August 25, 2024 Text:  Mark 7:1-13

Dear Friends in Christ,

You have heard the expression “lip service,” and you probably know what it means.  You probably do not know that the expression was inspired by our text for this morning where Jesus quotes from Isaiah.  Paying lip service is saying one thing and doing another.  Remember during Covid when politicians told us we couldn’t get haircuts and then they were sneaking underground for a clip and a perm?  Made you mad, didn’t it?  

Let’s welcome the Pharisees to the party this morning.  They would like you to wash your hands.  And if you don’t, well, you can’t really be a follower of God, because you are not keeping his law.  Throughout Scripture, these men are known for . . . 

“PAYING LIP SERVICE”

Are you a regular hand washer?  Are you as anal about it, as I am?  Every Sunday, after all the handshakes.  Soap and water in the vestry.  Get to the office, wash.  Go home, wash.  Shoot baskets, wash.  In a hospital or nursing home, wash.  I am not trying to keep up with the Pharisees, but I do believe my hand washing is a reason for my many years now of not being sick.  

Ok, you are going to a private audience with Jesus.  What are you going to ask him?  Anybody here going to ask him how to wash before a meal?  Didn’t think so.  You’ll never make it as a Pharisee.  Look what they do.  “The Pharisees and the scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands.’” (v. 5). Jesus’ opponents have completely lost sight of what matters to God.  They have put human concerns before and above what is important in God’s eyes.  

Does Jesus play nice with this question?  No, he calls them “hypocrites” and then he quotes from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, “’This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’” (v. 6-7)  The Pharisees are more concerned about whether people’s hands are clean than whether their bodies have been cleansed of disease by the words of Jesus and whether their hearts have been filled with the peace that Jesus is proclaiming.  That is exactly the sort of thing that happens when we stop asking what is important to God.

For the Pharisees their lips are close, but their hearts are distant.  They are paying lip service to Jesus.  If Isaiah’s words are prophesied about us, and if Jesus’ warnings speak to us, we had better examine our own lips and hearts and heads and hands to see how we are doing.  How have we lost sight of what’s really important?  What traditions of men, what traditions of our own, have we let crowd out God’s Word from its proper place as the Word that demands our total obedience?  

If we say we are followers of the Word but call out our neighbor for dirty hands, what are we doing?  We are paying lip service to our beliefs.  Don’t miss the dirt behind your ears or the dirt in your eyes or the dirt that clogs your heart.  God doesn’t just tell us we are dirty, rather our Lord calls us from human tradition to God’s Word and His priorities.  His voice declares us clean.  He forgives our lip service.  

We pray that the Holy Spirit will help us live this way.  Even young children pick up on telling them one thing and doing another.  Jesus tells us from the cross, “Come to me and I will make you clean.”  Our hypocritical behavior was washed away at Calvary.  We can come into His presence with clean hands and clean hearts.

When I have gone to neo-natal intensive care units, I must wash my hands like a doctor.  Hot water, soap and do it for at least a minute.  Then you glove and gown up to go in.  Those hands are pretty clean, but put them under a microscope and what are we going to see?  A least a few germs.  The cleansing that Jesus gives takes the tiniest microbe away.  His cleansing lasts for an eternity.  He didn’t just pay us lip service, He was obedient to the Father and finished the plan of salvation.  You can walk away clean . . . hands and heart.

Amen.   

August 18, 2024 Text:  Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18

Dear Friends in Christ,

Thomas Jefferson should have been rich.  He was born into a prominent Virginia family.  He married a wealthy widow.  He farmed a lot of land and had a lot of business ventures.  He was President of the United States.  Yet he died deeply in debt, and all his property was sold to pay for it.  How did this happen?

He inherited a large debt from his father-in-law and farming was an uncertain source of income.  People who owed him did not always pay him back.  He spent beyond his means.  His credit was bad.  When he died, he had a debt of $107,000 – millions in today’s dollars.

Money is seductive.  We think if we have enough, we will be secure.  But that is an illusion.  If relying on wealth, sooner or later it will fail you.  After all, you can’t take it with you.

Joshua was aware of this as his death drew near.  He knew he was leaving God’s people a rich and productive land, all of its blessings and promises.   But these comforts and wealth would be worthless and soon lost if Israel forgot the Lord.  Leaving them with a final word from the Lord would, Joshua knew, be a much more precious legacy.

Which G(g)od were they going to serve? 

“HOW CAN WE KEEP OUR VOW TO SERVE THE LORD?”

Israel always struggled in their vow to serve the one true God.  The friends, family, and neighbors of Abraham had invented some 4,000 gods.  At that rate they could serve a different god every day for about 11 years.  Their commitment at times was lacking.

We want to be committed to the God we know.  God the Father who sent His Son to die and rise again to save us.  We know Jesus has freed us from sin, death, and the power of the devil.  We know the Holy Spirit came in our Baptism to make us His sons and daughters.  We love God because He first loved us.  We want to commit to Him.  “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” (v. 15b)

Sounds easy enough, but is it?  How many gods can we create?  10?  100?  1,000?  If we set here long enough, we might come up with 4,000 like the Israelites.  We trust God, but aren’t there times we think He needs our help?  If your trust is not solely on Him in your sticky situations, well . . . maybe that vow is a little harder to keep.

We make poor choices.  We let wealth hold back the offering.  The Saturday night party that has us in no shape for the Sunday worship.  The child’s involvement in an activity where their faith is sacrificed on the altar.  Genetic family that comes before God’s family and fellowship.  Going after our “15 minutes of fame” instead of an eternity with Jesus.

We break our vow with things that will always let us down.  Only God can be trusted not to fail when we need Him most.  Sometimes He can be the last one we turn to in the support system.  “Lord, have mercy.”  Thank God, He does have mercy.

Even though God the Son deserves our complete devotion, he set aside His glory for our sake.  Sent to earth by God the Father, he was born of the Virgin Mary and became one of us.  He lived a perfect life of service to God and neighbor, which God credits to us.  Jesus serves us, by giving his life as a ransom for the many.  When are trust wanes, he carried that to the cross.  When we fail to put Him first in our lives, He forgives through His death and resurrection.  God has been faithful, giving us life and salvation in His name.

By the end of our text, the people have joined Joshua in a pledge to serve this Lord.  They give a confession of faith which tells of the way God had saved them.  

Because Jesus served us, we can serve the Lord.  When tempted to depend on earthly things more than God, The Holy Spirit reminds us through the Word and Sacraments where our true security lies.  When seeing all that God has done for us, we respond naturally to praise God for His love, mercies, and blessings.  When our main trust is in the Lord, and we love God above all things, we want to help others around us.  

Let’s hang it proudly in our homes.  Maybe have it on a poster in our bedroom or a bumper sticker on our car.  The people of Israel fashion their confession after the words of Joshua.  Their commitment to the Lord is the same as his.  We make that same vow today, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

Amen.