09/01/2024

I am going to start this Sunday’s sermon by talking about Christmas. Do you think it’s too early? It’s the first of September and our offspring have already begun sharing photographs of Christmas displays in the family chat. So, I know that, according to Cadbury’s, it is now the season for us to get our secret Santa organised. I wonder how many of us are quietly feeling smug in the knowledge that as Christians we know that Christmas doesn’t start until late December. Our party will just be getting started on Christmas Day; whilst those in the secular world will be preparing to take down their tired decorations and drag their empty purses out to the sales having missed out on the real meaning of Christmas. Poor things! Or perhaps our reaction is more one of irritation. Do we fear that Christmas is becoming debased into a time of excessive shopping, partying and shallow sentimentality? I’ll leave that thought with you for now. We’ll come back to it. It’s time to focus on the gospel. This Sunday’s gospel reading challenges us to think deeply about misinterpretation and cultural difference. We live in a world where cultural differences often result in misinterpretation, stress, and even violence. So, this is worth wrestling with. Let’s turn to the passage itself. It describes how a group of southern Jews misunderstand the behaviour of some northern Jews who are culturally different. These southern Jews come up from Jerusalem to gather around Jesus. They are particularly religious and keen to debate. They soon notice that some of Jesus’s followers don’t ritually wash their hands before eating. This is a cultural difference. Jesus and many of his followers are from Galilee. They are northern Jews who don’t have a strong tradition of ritual washing. However, as Mark explains, all Judeans (that is southern Jews) do ritually wash before eating. These southern Jews are convinced that their way is the normal way and that the northerners who do things differently are lacking. When they question Jesus about this different behaviour, the wording of their question is judgemental rather than genuinely open. They have clearly already made their mind up and think that they are superior. So, Jesus responds in a very challenging way. (We get a filleted version in our reading.) It is easy for us to recognise the narrowness of the southerners’ viewpoint. Ritual washing isn’t something that bothers us much in twenty-first century Europe. Ritual washing isn’t washing with soap for hygienic reasons. It is pouring plain water over something whilst saying a prayer. The only time that you are likely to see any ritual washing this week is during the Offertory hymn. If you look closely, you will see Father Richard ritually wash his hands as he prepares to say the Eucharistic prayer. It is a way for the priest to acknowledge that we can only pray the Eucharistic prayer in God’s grace and strength. And it is done quietly. It is not easy for us to recognise our own narrowness when we see others ignoring practices that we believe are important, normal, and right. Think back to our opening discussion of Christmas. Is Jesus ordering us to give up on our Christian Christmas and other Christian practices? ! No more than Jesus ordered the southern Jews to stop ritual washing. What Jesus does order the southern Jews to do, is to focus their judgement on themselves rather than others. To consider the reasons why they do what they do, the impact of what they do, and spirit in which they do it. To keep the focus on what is important to God and not let it get crowded out by other concerns or habits. As our society becomes more secular, (and it is becoming more secular) the cultural gap between Christians and those who are not churchgoers is getting greater. Are we going to fall into the natural human temptation to think that our secular neighbours are inferior or even threatening? Or are we going to hear Jesus’s challenge to avoid play-acting? The real dangers to our church life come from within, not from those outside. Will we ask ourselves why we do what we do? Will we examine the wider impact of what we do? Will we be honest with ourselves and God about the spirit in which we act? Will we make space for God to speak through us? This is the work of God, done in God’s grace and strength.