"When Form Is Mistaken For Substance"

Sermon Delivered By Reverend Richard E. Stetler – August 25, 2013

Centenary United Methodist Church

Jeremiah 1:4-10; Luke 13:10-17

    One day 8-year old Becky was helping her mother to prepare for dinner when she noticed a habit her mother had developed.  When her mom cut the end off the ham, Becky asked her why she always did that.  Her mother answered, “I don’t know.  I think it’s because that’s what my mother did.  Why don’t we call her and find out?”  While using separate telephones, the two called Becky’s grandmother.  The grandmother said, “I honestly don’t know.  I believe I cut off the ham hock because that’s what I saw my mother do.”

    Fortunately, Becky’s great-grandmother was still alive so they called her to see if the mystery could be solved.  When she heard Becky’s question, she burst into laughter and said, “Honey, I always cut off the ham hock because that is the only way I could get the ham to fit into my cooking pan.  In those days I only had one pan.”

    Most of us have developed everyday patterns by watching how others performed the same tasks as we were growing up.  This morning we are going to explore how unintended consequences can happen when particular patterns are passed from one generation to the next without any guidance or definitions.

    When I was a teenager, I attended a wedding in a Roman Catholic Church.  This was my first exposure to being in a Catholic Church.  After the ceremony extended beyond one hour, I began to wonder who planned the ceremony. This wedding had a sermon, a communion service that Catholics call The Mass, followed by a host of relatives that recited various readings on love and meaningful relationships.   These activities were embedded in the ceremony.

    There was a moment in preparation for The Mass when the priest walked around swinging a container of incense and another moment when he rang a group of bells.  I had no idea what was happening.  What I did know was that this wedding took one and a half hours.

    Later, I was with a group of my high school classmates that attended St. Ambrose, the local Roman Catholic Church in my home town.  I asked them why getting married was so complicated in their church.  To my surprise, they did not know why Holy Communion is called, The Mass.  They had no idea what was being symbolized by the use of incense or the ringing of the bells.  They did not know the background of why each of their families had to eat fish on Fridays.  None of it made any sense to them, but they did it anyway out of habit.

    All of this struck me as being too funny.  I asked, “If none of this makes any sense to you, why does everyone go through the motions as if it does?”   They said, “We don’t know.  All we know is that we have the same experience that you did at the wedding. We could hardly wait for the service to be over so we could get out of there.”           

    Our Scripture lesson this morning describes an incident where Jesus came in contact with a similar issue to the one we have just illustrated.  Religious leaders had become so attached to customs, laws and rituals that they were missing something extremely important: the substance of their religion – the care of a woman who had been in crippled and in pain for 18 years. 

    When Jesus healed the woman of a severe spinal condition, he was challenged by the religious authorities because the healing had taken place on the Sabbath.  The president of the synagogue said, “You have six days to work.  Do your healings then, not on the Sabbath.”  He and others like him were blaming Jesus for breaking one of the Ten Commandments.  (Exodus 20:8f)  The Law stated that the Sabbath must be preserved as a day of rest. Translated, that meant that no one could perform any task on the Sabbath that could be interpreted as work.

    Jesus knew that the rabbis had a strong reverence for the lives of animals.  Even on the Sabbath, it was permissible under the Laws of Moses to untie animals in order to water them.  In essence, Jesus responded, “All of you have such compassion for your animals that you can untie them so they can be watered.  How can you even think that the healing of a woman who has been crippled for 18 years is of lesser value than your animals?”  Whatever else Jesus said to them, they felt ashamed.   

    Perhaps this disconnect between the religious leaders and their people has been present for decades in our own churches. The decreasing number of worshippers in churches in recent times has happened very gradually. For example, during the 1950s and 60s, churches were bulging at the seams with people.  There was a day when Centenary had 80 children in Sunday school.  Those were the days when going to church was an entrenched habit for families.

    Listen again to what my Roman Catholic friends said during that same time period. “We don’t know.  All we know is that we have the same experience that you did at the wedding. We could hardly wait for the service to be over so we could get out of there.” This is what happens when form is mistaken for substance.  Worship had become a habit and not a source of remembering who they were and who they had the potential to become.

