Jesus speaks out against washing your hands before you eat.  Mothers of six year olds everywhere will be in an uproar.  Of course the hand washing in question is not of the sort that includes anti-bacterial soap and scrubbing.   The Pharisees notion of ceremonial hand washing entails a few drops of water, certainly not enough to literally wash your hands.

The issue at stake is not the transmission of bacteria but our understanding of faithfulness.  Dean Sperry of Harvard Divinity School tells this story.  "There was a Reformed congregation back in Holland that worshipped in a pre-reformation building.  According to Sperry's story, which is set a century after the Reformation, worshippers leaving the thoroughly Reformed worship service in this building would invariably bow to a white wall at the back of the church.  They did this routinely, out of habit passed down from generation to generation.  Of course, one day it was discovered that beneath the blank wall there was a painting of the Virgin.  The iconoclastic Reformers had painted it over a hundred years earlier, but the tradition of venerating it remained, even though no one in the congregation knew it was there or why it was traditional to bow to a blank wall."

Our human nature combines with our practices of piety and faithfulness in such fascinating ways, running the gamut activities that open our eyes to the presence of the divine through merely superstitious twitches that have long lost their true meaning.  It would be a mistake to read this morning's text as a condemnation by Jesus on all acts of piety.  What Jesus is challenging us to recognize is that God's calling to us is not to be found down the pathway of religious minutia but in our actions in the world, in the way in which we treat the children of God.

In our quest to be in relationship with God and explore the traditions of Christian Faith it is entirely likely that you and I will bow down before a few blank walls in our time.  We will on occasion mumble through the Lord's Prayer by wrote rather than praying with passion and urgency.  We will affirm creeds to which we have given little thought.  At times we will bow when we are told to bow and stand when we are told to stand merely out of well worn habit.

It is natural as we seek deep meaning in the traditions of our faith to occasionally slip off of the path of meaningfulness into the mundane.  The real danger that exists for us is when we allow the rote repetition of rituals to become the basis for our faith in God and our justification for that faith.  And while we are bowing down before the blank walls, impressed with our piety, there are people suffering in the streets.  At its worst we may even feel smug in our blank wall bowing noting how those people in need do not even take the time to do any blank wall bowing of their own.

Jesus is calling us to a new way of faithfulness that refuses to stand pat merely on the shoulders of the past.  We are called to a faithfulness that tells us that God is to be found not solely in our revered rituals but also in the faces of those in need.

My friend Michael tells of a man named Fuad Bahnan,
who is of Arab descent, born in Jerusalem, a Christian, and a Protestant minister in the Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon.  "For over thirty years, Mr Bahnan was the pastor of a small church in West Beirut, Lebanon.  West Beirut is the overwhelmingly Moslem sector of the city.  He told me a story about something that happened in that congregation in 1983.  '83 was the year that the army of Israel marched north into Lebanon; no one knew how far north they would come; few thought that they would advance as far as Beirut.  But members of Bahnan's church believed that the Israelis would take Beirut and attempt to starve out hidden Palestinian fighters.  The church decided to purchase a vast amount of canned food for the seige they felt would come."

"It did come, as you may recall; West Beirut was cut off, no one could leave, no food was allowed in.  The session of Pastor Bahnan's church met to make plans for passing out the food they had stockpiled.  By the end of the meeting, there were two different proposals on the table.  The first proposal was that the food be distributed first to members of the congregation, then, as supplies permitted, to other Christians in West Beirut, and lastly, if any was left over, to the Moslems."

"The second proposal was very different. This motion suggested that the food first be distributed to Moslem neighbors, then to other non-member Christians, and lastly, if there was any left over, to members of the church.  The session meeting lasted six hours.  It ended when a quiet elderly, and much-respected woman elder stood up, and in her impatience, shouted: "You hypocrites!  If we do not demonstrate the love of Christ in this place, who will?"  The second proposal was passed.  The food was distributed first to the Moslems, then to other Christians,  and finally, to members of the congregation.  Mr. Bahnan said, "The Moslems of West Beirut still talk about it."

It is actions such as these that demonstrate, at its deepest level, our holy commitment to faithfulness to God.   A faithfulness that begins and is nourished in the rituals of worship and piety will then continue right on out into the world in bold and dramatic examples of Christian love.

Here is the story of another church from Ryan White's autobiography, Ryan was the thirteen year old boy who was dying of AIDS.  He tells of his experience at his church on Easter Sunday.  "Then came Easter Sunday," Ryan wrote,  "Normally, at our church the whole congregation says,  'Happy Easter!" to each other this way:  Our minister steps forward to the front pew, shakes a few hands, and says, 'Peace be with you.'  Then those people turn to their neighbors and shake hands, and so on, all the way to the back of the church, where we were sitting.  The family in the pew in front of me turned around.  I held out my hand - to empty air.  Other people's hands were moving every which way, all directions away from me...

"It wasn't over yet.  As Mom, Andrea, and I turned out of the church parking lot, our transmission died in the middle of the traffic lane...Mom tried to flag down some other cars leaving church.  But no one would stop.  A half hour or so went by, and then finally a man in a truck pulled away from the auto parts store across the street, nosed up behind us, and pushed our car over to the side of the road.  Our rescuer climbed out of his truck and asked Mom, 'Need a lift home?'  Mom took a deep breath and said, 'First I better tell you who we are,' and she did.  The truck driver shrugged.  'Well, it doesn't matter,' he said.  He drove us home.  A couple of months later he stopped by and invited me hang gliding."

When I read Ryan's account the first thought that struck me was that the guy from the auto parts store had most likely not been in church that Easter Sunday.  But worship attendee or not it was clear that he celebrated the liberating love of Christ that morning.  Of course this does not mean that we abandon our worship and our rituals which are a vibrant and life-giving part of our faith to start hanging out in auto parts stores.  But we certainly do not let our rules and rituals become an excuse for shutting out the needs of the children of God.

Whenever this occurs and we find ourselves bowing down before blank walls we have distanced ourselves from the one who ate with sinners, touched lepers, healed the sick, and generally dedicated himself to ritual impurity in the cause of love.  Now that is a tradition to follow for generation upon generation.  Let our rituals and our liturgy inspire us and deepen our faith that we too might stand with all those who serve God by serving others.

Amen.