Patrick Comerford
We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar. This week began with the Fourth Sunday before Lent (9 February 2025), and Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent are just three weeks away (5 March 2025).
Later today, I hope to take part in both a lunchtime meeting in Wolverton of clergy in the Milton Keynes area and in the evening choir rehearsals in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford, where we are beginning to look at Handel’s Messiah. Before today begins, however, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Mark 7: 14-23 (NRSVA):
14 Then he called the crowd again and said to them, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand: 15 there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.’
17 When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. 18 He said to them, ‘Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, 19 since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?’ (Thus he declared all foods clean.) 20 And he said, ‘It is what comes out of a person that defiles. 21 For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, 22 adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.’
Today’s Reflection:
I have been in two hospitals within the past week, with two consultations in Milton Keynes University Hospital and and an unexpected visit to A&E in University College London Hospital. Distracted from my own concerns, I found it interesting to see how many people are still wearing face masks and sanitising their hands in these places.
It is so easy to forget how we are all wearing facemasks in public places not so long ago, sanitising our hands, and used to having our temperatures taken in many buildings.
The arguments about sanitising our hands and wearing facemasks are a very different order of argument to the arguments in today’s Gospel reading (Mark 7: 14-23) about washing my hands before I prepare food, and about presenting that food with clean cups and plates and knives and forks.
It is so easy for me to look at the people I do not like and then to find passages in the Bible that shore up, that support, that justify that prejudice, and make me feel good because I now feel a little more smug, a little more superior.
And that is precisely the moment when the Jesus of today’s Gospel reading steps in and upbraids me, and calls me a hypocrite.
As we saw with the Gospel reading yesterday (Mark 7: 1-13), in Greek, the word hypocrite (ὑποκριτής, hypokrités) was used for an actor who masked or hid his face. It came to mean someone who plays a part on stage. Because these people did not speak their own words, this label came to mean a pretender, what we call today a hypocrite.
When I speak words taken at random, or taken out of context in the Bible, I need to be careful I am not using them out of context, or condemning people for a fault that is not necessarily theirs, something I project onto them.
Some years ago, I came across this piece of doggerel inside a church porch in Ardmore, Co Waterford:
I was shocked, confused bewildered
as I entered heaven’s door,
not by the beauty of it all,
nor the lights or its décor.
But it was the folks in Heaven
who made me sputter and gasp –
the thieves, the liars, the sinners,
the alcoholics and the trash.
There stood the kid from sixth class
who swiped my lunch box twice.
Next to him was my old neighbour
who never said something nice.
Bob, who I always thought
would rot away in hell,
was sitting pretty on cloud nine,
looking oh so well.
I nudged Jesus, ‘What’s the deal?
I would love to hear your take.
How come these sinners get up here?
God must have made a mistake.
‘And why is everyone so quiet,
so sombre – give me a clue?’
‘Hush child,’ he said ‘they’re all in shock.
They weren’t expecting you.’
If I saw myself the way others see me, I would be less reluctant to open my mouth so often.
But the Church is full of people who continue to judge others – even other members of the Church – and justify their judgmentalism with passages of Scripture they quote out of context, sometimes even claiming passages of Scripture that simply do not exist.
And it is not just about washing hands and pots and pans. If it was only that, it might be funny.
There are people who condemn people for their sexuality, they look down on people because of who they fall in love with or marry, they even claim to uphold Biblical standards of marriage. But David, for example, offered no Biblical standards of marriage; and . Solomon, who had 700 wives and 300 concubines, hardly offered a Biblical standard of marriage either.
I find it quite shocking, yet it seems inevitable, that many people in the Church use arguments about sexuality, bolstered with phrases such as ‘Biblical standards of marriage,’ to express prejudices about sexuality. Some even remain opposed to women being ordained priests and bishops.
This is using another voice, another set of words, Biblical quotations, to express what is not in the Bible; the very origins of the word ‘hypocrite’ in the classical Greek and in this reading readily come to mind.
In the Church, there can be no discrimination against people in ministry based on gender, age, sexuality, ethnicity or language, for God knows no such discrimination.
I too easily become a hypocrite when I use the words or behaviour of others to condemn them, without having the courage to say exactly where I stand.
Father Tikhon (Murtazov) was a much-loved Russian spiritual guide who died in 2018. A nun, Sister Olga (Schemanun of Snetogorsk Monastery), recalled how he welcomed everyone who came to visit him and who asked for his guidance and prayers.
Amazed at his kindness, she asked him one day: ‘Why don’t you refuse anyone? You bless whatever they ask of you.’
‘We’re in difficult times now,’ he said. ‘It’s better to sin by love than by strictness.’
We should worry as much about making careless wounding remarks as much as we would worry about preparing food unhygienically.
Can you imagine how much more positively people at large would view the churches if every parish and church put as much care into seeing that our children are not abused or infected with racism or discrimination or hate as much as we put into seeing we have sanitised our hands, were wearing colourful facemasks a few years ago, seeing that the cups are clean for the tea and coffee after church on Sunday morning – or even as much as we attend to the cleanliness of the sacred vessels used for the Eucharist or Holy Communion?
Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 12 February 2025):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Founders’ Day.’ USPG and SPCK are celebrating ‘Founders’ Day’ in Saint James’s Church, Picadilly, next week (Monday 17 February 2025). This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Reflection by Dr Jo Sadgrove, Research and Learning Advisor, USPG.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Wednesday 12 February 2025) invites us to pray:
Father, teach us to honour truth, and lead us in writing new stories of justice, humility, and reconciliation.
The Collect:
O God,
you know us to be set
in the midst of so many and great dangers,
that by reason of the frailty of our nature
we cannot always stand upright:
grant to us such strength and protection
as may support us in all dangers
and carry us through all temptations;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Go before us, Lord, in all we do
with your most gracious favour,
and guide us with your continual help,
that in all our works
begun, continued and ended in you,
we may glorify your holy name,
and finally by your mercy receive everlasting life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Lord of the hosts of heaven,
our salvation and our strength,
without you we are lost:
guard us from all that harms or hurts
and raise us when we fall;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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