Morning Service for Trinity 14 2024 YrB p17

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September 4, 2024

Morning Service for Trinity 14 2024 YrB p17

HYMN O God of Bethel, by whose hand NEH 416 – Martyrdom

1 O God of Bethel, by whose hand

Thy people still are fed,

Who through this weary pilgrimage

Hast all our fathers led:

2 Our vows, our prayers, we now present

Before thy throne of grace;

God of our fathers, be the God

Of their succeeding race.

3 Through each perplexing path of life

Our wandering footsteps guide;

Give us each day our daily bread,

And raiment fit provide.

4 O spread thy covering wings around,

Till all our wanderings cease,

And at our Father’s loved abode

Our souls arrive in peace.

PRAYER OF PREPARATION
Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open,
all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden:
cleanse the thoughts of our hearts
by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit,
that we may perfectly love you,
and worthily magnify your holy name;
through Christ our Lord. Amen

PRAYERS OF PENITENCE

We recall our Lord’s command to love and in a moment of silence we confess

the many ways we fail to keep his command:

Most merciful God,

Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
we confess that we have sinned
in thought, word and deed.
We have not loved you with our whole heart.
We have not loved our neighbours as ourselves.
In your mercy forgive what we have been,
help us to amend what we are,
and direct what we shall be;
that we may do justly, love mercy,
and walk humbly with you, our God. Amen

May the God of love and power
forgive us and free us from our sins,
heal and strengthen us by his Spirit,
and raise us to new life in Christ our Lord. Amen.

THE COLLECT

Almighty God,

whose only Son has opened for us

a new and living way into your presence:

give us pure hearts and steadfast wills

to worship you in spirit and in truth;

through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen.

FIRST READING – Song of Solomon 2.8-13

The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes,

leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills.

My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag.

Look, there he stands behind our wall,

gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice.

My beloved speaks and says to me:

“Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away;

for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.

The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come,

and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.

The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom;

they give forth fragrance.

Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

HYMN Come down, O love divine NEH 137 – Down Ampney

1 Come down, O Love divine,

Seek thou this soul of mine,

And visit it with thine own ardour glowing;

O Comforter, draw near,

Within my heart appear,

And kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing.

2 O let it freely burn,

Till earthly passions turn

To dust and ashes in its heat consuming;

And let thy glorious light

Shine ever on my sight,

And clothe me round, the while my path illuming.

3 Let holy charity

Mine outward vesture be,

And lowliness become mine inner clothing;

True lowliness of heart,

Which takes the humbler part,

And o’er its own shortcomings weeps with loathing.

4 And so the yearning strong,

With which the soul will long,

Shall far outpass the power of human telling;

For none can guess its grace,

Till it become the place

Wherein the Holy Spirit makes his dwelling.

GOSPEL – Mark 7.1-8,14,15,21-23

Now 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. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”

He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,

‘This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”

Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

SERMON

Look there he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice. My beloved speaks to me: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past and the rain is over and gone.”

Freedom – it’s all about freedom. Release from imprisonment, from behind the prison wall; freedom to love. The narrator of the section of the Song of Songs we heard this morning is inside her parent’s property, kept for safety’s sake, kept for the demands of propriety. Her parents will find her a match, they will decide who the appropriate suitors are to be. But she has other ideas – as does her beloved. It is springtime after all, and they will be together. Her parent’s rules, her society’s rules, designed for the preservation of property rights and the protection of dynasties, are not her rules – not yet anyway. Her dreams have nothing to do with the rules.

Then he called the crowd again and said to them, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come…’

Jesus had a problem with Pharisees. He had a problem with Scribes and Sadducees as well, but today it’s Pharisees. Pharisees believed binding what became known as the Mishnah, a collection of oral sayings and traditions that had been handed down across centuries – from the days of Moses they claimed. The Pharisees taught that to be holy, to be acceptable to God, you had to keep yourself pure, and to do that you had to follow a way of life that conformed to the ancient traditions – which would affect every part of your daily life, especially what you ate and how you ate it. The Pharisaic movement was a renewal movement, aimed at the ordinary people. When the end came and the Temple was destroyed, along with much of Jerusalem, it was the Pharisees that kept Judaism alive, laying the groundwork for a faith based around the synagogue, the scriptures and this oral tradition.

