I was reading the paper last week about the red tide here in the Puget Sound. Personally, I love shellfish. And while there are few things worse than a bad oyster, for me there are few things better tasting than a fresh oyster in its crisp metallic brine, washed down with a sip of dry Pinot Gris. (Although a rare hamburger off the grill ain’t bad neither.)

But I was more disappointed to discover that cooking the shellfish during red tide doesn’t help. It’s not the bacteria that make you sick. It’s what comes out of them, their toxins already in the shellfish. You might cook and cook, kill all the bacteria in the shellfish, until they are absolutely sterile. But: no good, all you’ll have is clean shellfish with sterile toxins. It doesn’t infect you from the outside; it poisons you from the inside.

And then I read Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees about the disciples’ unwashed hands. He said: "There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile… It is from within, from the human heart."

It feels good, doesn’t it, to hear Jesus answering those Pharisees? He let them have it, right down to the root of their sacrilege. Jesus basically told them, "Do all you want to look good, follow every liturgical right taken from and slathered on top of scripture. Wash your hands, wash and shattered your pots and pans, but still it is only people who will be lulled and impressed by what you do, not God. Action after action, you Pharisees are only actors, because God, whose eyes really count, can see right down to your soul. You cannot clean your soul."

Ritual washing by itself never seeped in to magically cleanse the soul. But it should have expressed what they believed God was doing from the inside out.

Today’s gospel lesson is not just an explanation why we Christians no longer ritually wash, or why we can buy and eat foods without the kosher label. Today’s lesson is not a Christian pat on the back to say "Look how we've grown up since the!" It is a warning… to all Christians of all denominations.

We cannot rely on the actions of worship to be our religion. Some people can act out the rituals and words and be totally mindless of the God they are supposed to be worshipping, as if the rituals become their faith and religion. And, believe me, all Christian denominations, all religions, have various rituals, traditions or worshipful actions that can be mindlessly acted.

My wife complains that I don’t talk enough about cats in my sermons. Let me tell you about the Guru’s cat. There once was an old Guru who befriended a cat. The cat, likewise, adored the old man and constantly sought his attention. Unfortunately, the cat began to crawl into his lap and interrupt him when he was trying to lead the evening meditations. To avoid it, as favored and loved as the cat was, they had to collar and tie it up each night before meditations could begin.

This went on for six or seven years. And then the old guru died. But the new guru happily adopted the cat in his place. Again, they have to tie the cat up each night so they could have their evening meditations.

Some ten or eleven years more passed. Sadly, the old guru’s cat finally died. The monks were in a slight panic, for the cat had died near sundown. It was nearly time for the evening meditations and with such short notice, where would they find another cat to tie up so they could start?

The story is true, in that such things do happen. There are times when rituals and habits become the worship instead of expressions of worship. There is a church somewhere in Europe where the pastors, people and choir would suddenly bow as they processed up the middle aisle. It was the same place, by the same pew, every time.

Someone finally asked, "Why do we suddenly bow right here as we walk up the aisle?"

"We are reverencing the cross," another answered.

"Yes, but why right here in this one place? Why not at your pew before you sit, or up at the front before the altar, or back there by the door as we enter?"

Someone got interested, researched and soon realized that a couple generations back the church had gone through an expansion. The place where people were stopping to bow as they came forward was exactly where the low hanging doorway had once been. The old doorway was made so that you had to bow as you came into worship.

After the remodel, there might have been some choir member who—in memory, in humor, or perhaps even out of habit—bowed there, and others imitated. It became a ritual, done either as habit, or perhaps later reinvented with a good and heart-felt meaning: like reverencing the cross.

And see there is the key: it’s the heart, expressing the heart in worship. And I’m not just talking warm nostalgia; that’s not enough. The outward motions and actions are important when they express a worshipping and meaningful heart. Even if you can find the ritual commanded in scripture, without that heart and mind it cannot be faithful. It becomes a mass of empty human precepts and tradition. Because, more than sacrifice and washed hands, God demands: heart.

Imagine a man, standing in a rain-soaked field, hands outstretched, receiving every drop as a blessing, worshipping God and communing in the full presence of Christ. Imagine another person, surrounded by stain-glass windows with bread and wine at hand, muttering words, but whose heart is far away. Tell me, of those two people, which one is truly in church? Which one is experiencing the true altar of God, and celebrating the gift and body of Christ? Who, of those two, is worshipping?

So Jesus was not attacking the ritual of hand-washing itself. He was attacking their empty, hypocritical hearts. And he was suggesting that he and the disciples were worshipping God better without the ritual, than the Pharisees were with it.

But there is an important second part in this, beyond ritual and prayerful worship. Jesus made an incredible and radical claim: that things outside do not defile a person before God. We are not infected by the outside world. Instead, poison comes from within. We can try to disinfect our lives, separate ourselves from the defiling world all we want. We might point accusing fingers, and imagine this corrupt world boiling clean in the fires of God’s wrath, as some are tempted to do. But the outside world itself does not defile us. And, if we could, cleaning the world would not be enough.

We can exist and live in this world with all its wickedness and temptation and still remain faithful. We could live in worse, more evil situations and remain faithful, because the world, not even hell itself, has a power strong enough to separate us from God!

There is plenty of evil, and temptation. But we each give into sin and temptations—not because the outside world has reached in to corrupt us—but because of what comes out from our own internal desires and thoughts. It starts here with toxins in the human heart.

There is a toxic poison within. Some theologians have narrowed the poison to coveting, wanting whatever isn’t mine. Others say it is simply rebellion against God. Still others say it is coveting God, wanting to be God. But I think that trying to narrow it down makes it too simple and clean. It’s too easy for me to say, "Well, I certainly don’t want God’s job!"

I think what Jesus did in today’s lesson was better. Take a moment and read verses 21-23 of our gospel lesson to yourself. Read how Jesus described the poison. ["For it is from within, out of the human heart, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within."]

"All these things." Even if I try to excuse myself from one thing in this list, here and there I find me: wickedness, deceit, envy, pride, folly. The list includes me.

You see that’s the thing about preaching God’s law. It doesn’t stop at pointing at what’s toxic in the world. It comes around to show how I add to it, and how I need forgiveness.

This week I really like our bulletin cover. Look at it and think about what you see. One person at the 8:30 service told me afterward that it reminded her of the hands that make up the base for our baptismal font, reaching up for the water.

Let me end by telling you what I see. What I see in this picture …is me. Or at least what I need. I stand in need of God’s cleansing. I work, eat and live with defiled hands, all the water and rituals poured around and over me, all that I do, is not enough to clean and soak into my soul.

But during those same rituals, or while I am working, eating and living, when my eyes, hands and most important when my heart lifts to God, I can say, "Clean me, Father!" And then, only that power, God’s Spirit, washes out the poison and all guilt with it.

Defiled hands and all remain. But I am clean. Time and again. Amen

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