
I stared at the little white agates in my hand, delicate as moon drops. The mystery of God’s love as I understand it is that God loves the man who was being mean to his dog just as much as God loves babies; God loves Susan Smith who drowned her two sons just as much as Desmond Tutu. So of course God loves old ordinary me, even or especially at my most scared and petty and mean and obsessive. (God) loves me.
When I was young I would have felt, ‘What’s the point of trying to be good if the people who aren’t even trying get to be equally loved?’ Now, I don’t know much of anything for sure. Only that I am loved – as is.”
So why do it? Just do it. Not because God will love you any more, not because you are afraid, do it because it is the only thing that will make this world more loving, more just, more like God dreams.
So be perfect. Be mature enough to listen, mature enough to bridle your tongue, to take action, and to stand by your words. Be perfect. Be open to God’s word in you, be open to widows and orphans, neighbors, and strangers.
Be perfect. Be aware of what is right, be aware of who you are, be aware of God’s call to you. Be perfect. Love. Love back. Love some more. Just do it.
And remember. God loves you just as much as God loves Martha Stewart.
Return to Sermon Table of Contents