People give evidence that they like things to be pure. A favorite theme is of the poor little rich girl wanting to be loved for herself and not her money. She goes to great lengths to find out, “Do you love me for myself or just for my money?” She’s not alone. We all want to be loved for our own sakes. Our preachers are expected to be truly committed. To think they are in their work for the money is offensive. Our doctors are expected to be single-mindedly dedicated to “my” health. Teachers are expected to love our children first and foremost and wish for them genuine learning.
Today many skills are needed in a President, but none is more desired by the public than honesty. The search for integrity overshadows political issues. We like our syrup to be pure maple. Our soap should be 99.44% pure.
I vividly recall an experience when I learned about purity. In freshman chemistry, we were given urea and told to distill it, boiling off the various components of the solution until, at the proper temperature, only pure water would remain. I had finished my distillation and started to drink the “pure water.” The lab assistant rushed up to me, “No, don’t swallow that!”
“Why not? It’s just water.”
“Well,” he said, “there’re lots of procedures before you can drink it, and we haven’t got to them yet.”
Young people fall madly in what we call “Puppy love,” because from experience we know that life holds out many new experiences for them both. Yet they invest themselves totally in the relationship. Their love will always be pure, undiluted, of the essence. Everything is to be sacrificed for the relationship. People who are responsible for the well-being of these youth rush up and exclaim, “No. Don’t swallow that.”
“Why not? We love each other more than you can ever understand.”
The adult replies, “I’m sure you do, but there are things in life you haven’t seen yet.”
A college freshman was eager to make a friend. Her roommate offered a listening ear and shared deep secrets. The girl felt safe. At last, here was someone with whom she could share everything, so she told everything, believing she had found a pure, undiluted friendship. Life’s experience rushed up to her and cried out, “No! Don’t swallow that.” Sure enough, the roommate went around the dorm telling everything to everybody and laughing about it. The sad but wiser girl discovered that there were “things in life she hadn’t learned yet.”
John and Mable fell madly in love. John declares over and over, “I’ll always be true to you, care for you, put you above everything. I love you more than life itself. I’ll always be true to you.” Theirs is the pure essence of love. Two lives have been miraculously brought together and made one. Then Junior comes along. Junior is one of those unfortunate children who has long-term colic. For months he cries day and night. Poor John, unequipped for playing second fiddle, gets itchy and slips.
Having distilled his life down to Mable, John learns that there is much of life he hasn’t gotten to yet. And, Mable, torn between two demands, learns there’s much of life she, too, hasn’t seen.
Jesus teaches us a great lesson of the faith. Judaism was distilled to two commandments. Jesus had selected them from the Scripture and put them together as others had before him. Here was the essence of the faith, taken from Deuteronomy 6:4 and Leviticus 19:18. As the centuries went by, the prophets and priests and Jesus boiled down over six hundred laws until, at last, only these two remained. The Jews had seen a lot of life before this distillation could be made. A lot of other components of life had been boiled off in the experience of the years.
Like us, the early Jews wanted to guarantee a pure religion. Burnt offerings and sacrifices were to be performed in exactly the right way. If ritual purity were not achieved by precise attention to detail, then additional sacrifices were prescribed to regain purity. When these acts were performed perfectly, the priests and the people were purified of error and could return to proper worship.
Another tradition in search of purity was the effort to gain perfect obedience to the law. There were enough laws to assure believers that, were they to keep them faithfully, pure devotion to God alone would result, undiluted faithfulness, atonement.
Life’s experiences rushed up to the Israelites and shouted, “No! Don’t swallow that. There’s lots we haven’t gotten to yet.” Prophets, priests, and psalmists learned that it was possible to perform the sacrifices precisely and to obey the law with great precision, yet still not be pure in heart. When people did not come to the sacrifice or obey the law with proper personal response to God, they felt unexpected guilt.
Prophets discovered that to use the sacrifices to keep the people under control was nothing more than hypocrisy. Likewise with obeying the law and feeling smugly self-satisfied. And, false prayers and worship were shown, over and over by the prophets, to veil a deceitful heart. Pride could run throughout every possible “pure” act. As life achieved more and more understanding of the ways of God with people and people with God, it became obvious that there was much of life that people had not gotten to and lots of life ahead that people had to get to in order to plunge the depths of right relationship with God.
