The Reverend John E. McGinn, Rector
Saint John’s Episcopal Church
Sandwich, Massachusetts 02563
January 20, 2008 2 Epiphany
Today is the second Sunday
after the Epiphany and the sermon is taken from the 24th Psalm,
verses 1-5:
The customs officer at the
United States/Canada border tells about a man who came through the border
crossing one day with his four- or five-year-old son. The customs officer asked the man if he had
anything to declare. The man said, “No,”
but he looked suspicious, so the officer pressed on. “Are you carrying cigarettes?” The man answered, “No.” “Are you carrying any kind of booze?” Again, the man answered, “No.” “Do you have any type of cameras or
film?” The man answered, ‘No.” At that point the little boy looked up at his
father and said, “But he’s getting warmer, huh, daddy?”
A man wrote to Readers
Digest to tell about driving through Virginia at what he thought was a
reasonable speed. But the flashing blue
lights in his rearview mirror made him realize that he had been over the speed
limit. He handed the officer his license
and made small talk with his wife while his wife dug through the glove
compartment for the car’s registration.
“I’m usually very careful about my speed,” he told the officer as his
wife handed the policeman the paperwork. The officer studied it, and then he
gave it back. “Sir,” the officer said
gruffly, “This is not your registration.”
It was a warning ticket he had gotten for speeding in South Carolina.
In 2001, the Knoxville
News Sentinel ran an item asking readers to send in their favorite T-shirt
slogans. Two shirts with similar
messages tickled the funny bones of their editorial staff. One shirt had a big, bold message on it: “I finished the Tour de France.” The other shirt read, “I hiked the entire
Appalachian Trail.” Now those are
impressive claims, and most of us would boast about either one of those
achievements. But a closer look at each
shirt reveals that the truth is in the fine print. In fine print in between the larger words
lies the real message: “I
finished reading the Tour de France bike repair manual.” And on the other shirt: “I hiked the entire
width of the Appalachian Trail.”
There is a battle raging in
our country over who will become president.
I am somewhat discouraged but still hopeful concerning the process. Whether you are for Senator Edwards, or Obama, or McCain, or Clinton, or Governor Romney, or Hukabee, or yes, even the former major of New York City,
Rudolph Giuliani…the process goes on.
And this weekend I was
reflecting on the importance of Martin Luther King, Jr. some forty years after
his death.
This morning (and I want you
to forgive me a bit), but when I was looking at both of these things this week,
I was also meditating and saying some prayers, and I came across next to the 23rd
Psalm, the 24th Psalm. I read
the first five verses, and they really struck me as important as we look at
those two events: the presidential
campaign and also celebrating the anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther
King, Jr.
“The earth is the Lord’s and
all that is in it. The
world and all who dwell therein. For it is he who founded it upon the seas and made it firm upon the
rivers of the deep. Who can ascend
the hill of Lord? Who can stand in God’s
holy place? Those who have clean hands
and a pure heart who have not pledged themselves to
falsehood, nor sworn by what is fraud.
They shall receive a blessing from the Lord and a just reward from the
God of their salvation.”
And I thought to myself -
what a magnificent psalm (that I had read before, but I sometimes go by it
after I’ve read the 23rd Psalm).
The psalmist here asks, “Who can ascend the hill of the Lord? And who
can stand in God’s holy place?”
I sometimes think that that’s
a voice crying in the wilderness to the twenty-first century. “Clean hands and
pure hearts.” Who among us would qualify
- who wants to qualify? We prefer
slightly soiled hands, slightly impure hearts.
It’s not that we don’t want to be saints. Isn’t that the truth? But some saints are so boring. When we think of the word saint, most of us
conjure up the idea of a goody-two-shoes character that everyone wants to
avoid.
By the way, do you know where
the expression “goody-two-shoes” came from?
It derives from the name of the title character of a nursery tale, The
History of Little Goody-Two-Shoes. Attributed
to Oliver Goldsmith, Goody-Two-Shoes was
published in 1765 by John Newbury, one of the earliest London publishers of children’s
stories. It’s about a poor little girl
who owned only one shoe, and when she finally is rewarded with another shoe,
she scampers around pointing at her feet to everyone who will listen to her
crying, “Two shoes, two shoes!” And that’s goody-two-shoes.
Somehow the phrase has come
to mean someone who is self-righteous and smug about their virtue. You can say many things about Jesus, but he
was not a self-righteous, smugly virtuous person. In fact, Jesus despised such people. They were the very ones who put Jesus to
death. And the last thing we want to be
is smug and self-righteous. In fact,
most of us would prefer to be thought of as slightly naughty and just naughty
enough to be fun to be around.
Clean hands and pure
hearts…well, maybe some day when we are older.
And so we become part of a culture of compromise. What do I mean by a culture of
compromise? I want to give you an
example:
A study was conducted by
Professor Robert Feldman of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst on the
subject of lying. This study found that
lying is more common than most people realize.
In the study, pairs of strangers were put together for ten minutes and
instructed to carry on a conversation.
