Welcome:
Welcome to the service of worship for the 29th August from Craigmillar Park and Reid Memorial parish churches in Edinburgh. This week we will be reflecting on the place of tradition in our life of faith.
Call to Worship (Psalm45: 6):
Your throne, O God, endures for ever and ever.
Your royal sceptre is a sceptre of equity;
you love righteousness and hate wickedness.
Let us worship God.
HYMN 100 O lord, thou art my God and King (Psalm 145)
(from Grace Reformed Church, Dunnville, Ontario)
Prayer
Heavenly Father,
we gather to worship you, and glorify your holy name.
As the Psalmist wrote,
“we will thank you forever, because of what you have done”.
You created the heavens above and this world of beauty world below.
How can we not praise you and be thankful for each new day?
You made heaven and earth and all that is within it blesses your holy name.
There are many troubles in your world;
there are storms, and violence, and disease.
There are those who seek to destroy and hate,
rather than build or love.
Through our times of hurt, or fear, or trouble,
we know we always have you to sustain us
to comfort us, and to guide us.
You alone, our God, are worthy of our praise and adoration.
As we worship together this morning,
let us lift our voices with alleluias and songs of joy.
May we hear your word
and have our hearts and minds transformed
to be your disciples.
All this in the name of your son, Jesus, the Christ.
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Save us from the time of trial
and deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours
now and for ever. Amen.
Scriptures:
James 1: 17-27
Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfilment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.
You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.
But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror, for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.
If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.
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.’
HYMN 543 Longing for light, we wait in darkness
(from Frodhsam Methodist Church)
Reflection:
Each of today’s readings speak of what it means to live a life of faith and how that impacts upon the way we interact with God and other people.Our first one, from James, is in some ways a difficult one to deal with because it says so much in a few short verses. It offers no fewer than fourteen pieces of advice on how to live a life of faith, any one of which could be the subject of a sermon. Think of this passage as James setting out the ideas that he will develop later in his letter.
What is important, though, is that James sets out patterns for living a Christian life. Like all patterns the motive can often be lost so that what remains is the practice. The risk with this is that it can turn to tradition or habit that is observed for its own sake. It is this that Jesus engages with in our Gospel reading; it is this that matters to us today. What are our habits or traditions and what do they say about our faith?
We all have habits. Perhaps they are good ones, or perhaps not. Were you ever told off for having one of the less acceptable ones such as biting your fingernails? Or perhaps, if you are of a certain age, you had an ‘Abbey habit’. But what if the habits, or traditions, are ones that impact directly on the lives of others? What if they say something about our faith? Do our habits or traditions attract people or scare them away?
For almost eighteen months we have lived through a time where hand hygiene has been even more essential for survival than usual. You may be tempted to think this is what the Pharisees and scribes were getting at. If it had been then they would have had a point when they criticise the disciples for eating without first washing their hands. Their concern though was not in the interests of good health but in the fulfilment of ceremonial cleanliness. They had codified thousands of rules which would make or keep a person ritually clean and washing hands in a certain way before a meal was one.
Jesus responds to them by calling them hypocrites. He quotes from Isaiah the passage where the prophet complains against those who practice the rituals of religion without allowing it to transform their lives into ones of discipleship. This isn’t simply an issue for the time of Jesus; it is also one that is pertinent to us. Over the centuries many in the Church were left with the impression that faith simply boiled down to a set of rituals and practices that, if performed correctly, didn’t need to affect lifestyle. Jesus clearly warns against the risk of falling into that trap. Religious practices are good if they help turn us towards God and others. But it is vitally important that our practices or traditions do not become the be all and end all of religion. Our faith is so much more than religious observance.
Jesus turns from the religious leaders to the wider crowd, making a statement that would have shocked them. He said, “there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” Jesus goes against tradition and scriptures which make provision for what foods and objects are clean or unclean. Instead, he declares that it is the heart that makes someone clean or unclean.
The crowd had lived with these teachings and practices for generations. Now Jesus says that’s not what really matters. It must have been a lot to take in. Do we, like the crowd, have traditions and practices we hold dear? Do we have observances that stretch back over the generations and which we would find difficult to move beyond? Do we have places that have become more sacred to us than the God whom we worship? If we do, Jesus may also be proclaiming to us that, ultimately, they don’t really matter!
It would be wrong to see Jesus’ words as simply an attack on tradition. This is always tempting for those of us from parts of the Church that play down the place of ceremony. We all have traditions irrespective of whether these are explicitly acknowledged or not. The challenge is to keep them in perspective. The challenge is not to let them hinder a living relationship with God, but to reinforce it. In this time of change we must also consider what traditions to hold on to. What ones will we allow to evolve and take forward from our past to whatever form the Kirk takes tomorrow?
Two thousand years ago Jesus called both the Pharisees and the crowd back to their relationship with God. That relationship shows itself in the attitudes which transform us inwardly and which are exhibited in how we behave. Our faith, our religion, is a radical commitment affecting our whole life.
Amen.
Prayer for the World
God our Creator,
you made us to be sisters and brothers in Christ;
hear us as we lift our hearts in prayer for all those in need.
We bless you for the fellowship of the church family
gathered around us as we meet in this house of prayer and worship;
may we honour you with our lips, our hearts and our lives.
We pray for peace in the world, especially in Afghanistan.
We pray for a time when war will cease,
and weapons transformed into tools for growth.
Strengthen us to work for justice;
give us the wisdom to speak only truth;
make us examples of living by peace and love.
We bless you for our friends and neighbours,
and those with whom we share our daily lives.
We thank you for all the joys and blessings of life.
Aid us when we quarrel, or fall out,
to quickly put things right and forgive one another.
Loving God we lift before you all whose lives are restricted.
We remember the chronically ill, those in constant pain,
those who are depressed and despairing.
We pray in silence for those whose names lie heavy on our hearts.
(Short Silence)
Loving God we pray for those whose hearts have been saddened by death.
Aid us to experience the comfort of your Holy Spirit within us,
and the fellowship of the church family around us
until we are reunited once more in your heavenly kingdom.
(Short Silence)
Faithful God, we now ask for the blessing of your presence in the week ahead.
We pray that you will guide us, guard us and keep us safe in all we do and say.
Merciful Father, accept these prayers for the sake of your Son,
our Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Amen
HYMN 489 Come down, O love divine
Benediction:
As you go from this place,
be the eyes that see beauty afresh;
be the ears that are quick to listen;
be the mouths that are slow to speak
and be the hands that act in compassion.
And as you go,
may the blessing of God Almighty,
Father, Son, and Spirit Holy,
be with you all,
now and always.
Amen.
Sung Amen
Acknowledgements:
Bible Quotations taken from: New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
English translations of The Lord’s Prayer, © 1998, English Language Liturgical Consultation (ELLC), and used by permission. www.englishtexts.org