Since our forebears discovered the difficulty of devising perfectly pure religion how do you and I manage? How do we know that we are right with God so that we can move ahead with a working self-esteem and a goodly sense of being justified in the faith? how do we feel Jesus in our salvation so that we do not keep on in an endless regress of self-examination? We need appropriate answers to these questions if we are to move on with mature confidence and effectiveness and if we are to be happy.
One thing we try, as our forebears did, is to simplify the task. We convince ourselves that if we seek one thing and do our best to stick to it, with a pure heart, we will find redemption. How often people have told us with the best intention, “If only you’d believe,” and we try and try to believe. If it doesn’t work, we resolve to believe harder. “If only you’d keep the Ten Commandments, you’d be pure.” We try, but even here there are subtleties about life that we haven’t gotten to yet. “If only you’d pray.” I recall as a youth going to talk to my pastor when I felt my faith was slipping away. His only counsel was “Do you pray?” Of course I prayed; I prayed all the time. My concern was influencing my whole life. So I redoubled my efforts. The prime instruction, “Read the Bible.” We do, only to come to more confusion than before because of the Bible’s many seeming contradictions. Finally despairing, we think that if only we can guarantee a simple ten percent interest on our savings account for life, we will be secure. Jesus watches us in our twistings and turnings, “No! Don’t swallow that. There’s much of life you haven’t gotten to yet.”
In our Scripture today Jesus is equipping us for making it over the long haul, for keeping the heart of the faith and walking through life with confidence. His teaching is simple: Keep the right relationship with God. Extend that relationship to those whom God also loves. Put your mind, heart, soul, and strength in him. Stop being preoccupied with your own petty purities and distillants. Keep the relationship first above all. Keep your heart and will on the primary concerns of life, God and the others whom he loves equally. Drop the desire for a self-graded performance, “How am I doing?”
We know, for instance, that teachers are not perfect. We know they will never teach the children all there is to know in any one subject. But, we accept imperfections so long as the teachers keep a right relationship with the children. Personal devotion to the children’s good the relationship is crucial. We could make the same care for preachers, doctors, roommates, parents and children. None of us is perfect. We all make mistakes. If the bond is kept, the behavior can be adapted in many ways and understood and forgiven when imperfect. But what we do not and cannot understand, and find so hard to forgive, is when persons misuse us and then cut us off.
A core teaching of the Bible is that righteousness is not perfect behavior, ritual purity, proper feeling in prayer. Rather it is the putting foremost the one God and having no other loyalties to weaken the bond or take his place. Here we have an echo of the First Commandment. We are to have no other gods before God. Jesus receives this commandment as it has been distilled over the centuries. Central to Jesus’ ministry was that there would be no other gods (nor life-consuming passions) than God. We are not to accept substitute gods be they rigid laws, exact sacrifices, or proudful personal piety. We are to keep right relationship with God and all humanity.
Jesus knew that a right relationship takes on a life of its own. God’s presence in us produces its own dynamic. The force moved outward and outward, into the world God created and the creatures with whom he populated it. The relationship empowers and characterizes all our relationships, especially with our neighbors. God loves the world enough to send his Son to save it. I am a part of this world and subject to his saving love.
Realizing that there is no one way for us to be pure, we accept a common seeking and searching with our neighbors. As we accept ourselves, we also love others.
When we are in the process of judging and prescribing limitations to our neighbors Jesus rushes up, “No! Don’t swallow that. There is much that you and your neighbor haven’t gotten to yet.” Keeping a right relationship with God means actively reaching out and drawing our neighbors into the circle.
The great gift in our Scripture today is that perfection is not the essential part of our religion. Rather, it is purity of heart. Perfection can become an idol. We are not to think that there’s only one right way to go about justifying our lives. Justification belongs to God and is his gift to us.
Jesus teaches a simple lesson that deepens and broadens as it touches on the larger aspects of life. Put your heart on God, keep the relationship above all; then you will be free to meet, adapt, and grow with all kinds of new and exciting experiences.