The Pursuit of Purity

sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA

by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 17B, September 2, 2018

Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9;  Psalm 15;  James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

As most of you know, my family recently spent a week in Japan with my brother Seth and his family. For several days, we explored Tokyo and several other nearby cities, and we found no shortage of Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Of course, as I am a religious professional, these were places of particular interest to me.

At the entrance to each Shinto shrine was something resembling a large water trough containing many ladles. Seth showed us the practice that is expected here: you use a ladle to cleanse your hands with water. Then you touch some of the water to your lips to cleanse those as well. Then you wash your hands one more time and say a prayer. I did so, approaching the shrine in the full confidence that all of us seek a connection with the one God.

I thought about this ritual, and I thought about the fact that most religions seem to have developed rituals of purification. The Israelites’ temple in Jerusalem featured a large pool for the priests’ purification before approaching the inner sanctum. Muslims wash their hands and feet five times daily before prayer. And, of course, Christians become Christians through the waters of baptism, a rite which can be described as a cleansing from sin. I got curious about these practices and tried to think of a few examples from the Bible of people seeking to purify themselves before God.

When God first called him into service, the Prophet Isaiah protested, “I am a man of unclean lips, and I come from a people of unclean lips.” Rather than settle for this excuse, God sent an angel with a hot coal to touch Isaiah’s lips and purify them.

Have you ever put a needle in fire in order to sterilize it? The Prophet Malachi described God’s presence in similar terms, as a refining fire—or as soap. God kills germs. But there is anxiety here: Malachi asks, “Who can stand when he appears?” In other words, who doesn’t have germs that need to be killed?

When Peter the fisherman saw Jesus walk to his boat on the water, he fell down and cried, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”

And St. Augustine, the 4^th-century theologian renowned for giving us the concept of original sin and also known for his sexual misadventures and hangups, once prayed: “God grant me chastity and continence—but not yet!”

Why is religion so concerned with purity? What is purity anyway, and what is it for? Who has it, and who doesn’t? What consequences do we fear when we fail to maintain it?

There’s something about being in the presence of the Holy, of the One who made us all—when we’re in that space, we don’t feel worthy to be there in all our imperfection. We feel the need to purify ourselves. This is why we pray the Collect for Purity at the beginning of the Eucharist. This is why some people fast before church, or dress up in their “Sunday best.” And it’s why Roman Catholics go to the confessional booth before daring to receive Holy Communion. We ourselves take that step within our liturgy by reciting a general confession just before the Peace.

Somehow these rituals make us feel a little more prepared for the holiness we’re about to encounter. To some, they may seem like empty rituals—how could they actually accomplish what they set out to do? I think the answer is that they will if we’re ready to let them. We want at least to try to do be morally good. We don’t appreciate those who don’t try to be morally good. But what does this even mean?

Our Collect of the Day has us praying that God will “increase in us true religion.” The reading from Deuteronomy advises diligent observance of the Mosaic Law, and today’s psalm sings of people who lead “a blameless life” and who do “what is right.” Purity in these contexts is marked by honest speech, lack of contempt for others, rejection of what is wicked, and indifference to the lure of money. In the Letter of James, purity means a bridled tongue, a refusal to let our anger get the better of us, and proactively doing good works toward those who are most in need.

So in the Bible, purity has both a personal and a communal aspect. It’s about practicing self-control, and it’s also about actively working for social justice. To be “stained by the world,” on the other hand, is to be driven by the pursuit of wealth and the hatred and contempt of other people. Money is mentioned in particular because of the unique power it gives us to abuse others.

Now let’s take all of these things and keep them in mind as we hear today’s Gospel proclaimed. The Pharisees fastidiously observe the traditional Jewish rituals of purification, which is all well and good, but then they criticize Jesus and his disciples for not doing so. Now, I figure that Jesus’ disciples were observers of these purity rituals, just as the Pharisees were. I might just be making this up, but I imagine that in this case Jesus has urged his disciples not to wash, just this once, in order to be provocative. When the Pharisees take his bait, Jesus quotes the Prophet Isaiah to excoriate them: “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”

In other words, the washing is all well and good, but Jesus objects to hypocrisy: doing the outwardly holy thing while quietly pursuing that which is abhorrent. Jesus names a whole laundry list of behaviors to which he assigns “evil intentions.” If you’re going to do these things anyway, says Jesus, then what are you washing for? Meanwhile, anyone can fail to wash but still do good works—and these are the ones whose intentions will be honored. Jesus is decoupling purity rituals from actual purity.

This is in keeping with everything the ancient prophets of Israel and Judah preached. Their main concerns were with the futility of idolatry and the moral demands of social justice. Purity could be found in dedication to the One God, but not merely in the externals. Performing your rituals “the correct way” may well help you. God doesn’t need that; you do. But if you have food while your next-door neighbor is hungry, you have no right to criticize your neighbor’s failure to “do it right.”

I see a couple points of tension here. One is that purity isn’t simply about keeping your head down and privately following rules. We’re not meant to be navel-gazers, but active participants in God’s world. This means that while we are not to nit-pick others hypocritically, we still need to deal with evil. I think this is the problem the Roman Catholic Church finds itself in right now. There has been a decades-long cover-up of evil behavior, and it looks more and more like it goes all the way to the top. It’s truly abhorrent. Worse yet, the cover-up has been perpetuated in the name of forgiveness. But if someone else sins against you, I have no right to order you to forgive them! Now there needs to be a whole lot of painful truth-telling, and those who have done evil things need to be brought to justice. Until this happens, all the true riches of the Roman Catholic tradition will continue to be poison for millions of people.

And this leads to the other point of tension: Rituals of purity are not required for salvation. But that doesn’t mean that we can avoid the consequences of our actions. We all know what justice is. When someone has committed evil, we want them to know it! They should not be able to escape the full knowledge of the effect they have had, and there should be a way for them to pay a price for it. Of course, if we’re being fair, the same goes for us.

My image of God’s judgment is that when our lives are complete, God shows us all the consequences of all of our actions. We see—no, we experience—the effect we have had on others, from the best to the worst, in full relief. But then, in an instant, God forgives it all. How would you feel if this happened? It may be that being forgiven—even though we don’t deserve it—feels like hell, or at least like a very painful purgatory. But if we have prepared ourselves through the pursuit of purity—which includes the practice of forgiving others—we may find our own forgiveness easier to bear.

So there’s nothing wrong with pursuing purity. It is doomed to fail. But maybe this failure is more helpful to us than success. From the Cross, Jesus taught us that God works wonders through failure. C.S. Lewis, in his autobiography Surprised by Joy, wrote that a vital part of his path into mature Christian faith was trying, and failing, to be pure—and then reckoning with the consequences—and then coming to a deeper understanding of himself as a forgiven sinner.

All this is to say that there is no place in our lives too impure for God to tread. No moral failing can keep God out. The psalmist cries, “Lord, where can I go from your presence?” God is with us in our joy and in our tears—in our successes and in our failures—in our good works and in our worst sins.

Another name for the pursuit of purity is sanctification: becoming more and more like God, two steps forward, one step back. Or even one step forward, two steps back. When we do good works, God blesses our efforts. When we fail to do so, God is with us in our sorrow and anxiety. We are always given another chance to “welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power” to save our souls.

And when we fail whatever purity test others place on us, God is there too, whispering, “Don’t listen to them! I love you as you are. There is literally nothing you can do to make me love you less.” Amen.