They were unaware that their conversations were being video taped. Afterward, as the participants viewed the
tape, they were asked to indicate anything that they had said that was not
true. Sixty percent admitted to telling
at least one lie - sixty percent! The
average person lied more than once, and this was during only ten minutes of a
casual chit-chat.
Professor Feldman
concluded: People tell a considerable
number of lies in everyday conversation.
It was a very surprising result.
We didn’t expect lying to be such a common part of daily life. The participants also were shocked by their
own deceptive behavior; and when they were watching themselves on video tape,
people found that they had lied much more than they thought they had, Professor
Feldman observed.
Now, is lying that big a
deal? If everyone does it, should we
even worry about it? And, I wonder, what
happens to a culture when we can’t take anyone’s word. Lying takes many forms, by the way.
Does anyone believe anything
that comes out of Washington anymore?
You know, whether it’s about the campaign, or
whether it’s about the war, the economy; they call it spin. No matter what the issue, you know the
politicians are going to spin it to make it sound more favorable to their
party. Is that so bad? It is if we get the point that we throw up
our hands and quit listening at all. Can
we believe anyone is telling us the truth these days?
“Who can ascend the hill of
the Lord? Who can stand in God’s holy
place?
Those who have clean hands
and a pure heart.”
It does matter that we
tell the truth. It does matter
that we are people of our word.
Martin Luther King, Jr. lived
a life that I would say was very human.
He made mistakes, he did many good things, he
was truly one of God’s children. But one
of the things, if you go back and read some of his articles and some of his
speeches, you will begin to understand right away that Martin Luther King, Jr.
told the truth. He told the truth about
racism in our country, and he told the truth about how we could end that
problem that we’ve had. It was not
through violence and being judgmental, but it was through love, and compassion,
and understanding, and telling the truth about what was happening.
It does matter that we
are people of our word.
Now, a company whose stock is
taking a beating over the past few years is Merck, the pharmaceutical
company. People said that they hid the
truth about their drug Vioxx. Did they?
Well, I don’t have any inside information; however, I do know that a
number of years ago executives at Merck found themselves at another difficult
crossroads. A company scientist
discovered that a veterinary drug Merck had developed possibly could be adapted
to kill the parasites that cause the horrible disease
river blindness. The prospect of finding
the cure for a disease that causes such terrible suffering would normally be a
cause for celebration. But here was the
dilemma: The customers for this drug
were poor residents of poor countries who could not afford to pay for it. The fact the Merck is a publicly held company
compounded the issue. The executives, as
employees of the owners, had an obligation to return wealth to shareholders by
seeking profit. The price tag on the
dilemma: It would cost more than twenty
million dollars a year simply to transport the drug, if in fact the company
decided to give it away. Stranded
between right and wrong, one brave executive dug back to the founder’s
intent: George W. Merck had written, “We
try never to forget that the medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits.” And with that statement in mind, Merck
executives decided to develop the drug called Mectizan
and give it away to any country that asked for it.
Does it matter that we are
able to trust a drug company? Of course,
it does. Every day when I take the pills
that I am required to take, it is so important to me. Our very life, and my life, does depend upon
it.
Does it matter that we are
able to always speak the truth in our families, in our church, in our
town? Of course, it does. We want there to be a bond of trust. We want our children, and our spouses, and
our friends, and our neighbors to know that if we tell them something, it is
absolutely true. How else can we expect
the truth from them? The truth will set
us free.
We need to raise our
standards as a society. We need to clean
house in Washington when we feel that politicians sometimes are misrepresenting
the truth. We need to stop doing
business with people who do not have a high standard of integrity. We need to choose friends who can be trusted
with our confidences.
In other words, we need to
take the psalmist seriously. Clean hands
and pure hearts do matter. Trust is the
foundation of a healthy society. Clean
hands and pure hearts especially matter for those people who call themselves
Christians, who follow Jesus. We don’t
want to be smugly self-righteous, but we do need to be people of integrity.
Now a certain lamb and its
mother pass the pig pen everyday on their way to the pasture. The lamb looked longingly at the pigs
wallowing in the mire, and he asked his mother if he could go and play in the
mud. His mother scolded him and reminded
him that sheep just don’t wallow. Oh,
but he wanted to play in the mud. It
looked like so much fun! Particularly on
hot days, the mud looked - ummm - so cool. And one day as he and his mother were making
their way to the pasture, the lamb let his mother go ahead of him, and then he
took off for the pig pen. He jumped over
the fence, and he started playing in the mud.
And the cool mud felt good around his ankles, so he went in a little
deeper, and he got up to his belly. The
mud was nice and cool. Wool and mud,
however, don’t mix very well. The mud
began to cake on his wool, and eventually he realized that he was stuck. He couldn’t move, and he couldn’t get
out. What he thought would bring him
pleasure, became his prison. In crying
for help, the farmer rescued him. And
his mother reminded him, “Sheep don’t wallow.”
And they don’t.
We who are disciples of the
good shepherd don’t wallow. “Who can
ascend the hill of the Lord? Who can
stand in God’s holy place? Those who
have clean hands and a pure heart.”
Amen