Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them.

(For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.)

So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,

‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”

Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

On Tuesday, I got really angry. I love my son dearly, but Clive will not stop climbing on anything, everything. The chairs, tables, the kitchen counters; he’s sneaking and oddly daring for being my son. Tuesday he climbed on a chair, then on the kitchen table for the 52nd time in the last hour. I was angry and grabbed him off the table and, getting as close to his little ear as I could, told him to stop climbing on the table.

As soon as I let go, he pouted his lip, cried big tears, and I felt terrible. After putting him to bed, I turned on the local news. The first story was about how three children in Indianapolis, five years old and younger, had lost their lives from finding a gun and accidentally firing it. And I thought if I should be outraged about anything, it shouldn’t be my son acting like the toddler he is, but rather that toddlers are losing their lives from completely avoidable situations.

What makes you angry, outraged even? Is it the high cost of living that only seems to be getting higher? Is it that suicide among young people continues to grip our community? Is it that it's easier to get a gun in Indiana than to adopt a pet, in most cases. Whatever the source, what do you do with your anger? For many of us, anger is a motivator, a catalyst in our lives. We hear something, see something, that hurts us or someone we love or experience something that we know isn’t right and we feel compelled to act.

Action, what we do with our lives, is the main concern for both Jesus and James today. And it's tempting to think that this righteous anger, this outrage over something that isn’t right in the world, is a good thing.

It was for Cecilia Munoz; her outrage did a lot of good and got her pretty far in life. The source of her anger came from a dinner she had at 17 with her parents and a close friend. The year was 1980 and the conversation at the table focused on the wars going on in Central America and the involvement of the US.

After dinner, Cecilia’s good friend looked her in the eyes and said that if the US were to ever go to war somewhere in Latin America, he believed that her parents belonged in an internment camp just like the japanese-americans during WWII, because they were immigrants from Bolivia (a central american country).

She couldn’t believe someone who knew her, knew her parents, who sat at their table for meals, could say and believe such awful things about her parents. She was outraged and, as she wrote in an essay, that outrage became the propellant of her life, driving her right into the immigrant rights movement, fighting for people whose story was a lot like her parents. And according to Cecilia, “a little outrage can take you a long way”. It took her to Washington, then to the white house, and even becoming a MacArthur Fellow for her work with helping immigrants.

Isn’t this what James is talking about when he says be doers of the Word, not just hearers?

We hear God’s call to welcome the immigrant and the stranger, to care for the weak and the vulnerable, the orphan and the widow as James puts it, and then we do those things.

That's what God wants from us according to James. Does it matter if anger is the fuel that gets us to do the right thing?

Well Cecilia has a warning, “anger has a way of hollowing out your insides”. For every fifty families she would help, she could only think of the five who didn’t get the documentation they’d hoped for. The defeats were more than the victories, which is often the case with any injustice or problem out in the world. And anger could only take Cecilia so far before it started carving out her soul.

Or as theologian Fredreick Buechner puts it, “Of the 7 deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun… in many ways anger is a feast fit for a king. The main drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you”.

Our outrage at the problems, struggles, and pains of this world are not misplaced. We should get mad when we see our neighbors being harmed, when we witness the misuse and abuse of creation, when we hear the cries of the poor and brokenhearted. Those same things anger God!

Yet, when anger is the source of our action, the fuel for what we do out in the world, it will eat us up. The problems are too great, the struggle too strong, the hurt too deep for anger to be the motivator.

It won’t sustain us for the work that God calls us to nor does it accomplish what God desires, at least that’s what James thinks. Which is why he says we must be slow to anger, because it will feed us for a little while, but then it starts to carve a hollow place in your soul.

Yet what of Jesus, he seems pretty angry with the Pharisees, calling them hypocrites! And what about that other time he flips tables over in the synagogue? What is that if not outrage? Yes this is true, Jesus certainly gets angry. But it’s good to remember or be reminded that we aren’t Jesus and his ways are always higher, better than our ways, Isaiah reminds us. Jesus' concern though is with actions too and what motivates them, just as James is, but from a different perspective.

While James tells us that anger shouldn’t be the catalyst for our actions, Jesus is worried that our actions are simply going through the motions; that we do what’s considered the right thing, but one’s heart isn’t really in it, saying the right words but it’s all lip service. The Pharisees weren’t wrong for following the tradition of washing hands. But, Jesus is angry because they cared more about the tradition than they did their neighbors and God’s instruction to care for them.

Is that not still the same today? We hold to all sorts of traditions, all sorts of ways of doing things, over caring for our neighbors, with one glaring example being gun violence. We hold so tightly to human tradition, this right to arm oneself that we either forget or outright abandon God’s commandments, like don’t kill, love your neighbor, and protect the vulnerable.

It’s not enough to extend thoughts and prayers after the next act of gun violence or mass shooting if we are unwilling to forget human tradition, advocate for gun reform, and hold tight to God’s commandments. If not, it’s all lip service.

So if it’s neither anger nor tradition that motivates our action, what should?

Cecilia Munoz says anger didn’t eat her away completely because that hollow place carved by outrage got filled with other, more powerful things, things like: compassion, faith, family, music and the goodness of people around her. These things filled her up and tempered her outrage with a deep sense of gratitude.

Anger, righteous or not, rarely produces what we want. Clive still climbs on tables after all.

So, what fills you up with a sense of gratitude? What are those things more powerful than anger that sustain your action?

