Thomas J Parlette
“Living Cathedrals”
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
8/29/21
I have a riddle for you this morning. What is something that was declared illegal 100 years ago, but is perfectly legal today? I’ll give you a hint – it inspired the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. In what was termed the Noble Experiment, the United States government made it a crime to manufacture, transport or sell alcoholic beverages. From 1920 to 1933 – a period referred to today as the Prohibition Era – all the bars and saloons and liquor stores in the nation shut down – at least “officially.”
What really happened was that the practice of drinking just went underground. For example, in the city of Los Angeles there were 11 miles of service tunnels that became secret passageways to hidden saloons and clubs. In fact, the mayor of Los Angeles at that time helped to supply illegal liquor to these hidden establishments. By 1927, seven years after the passage of the 18th Amendment, there were approximately 30,000 illegal bars or speakeasies in Los Angeles – twice the number of legal bars that had been operating before the law was passed.(1) Seems a bit hypocritical, don’t you think?
Or consider this interesting story. Cecil T. Turner of Louisville Kentucky, a seemingly religious man, was arrested in 2003 for burglary and fraudulent use of a credit card. The sticky-fingered Mr. Turner had obtained the card and several other items by ransacking several women’s purses while they were attending a church meeting.
The curious part of the story though, is the business where Mr. Turner chose to use the stolen credit card. The police traced it back to Christian bookstore in a nearby town, where he had used it to purchase ten copies of a Bible study called “Making Peace with your Past”, as well as a follow-up study called “Moving Beyond your Past.” Seems he was stocking up on resources for his bible study group. When they searched the suspects home, police found receipts for those purchases which clinched the indictment. Again – the hypocrisy of using stolen credit cards to support your bible study habit – hard to believe.(2)
It’s easy to shake our heads in disbelief at these stories of hypocrisy, but to be honest, we all have problems with moral and ethical consistency. We all fail to meet our own standards sometimes. That’s not an excuse, it’s a reality. Somehow our hypocrisy radar fails us when we point it at ourselves. And it’s an especially difficult issue for church leaders. Realistically, if you call yourself a Christian, a Jesus-follower, then you are a leader. Other people will watch you and draw conclusions about the character of God and the authenticity of your faith by how well your words and your actions match up to God’s standards. It’s a tough position to be in.
A few years ago, a young man named Tyler started a controversial Instagram account called PreachersNSneakers. It was controversial because Tyler began posting pictures of prominent, hip young pastors and worship leaders leading worship services while wearing expensive designer clothing and sneakers, worth hundreds or thousands of dollars. Now Tyler is a Christian, he wasn’t looking to cause controversy, but he was concerned about the message that was being sent by these “pastor influencers” who were preaching the message of a poor, humble carpenter while wearing ridiculously priced sneakers. He started questioning, “What is OK as far as optics… as far as pastors wearing pricey designer clothes?”(3)
Our Bible passage for today revolves around a question of proper optics as well. The Pharisees and some teachers of the law noticed that Jesus and his disciples were not following the Jewish laws of ceremonial hand washing before they ate. The Pharisees were concerned about this – surely this invalidated Jesus’ authority as a religious leader! But instead of hanging his head in shame and slinking away, Jesus turned the tables on the Pharisees.
Jesus says, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’ You have let go of the command of God and are holding on to human traditions.”
The great sin of the Pharisees was their hypocrisy. They loved the Law more than they loved the Lord. They cared more about keeping religious rules than knowing and honoring God. They said all the right things, but they weren’t motivated by the will of God. They set a standard for others that they didn’t live up to themselves. And the Pharisees’ hypocrisy was doubly dangerous because it was driving people away from God, as well as getting in the way of their own relationship with the Lord.
Pastor Ron Dunn of Irving, Texas, had an unsettling experience a few years ago when he discovered that there was another man in his small rural town also named Ron Dunn. And this other Ron Dunn was well-known around town for passing bad checks.