    Today, the challenge for most pastors is the same as it was for Jesus.  We have to communicate our spiritual treasure in such a way that people leave a worship experience better prepared to make a difference in the world.   Pastors can work very hard on preparing their sermons, but words do very little when it comes to changing the direction of people’s lives.  I have actually test-marketed this suspicion. 

    There have been Sundays when people have said very complimentary words about my messages.  The very next Sunday, I teasingly asked if they could remember anything that I said in the sermon that they had found so meaningful.  On every occasion, they smiled in embarrassment and could not remember a single idea, theme or illustration.  Goodness, I cannot remember what I said from one week to the next. 

    Jesus experienced this same thing.  He never kidded himself into believing that his ministry really mattered to most people.  They listened to his stories.  They watched him perform miracles, but Jesus knew his listeners seldom understood the meaning behind anything that he did or said.  (John 6:25f)  Jesus, however, knew what people could become if only they experienced the invisible part of themselves. (John 3:10f)  He used his words to point to where the Kingdom of God was – within them.

    People need to experience something that awakens their spirits.  If profound words changed lives, think of it—we have had the Bible for close to two thousand years.  Take a look at the world, or, more specifically, look at the lack of courtesy drivers have on our highways. Changed attitudes do not occur because we hear or read profound words. 

    However, if we had a running conversation with our deceased spouse or had an out-of-the-body experience while on the operating table, our lives become radically changed.  Why? We had an experience that gave us a glimpse into a realm that had previously belonged only to our faith and hope.  After being impacted by an earth-shaking experience, however, we know that there is more to life than we once realized.   

    There was a time when three youth groups from Maryland gathered to make repairs to houses in West Virginia where my church was located.  For five years, teenagers, an architect and professional carpenters refurbished four homes each summer.  The workers were provided lodging by a local college.  The college also gave them breakfast.   The United Methodist churches in our area supplied the lunches and dinners for about 35 workers.     

    I had borrowed a large dump truck from one of our orchard farmers and drove it back and forth to the dump filled with refuse, rotted wood and decaying roof shingles. The experience of one college junior was so profound that she wanted to ride along with me each time I drove to the dump.  Her being among and helping impoverished people had touched her so deeply, she decided she wanted to enter the ministry.  She wanted to talk to me about how to do that.

    What happened to her is the same transformation that happened to a number of people that decided to go to Horseshoe Bay and pick up the trash and litter that some careless Cup Match revelers left behind.  It is life-changing to return a cluttered beach to its pristine condition.  What happens to people?  What is so transforming about picking up litter.

    The mystery of transformation takes place because of what we experience.  This happens when we find ourselves doing something for someone else.  We absolutely love to give.  The results are a cleaned up tourist attraction like Horseshoe Bay or four refurbished homes.  We feel alive.  We feel that our lives have a purpose.  We feel we are doing what God intended us to do—love our neighbors.   

    I do not mean to minimize what we do here on Sunday mornings.  In this world with all its angry, chaotic insanity taking place on our television screens every night, we need to be reminded of our purpose as disciples of Jesus. Going to church helps us to remember our purpose.  We cannot experience the Spirit of God until we connect with our own.

    Like the college student at our construction site, she was overwhelmed by her own compassion for people who lived in an impoverished environment.  She was getting in touch with her generosity, her eagerness to help and her delight in knowing that she was making a difference in the lives of people she had never met.  Perhaps she was experiencing an awakened spirit that provided her with a new dimension to her identity.

    We Christians need to experience a new way to look at other people, new attitudes that improve our own health, that keep smiles on our faces, that help us to give up complaining about anything, and that fill us with gratitude for how truly blessed we are.  We have to experience our creativity rather than to be told by some pastor that we need to display it.  Our world is filled with opportunities to become miracle-workers. 

    This is what Jesus was preaching throughout his ministry.  Getting in touch with spirit allows us to tune into the infinite part of ourselves that makes visible the qualities we assumed were possessed only by angels.  The power to make miraculous changes within ourselves and in our world is ours when we bring healing from a place that no one can see.  (Matthew 6:33)  We need the form that church attendance provides, but we need the substance to make a difference in our world.