Playing in the Dirt

Series: Pentecost

Speaker: The Rev'd Emily Griffin

St. Alban’s, DC – 9/2/18 – The Rev’d Emily Griffin
Song of Solomon 2:8-13, James 1:17-27, Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

I thought cleanliness was next to godliness. What’s so wrong with keeping our hands clean? The Pharisees have a point in today’s Gospel. On the surface, Jesus’ response to them seems harsh, if not downright unhygienic. These “traditions of the elders” that Jesus apparently quibbles with could just as easily have come from the Health Department. Wash your hands before you eat. Make sure your dishes are clean. Who are these followers of Jesus anyway, not washing their hands – a bunch of junior high boys who can’t bother to bathe?

We don’t really know what they were thinking. Jesus doesn’t answer the Pharisees’ question directly – because it’s not their real question. He’s their target. They’ve heard about him playing fast and loose with Sabbath rules. They know he touches lepers and eats with outcasts – doing everything he seemingly can to be ritually unclean. But rather than let them scapegoat his disciples, Jesus holds up a mirror to them. Those who are most concerned with other people’s purity usually have something of their own to hide. Don’t worry about what others are doing or not doing, he says; look inside your own heart.

There are some who say we shouldn’t worry about having clean hands at all. Things get done by people who get their hands dirty. Pretending we have clean hands only makes us more dangerous. It’s those who stand on the sidelines with their pretensions to moral superiority who make the most noise and do the least good. The parallels to our political life are only too obvious and can be stated in other places; let’s try another image this week.

How about gardens? They don’t magically grow on their own. They need to be planted and cultivated by people who are willing to get dirty. They need to be weeded before they’re harvested, and weeds can only be pulled by those who get close enough to know what’s what. I’m not much of a gardener, but I’m told there’s pleasure in helping things grow. The non-fluorescent light, the unconditioned air, the smell and beauty and taste of things you’ve planted yourself; unlike so many areas of our lives, gardens produce tangible results. Think about how much we’d miss if we weren’t willing to sacrifice our clean hands once in a while. There’s a difference between playing dirty and playing in the dirt, I guess.

The problem is – we don’t always realize how dirty we’ve become; for that, we need a mirror. Mirrors aren’t always welcome. Knowing what we really look like can be as scary as knowing how much we really weigh. We don’t want to know how much we’ve changed, how much reality differs from how we remember ourselves when we felt young and strong and invincible. If we’re forced to look, we suffer a passing glance and pray for more forgiving light next time.

That’s where our reading from James comes in. He tells us that hearers of the word “are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.” But those who look into what he calls the law of liberty and persevere – they’ll be blessed in their doing. How exactly does the law bring liberty? Doesn’t it control us by telling us what to do and what not to do?

We forget sometimes that freedom isn’t the same thing as license. By looking long and hard into the mirror of God’s Word and asking for forgiveness, we’re freed from the traps of self-righteousness and the constant need to justify ourselves. We can stop worrying about covering our tracks and masking our pain all the time and can find grace to finally make a new start.

Believe it or not, there are benefits to looking into what singer Elvis Costello calls the “deep dark truthful mirror.” With the Father of lights as our light source, it’s not possible to stand in more forgiving light. Besides, mirrors can’t really do their job in the dark. What does that mean? Well, it means, among other things, that our darkest moments of sorrow and regret and despair might not be the best times to see ourselves clearly. It’s just as possible to exaggerate our faults as it is to lowball them. We’re not always in the best position to see our weaknesses or our strengths. We might need to let ourselves bask first in the full light of God’s mercy and love before we’re ready to start yanking the weeds, or what James calls the “rank growth of wickedness” in us.

Of course, those of us who don’t like our reflections don’t always avoid mirrors. Sometimes we’re obsessed with our image instead. There’s a danger in too much self-reflection, though. It can paralyze us and stop us from doing anything important or real. That’s one of the problems with mirrors; they capture moments pretty well, but they can’t capture everything we’ve been or what we’ll become. Sometimes we need to step back and remember what’s brought us to this moment – and then step away and act in hope for what we’ll become.

That’s why it helps to have more than one mirror, I think. As people made in the image of God, we can serve as mirrors for each other – reflecting the light and love, as well as the challenge, of God. I don’t know who your best mirrors are – it could be your spouse, your best friend, a colleague, a parent, your child. They may be or may no longer be with us, but that doesn’t change the role they’ve played in shaping you. As mirrors, we can help each other with our blind spots and the faults that are too close to see. But we can also point out the truth and goodness and beauty in each other – things that can be impossible to find on our own. We can push each other to risk more when playing it safe might be easier but certainly isn’t smarter or healthier. We can get our hands dirty together.

I spent some time this week trying to figure out how our first reading, that old wedding staple from Song of Solomon, could possibly fit with our other readings. What does “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away” have to do with what we’ve heard so far? It’s not about introspection or laboring for the Lord. Not that those things are unimportant; it may have taken a great deal of work for those flowers to appear on the earth, for those vines to give off fragrance. But that’s not what this good news is about. No, this is about the power of our God-given beloveds to take us away from our self-obsessed mirrors, to help us stand out in the open light and air and breathe. Purity before God here isn’t about what we don’t touch, what we don’t eat, what we don’t experience – it’s about how we allow ourselves to enjoy all the good gifts that God has given us. So, on this Labor Day Weekend, when there’s always more to do, in this last pause before the oncoming train of September, I invite you in our customary silence, to give thanks by name for the mirrors in your life who’ve reflected the love of God and the challenge of Jesus to you, who’ve helped you over time to step back and step away, who’ve helped you play and rejoice. Who knows? Perhaps clean hands are overrated. Amen.