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First
Reading
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Psalm |
Epistle |
Gospel |
Deuteronomy 4:1–2, 6–9 |
Psalm 15 |
James 1:17–27 |
Mark 7:1–8, 14–15, 21–23
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When I visited my great aunt’s summer house among the Amish farms of Lancaster County, as soon as I arrived after the long car ride, I loved to race through a grove of young oak trees and across a meadow to the banks of Mill Creek, a lazy, placid body of water that seemed to meander around every cow pasture of every farm in the vicinity before it dumped its chocolate brown water into the larger Conestoga. Along its banks grew my favorite tree, a huge old willow. Watered by the rich water that slowly and silently passed so closely by, it had a substantial girth about the size of this pulpit, and was partly hollow inside so that a small boy like myself could climb around it to the creek side and easily hide in its cavity. The tree was clearly the undisputed king of the creek bank, towering over all the rest of the trees that grew along its winding course for miles in either direction. One year, however, when I raced out of the car to hug my favorite tree, I discovered only the remains of a jagged stump of a trunk, barely higher than myself. The rest of the tree was gone. Sometime in the past eleven months, its roots had given way or it had received a fatal strike of lightening or its hollow trunk had gotten too weak to support its tall frame that broke away from the bank, tumbled into the creek, and eventually was washed away in a spring flood, with only a sad monument to what had been a sentinel for many decades. I was crushed. How could this have happened to my tree!
Of course my great aunt and any other adult for that matter would not have been so shocked. The creek had been wearing away the bank and cutting into the soil around the tree’s roots for years. The tree was already leaning more and more over the bank, and its hollow cavity was a sign that it was also decaying from within. Even while growing taller it was, in reality, getting weaker and weaker.
After delivering the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told a parable about a house built on sand that was washed away in a flood, and a house that withstood a flood because it was built on a foundation of rock.1 I wonder if the children’s story about the three little pigs, one who built a house with straw, one who built a house with sticks, and the third who built a house with bricks was taken from Jesus’ parable.
Today’s Gospel, condemning singular adherence to outward appearance, is one of the applications of all these lessons. Obviously, outward appearances give some indication about what’s inside and vice versa. Jesus is not belittling how we conduct ourselves in public or saying we should not practice good sanitary and personal habits. Jesus’ parable is not about sanitation, just as the story about the three little pigs is not about building codes requiring every structure be made of brick. Of course how we appear and behave does reflect to a certain extent the type of person we really are. Yes, to be sure, appearances are an important part of us.
However, Jesus warns that appearances in and of themselves can be deceiving. It’s a lesson we usually learn again and again. Con artists depend precisely on that weakness. If we neglect doing an inner housecleaning of ourselves, if we don’t ever bother to pay attention to the ethical questions concerning our behavior, if we go through life only concerned about how we will look to others, then we are likely to become vessels, polished on the outside, but rotten as all get out on the inside. If we are just impressed with and become dependent upon the surface looks of the present moment with no thought of deeper and longer implications, ultimately we are likely to be as disillusioned as a young boy who always depended upon his tree to be there because it was so large and met his needs of fantasy so perfectly.
For people of faith, checking on our roots, taking care of our foundations, repairing and nourishing what’s inside us is even more important than admiring our polish or, as it were the strength of our fine branches. Indeed the lasting health of our polish and the strength of our branches depend on what is not readily seen. I think that’s a good lesson for all of us, whether we find ourselves at Cornell, Ithaca, Boynton, Dewitt, Beverly J. Martin, South Hill, or even at White Eagle choir camp.
1 Cf. Matthew 7:24-27, Luke 6:47-49
And I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.