Thanks be to God for every generous act of giving, every perfect gift that comes from God, filling the hollow place hewed by outrage and anger. May we all be so overwhelmed with gratitude for the good, more powerful things of this life: faith, hope, love, family, music, joy, that we can’t help but be doers of God’s word.

Perhaps then we will accomplish not only what we want, but what God wants too.

Amen

John 6:25-35

When they found [Jesus] on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.” Then they said to him, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” So they said to him, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

As many of you know, things are tougher than usual in Haiti these days. Our friends in Fondwa – up in the mountains – are safe, as far as I know, from the political unrest and from the gangs who seem to have overrun so much of life in the neighborhoods in and around the capital of Port au Prince.

But our friends in Fondwa are heavy on my mind these days – and this week, in particular – as it revolves so much around food and abundance and counting our blessings. In the last couple of months there has been a food crisis, even up in the mountains of Fondwa. Even though they’re physically safe from and don’t have to interact with the gangs and the protests and the unrest in the city, all of that has impacted their ability to transport food and supplies and other necessities up the mountain. (Ships haven’t been able to port, gas stations haven’t been able to get or sell gas, people can’t get into or out of the city to move goods and supplies from one place to the next.)

Because of that, Zanmi Fondwa has been trying to raise money – not just for houses, lately – but to help with the resulting food crisis. When Luckner, our Director of Operations in Fondwa, who is also one of the most positive, optimistic, hopeful, humble, faithful people I’ve known says that it’s as bad as he’s seen it, it gets your attention.

So, I’ve been thinking a lot the last few days about the fact that our Haitian friends have told us $40.00 is enough money to buy a household in Fondwa enough rice and oil – and maybe some beans – to feed them for a month. And, if you’ve been to Fondwa, you know that “household” is a nebulous term. It could mean anywhere from 4 to 6 or 8 to 10 or more family members, in many cases. $40.00. Rice and oil. For a month.

The fact that we also chose $40.00 as the price point for our Food Pantry Thanksgiving Meal ministry isn’t lost on me. We gave families who signed up – also regardless of their size – a turkey, a pie, cans of corn, beans, gravy, rolls, potatoes, stuffing, and more. Like my Thanksgiving meal and yours, the quality and calories of that single meal is more than my Haitian friends will consume in weeks.

I’m not poo-pooing any of it. Both are beautiful expressions of generosity and provision. It’s all relative and meaningful. It’s just a healthy, holy, faithful dose of perspective for me as I prepare to eat my fair-share of gratitude on Thursday and to count my blessings in the days to come. And tonight – and this week – and every day that we can manage it, is about taking none of that for granted.

Because the practice of giving thanks from a Christian, faithful kind of perspective isn’t so much about national pride or patriotism. The practice of giving thanks, of counting our blessings, even in the face of sadness and struggle – of acknowledging God’s abundance even in the face of what can feel like scarcity for us or for others – is an act of faith, pure and simple. Gratitude is a Christian discipline that points to God’s power – and our desire to trust that power – whether we’re feeling blessed or burdened at any given moment.

And, while having enough to eat isn’t a struggle for most of us, you and I might feel more blessed by God’s provision or more burdened by its lack, depending on the day. Just in the last couple of days, I’ve prayed to God and had conversations with some of you about successful surgeries and about sad and scary diagnoses; about new, blossoming relationships and about relationships that are struggling; about new life being born and about lives being lost too soon. There are joys and sorrows, challenges and celebrations,¬¬¬ everywhere you look.

And, in tonight’s Gospel, what Jesus seems to be inviting those people to – the ones who were chasing him down all around Galilee – is a holy kind of perspective about life and faith in the middle of it all. He reminds them about how the Israelites – lost and wandering around in the wilderness – were fed with the manna that came down from heaven. And he wants them to know that, in the same way, he has come to feed the world – lost and wandering in our own kind of wilderness, still – with a different kind of bread.

It’s bread that fills us, literally, like so much rice for our friends in Haiti. And it’s a different kind of bread that fills them – and us, too – with the promise of forgiveness and redemption and hope, in spite of whatever sins and sadness and struggle any of us faces from day to day.

It’s no small thing that Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed – to be crucified, killed and buried – “took bread, blessed it and broke it, GAVE THANKS, and gave it to his disciples.” And he did the same thing with the cup – GAVE THANKS, I mean – before sharing the new covenant in his own blood, that was about to be poured out for the sake of the world. Even as he looked ahead to the way they would betray and deny him. Even as he looked ahead to his own crucifixion, Jesus had faith enough to give thanks.

Which is how we’re called to be today, on Thursday, and every day, as God’s people on the planet – find ways to be grateful in the face of whatever comes our way, which is something I’ve learned from the people of Fondwa over the years:

- To give thanks, not just for what we have, but for the Truth that God has us, always.

- To give thanks, not just that God meets our needs, but that God is our only need, really.

- To give thanks, not just that we have been blessed in some way, but that God uses us to be a blessing in return.

- To give thanks, not because all is right with our world, but that God is bigger than whatever is wrong.

- To give thanks, not because we are better off than so many others who have it worse, but to give thanks that whatever and wherever we are in the grand scheme of things can be “enough” – by God’s grace – if we will allow it to be.

- And to give thanks because the discipline of it changes our perspective and it softens our hearts. It turns darkness to light, scarcity into abundance, sorrow into joy, despair into hope, fear into faith – and more – because of God’s deep love for us all.

Amen

Gratitude over Outrage

Joy, Discipline and Perspective of Gratitude