Imagine the embarrassment of Pastor Dunn and his wife when store clerks stared cynically at the name on their checks and then refused them service. In this small town, many stores didn’t take credit cards because of the fees, so the Dunn’s had to carry cash everywhere because no one in town would take their checks. Pastor’s Dunn’s wife began going into all the stores and announcing loudly, “We are not the Ron Dunn you are looking for!”
Pastor Dunn wrote of this situation, “Now it’s okay for someone else to have my name; I do not have a copyright on it. But what really disturbed me was the fact that people were judging me by what someone else with my name was doing. I sometimes fear that the reason the world has such a distorted view of Jesus is that he has been judged by what others who carry his name “Christian” have done.”(4)
As followers of Jesus, we carry his name, “Christian”, into the world. What we do reflects on that name. We can listen to a lifetime of sermons, give to charities, and memorize Bible verses, but we can still miss the joy of knowing God. Remember when the Pharisees asked Jesus to name the greatest commandment? Jesus didn’t point to a rule or a religious observance or a church tradition. Jesus pointed to a relationship. He said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Jesus is saying, “God isn’t pointing you toward the Law. The Law is pointing you toward God. Once you understand God and live the way God wants you to, once you love God more than you love yourself, then you won’t need the Law. Instead, your goodness will be replaced by Godliness.”
When some of the great medieval cathedrals were built, like Notre Dame in Paris, most of the population in Europe was illiterate. So architects, sculptors and artists created these amazing cathedrals full of carvings and statues and stained glass windows to tell the story of God through art. They assumed that the average citizen might never read a Bible – but they could “read” the story of God through the images in the church buildings.
And that’s still the best way to spread the message of Jesus. Most people in our society will never read a Bible, or will only read parts of it. So it’s up to us to be “living cathedrals” in our society. Others will read the story of God in the way we live our lives. As James put it in our Epistle reading this morning, “Be doers of the Word, not merely hearers.”
Author Brennan Manning wrote, “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world finds simply unbelievable.”(5) I see his point.
Many years ago, missionary E. Stanley Jones met Mahatma Gandhi. Jones asked Gandhi, “How can Christianity make a stronger impact on your country?”
And Gandhi gave Jones three key insights. He said Christians need to live more like Jesus. Second, he said that Christians must present the message of Jesus without adulteration, or cultural baggage. And finally, Gandhi said, Christians should emphasize love, the core message of the faith.(6) Or, as James says, “Be doers of the word, not just hearers.”
Will Campbell was a Baptist pastor and civil rights activist who passed away in 2013. Campbell was known for his love for the poor, and for putting his faith into action, even when it required great sacrifice. One Sunday, he was preaching at Duke University Chapel. An ice storm had blanketed the area the previous night, but plenty of people showed up to hear the prominent preacher and theologian speak.
But instead of an inspiring and well-researched sermon, Campbell simply said, “Had an ice storm last night. Lots of trees are down. Lots of poor people in this town. Electricity is off, they got no heat. I got my pickup outside, my chain saw and my wood ax. I’m going out to cut some firewood from those trees to help people out. Who’s going with me?”
And then he stepped out of the pulpit and walked out the back doors of the church. And he left a bunch of mystified people sitting in the pews.(7)
Will Campbell didn’t just honor God with his lips. He honored God with his life. When it came time to preach a sermon that would honor God, he preached through his actions, not his words. He was a doer, not just a hearer.
We are all hypocrites. Jesus knew we would be. But he loves us too much to leave us in our hypocrisy. Jesus knew that our half-hearted, insincere faith gets in the way of our relationship with God and drives other people away as well. The source of our hypocrisy is honoring God with our lips when our hearts are far away from God. The cure for our hypocrisy is loving God with all our heart, soul and mind, and loving our neighbor as ourselves. Be doers of the word, not just hearers. Become Living Cathedrals of the Word of God. That’s the only way to move our testimony from our lips to our life.
May that be so for us all. May God be praised. Amen.
1. Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXXVII, No. 2, pg84
2. Ibid… pg84
3. Ibid… pg84
4. Ibid… pg85
5. Ibid… pg86
6. Ibid… pg86
7. Ibid… pg86-87
