Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost (17B), September 2, 2018; The Rev. Susan Ackley

Here we are, you and I, at the official beginning of Pam’s sabbatical.

Pam left us with a particular intention for this three months so that it might be a time for her and Emmanuel to walk paths, not precisely parallel, but definitely meandering under the same stars.

We don’t have anything new to produce during this time. No numerical goals, no physical structures. Of course Emmanuel will continue to flourish in the abundance of ministries it sustains, including the new one of ‘Crèche” But the sabbatical for us is not about pressure to produce anything shiny new thing to show Pam when she gets back.

Our meander with Pam this fall takes us into a distinctive spiritual landscape. The features of this landscape are five qualities, symbolized by the Middle Eastern figure, the Hamsa.

The five qualities are Generosity, Strength, Blessing, Well-Being, and Replenishment. Let’s take a moment and let the feelings evoked by these words roll around in our heads and hearts for a minute. Generosity . . … Strength … Blessing … Well-Being … and Replenishment.

In that spirit, I want to look at today’s Gospel from the point of view of replenishment.

This is a classic Gospel disputation story in which Jesus comes out victorious in an argument his frequent argument partners, the Pharisees.

Now, if  you’ve attended Emmanuel Church for any length of time, you are aware of who the Pharisees really were, as opposed to a literary foil for the Gospel writers.

As a sect within first century Judaism the Pharisees advocated a thoughtful, public living out not only of the laws in the Torah, but also the so-called traditions of the elders, codified in volumes of teachings. For them, it was important for Jews to remember God and Torah in the minutiae of the day.

For example, the practice at issue today–washing hands before eating. Washing hands before before eating is not demanded by the Torah, but had become a “tradition of the elders” to ensure that if someone touched something ritually impure by accident or chance, they did not then eat with impure hands. It was a tradition to guard against violating the laws of Torah. It was also a way to bring to mind God and Torah during the ordinary events of the day.

It is generally thought that despite what the writer of this Gospel says, not all – and possibly not even not most—Jews washed their hands before eating. Jesus’ disciples were not as far out of the mainstream as Mark suggests.

You might have noticed that the Gospel reading in the lectionary today omits a number of verses, 11 verses out of 23, out of the beginning of the seventh chapter. I believe they are crucial to understanding what’s really going in here.

In verses 9-14 Jesus rips into his critics for committing and encouraging a sin against justice.

He accuses them of violating the commandment to honor one’s father and mother. Apparently these men had been avoiding supporting their mothers and fathers by invoking a tradition called Corban, by which something given to God cannot be used in any other way. Jesus says to them, “For Moses said, ‘honor your father and your mother…’ But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, “Whatever support you might have had for me is Corban (that is, an offering to God)—then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, thus making void the word of God, through your tradition you have handed on.”

In this passage Jesus is calling out evil, sins of greed and injustice. He is saying that however often you wash your hands it doesn’t make up for flouting the Torah.

He is laser focused on real evil, real cruelty, real injustice. And he is very clear about its source. As one translator roughly puts it, the source of evil is human and it is vomited out of the human heart.

The evils may be personal or systemic or most probably a blend of both. In the Gospel, in indicting his opponents, Jesus names the intertwined systemic evil of the misuse of power by respected teachers in the interest of personal greed and the cruel consequences of that behavior in the lives of elderly parents.

We all live in this kind of a web – The systemic evil of racist structures infects the young hearts of children of all races in this country and in a multitude of ways distorts individual and communal behavior. Personal hatred flows out in the words and actions of people caught up in who feel justified by centuries of racist thinking.

I don’t know about you but right now I’m feeling weighed down by the cruelty of the separation of refugee children from their parents, and in general a constant whirlwind of hate-filled words and actions.

I feel immersed in the evil done in my name and at the same time I know that something close to hatred bubbles up in my heart.

I feel pretty confident in saying that in general we are all busy people doing our best.

Sometimes all the doing tires us out. We get exhausted physically, mentally, spiritually. We need to be replenished—ah ha!– periodically just to keep on keeping on.

But I know that beyond my ordinary daily work, that this difficult time politically and socially contributes mightily to my sense of being drained.

Coming full circle back to the Hamsa, how do we get replenished? And in thinking about this, I have to say, I see that the Pharisees had a point.

For the Pharisees and the scribes, washing hands wasn’t an hygienic practice, clearly they didn’t know about germs, but one of the ways in every day life to remind themselves of their covenantal relationship with the Holy One, a sign of devotion to the law.

Once when I was telling Pam about how exhausted I got mentally and spiritually  counseling addicts and alcoholics, she advised me to get up wash my hands between sessions to bring me back to myself and Spirit. It became for me a lovely simple way of replenishment in the moment.

Another practice of replenishment that I do several times a day—not enough!—is simply be quiet. Not fill an unscheduled moment by checking my email or news headlines. I just stop, and let silence fill me. Often it feels to me like a wordless prayer, a way of re-connecting with the Loving Source I call God.

Reflection: What replenishes you? Where do you turn for refreshment? Take a minute to think about it… Then ask yourself—do I do these things enough to be able to be re-filled, re-created? Are there other ways I might I open myself to replenishment especially as I’m hurtling through my day?

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