But in many respects the tradition sought to divide – the so called pure from the so called impure, the good Jew from the lax Jew, and – most profoundly of all – Jew and non-Jew. For Jesus the importance placed on the observance of tradition wasn’t just a tedious waste of time, but a dangerous source of division and excuse for downright evil.

But challenging the Pharasaic traditions was one thing, what Mark claimed, though, was even more radical, Mark reported that Jesus had said that ‘People are not made unclean by outward things but by what comes from inside.’ The verses that have been left out of the lectionary passage, 7:17-20, expand on this, pointing to the fact that what enters the mouth passes through the digestive system and out. It is absurd to give it spiritual value. In 7:19c Mark summarises the argument by saying that Jesus was thereby declaring all foods clean.

This can easily be passed off as Jesus’ dismissing Jewish practice, but it is much more than that. Laws about clean and unclean food are firmly rooted in the Old Testament (eg. Leviticus 11). The distinction between clean and unclean is fundamental to the Torah. Here, according to Mark, Jesus is declaring such laws not only invalid, but never valid. They make no sense, he is arguing. They never did. How can such external things affect your relationship with God?

This is as radical and liberal as you can get, indeed neither Matthew nor Luke was particularly happy with what Mark wrote. Matthew revises it thoroughly to reduce it to just a dispute about Jewish scruples and not about scripture. Luke leaves it out altogether. And yet Mark shows that Jesus accepted, healed and welcomed the non-Jew and the non-good-Jew. Mark knew that both Jew and Gentile were welcome in the new people of God, the church.

It is very easy to build barriers around people, convince them they’re different, better, more honest, more noble, better bred. It keeps undesirables out, but more importantly it keeps people in. The more threatened, the more isolated people feel then the more they look to what defines and distinguishes them – sets them apart. This is how they seek to guarantee the survival of their community. We do the same. We make ourselves different and so give ourselves an identity.

Jesus was clear what the identifying feature of the community of his followers was to be. Not the following of a clear code, much less a purity code, not the adherence to ancient Law, but the following of a more difficult, less certain but ultimately more liberating law of love.

If we can achieve that… then spring will truly have come again and the voice of the beloved will be heard, “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past and the rain is over and gone.”

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH
Let us declare our faith in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ:

Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures;
he was buried; he was raised to life on the third day
in accordance with the scriptures;
afterwards he appeared to his followers,
and to all the apostles: this we have received,
and this we believe. Amen. 1 Corinthians 15.3-7

HYMN Now the green blade riseth NEH 115 Noel Nouvelet

1 Now the green blade riseth,

from the buried grain,

Wheat that in dark earth

many days has lain;

Love lives again,

that with the dead has been:

Love is come again like

wheat that springeth green.

2 In the grave they laid Him,

Love who had been slain,

Thinking that He never would awake again,

Laid in the earth

like grain that sleeps unseen:

Love is come again like

wheat that springeth green.

3 Forth He came at Easter,

like the risen grain,

Jesus who for three days

in the grave had lain;

Quick from the dead the risen One is seen:

Love is come again like

wheat that springeth green.

4 When our hearts are wintry,

grieving, or in pain,

Jesus’ touch can call us back to life again,

Fields of our hearts

that dead and bare have been:

Love is come again like

wheat that springeth green.

PRAYERS OF INTERCESSION – Kristin Tridimas

As we start a new week, a new month and a new season, we pray for change in the world. We pray for peace in Gaza, Ukraine and all the troubled places in the world. We pray for a better, greener future with a better balance between man and nature. You have given us a beautiful world; please help us not to destroy it. We pray for our leaders; that they will make the right decisions and not neglect the commandment of God in order to maintain the tradition of men.