Leo Tolstoy tells a story of a Bishop, whose diocese consists of a series of small islands. The way the Bishop would visit his congregations would be by boat, and he would travel from island to island over the sea.
One day, when the Bishop was traveling, a large storm came up. His boat was damaged, and they went to the nearest island to dock and make repairs. This was an island that everyone had thought was uninhabited, and the Bishop assumed that since it was uninhabited, then, of course, there would be no Christians there. As he wandered around the island, while the repairs were being made, he met three men. He was surprised to meet anyone on this "uninhabited" island, and they began to talk together.
The three men were very excited to discover that he was a Bishop. "You're a Bishop! That means you're a Christian! We are Christians too!" The Bishop couldn't believe that there were Christians in his diocese that he knew nothing about. He decided that it was important to make sure that these three men were properly trained in Christianity. So, he asked them, “How do you pray?”
"Oh! This is how we pray: 'You are three, we are three, have mercy on us!' " The Bishop was mortified. These three men had clearly not been properly trained in how to pray. So, the Bishop took a deep breath, rolled up his catechetical sleeves, and began to teach them. "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name..." The three men were slow learners. They just could not get the Lord's Prayer. But, the Bishop was resolute. He was not going to leave this island until these three men were capable of saying the Our Father. Finally, after months of painstaking instruction, they finally got it. They were able to recite the Lord's Prayer back perfectly. Very pleased with himself, the Bishop got back in his boat and resumed his journey.
A year or so passed, and as the Bishop's boat sailed near the island of those three men, the Bishop saw a glow off in the distance. That glow drew closer and closer and closer to the boat, and eventually the Bishop could see that the glow was coming from the three men as they ran across the water toward the boat. As they got closer, the Bishop could hear the three men as they ran over the waves, calling out, "Bishop! Bishop!"
They finally made it to the boat. They said, "Bishop! We are so sorry, but we forgot how to pray! Will you please teach us again?" The Bishop looked at these three men, as they were walking on the water, and he said, "OK. When you pray, pray like this: 'You are three, we are three, have mercy on us.' "
The tradition of the Pharisees began with a lovely impulse. In the time of the Pharisees, at the time when pharisaic Judaism began, it was believed that God could only be encountered in the Temple, and only by the priests. Some Jews began to wonder whether or not it was possible to encounter God in ordinary life; whether or not it was possible for ordinary people to encounter God in their lives. They came up with this crazy idea. Why don't we practice what priests do?
Before a priest was ready to encounter the Holy in the Temple, he would do ritual cleansing in order to get his intentions ready for a holy experience. Jews who weren't priests asked themselves, why don't we do those rituals ourselves? Do them before we eat an ordinary meal? To prepare ourselves to encounter the holy in an ordinary meal, in the dailyness of our lives? It was a beautiful and lovely idea.
So the original Pharisees began to practice, and began to teach others to practice, rituals that would help to sanctify every act they did. There were prayers before one ate, there were prayers to pray just as one woke up, there were even prayers to pray when one went to the bathroom. Every act could be an opportunity to encounter the holy. It was a lovely, lovely idea.
What happens in all religious traditions, unfortunately, is that we take these lovely ideas and these rituals that we create, and we began to use these rituals to judge other people's holiness. If you're not praying the way that I am praying, well, you must not be "holy", because this is a prayer I use to become holy. The Pharisees began judging Jesus’ disciples because they weren't washing their hands and doing the rituals that the Pharisees thought were necessary for holiness.
As a rebuttal, Jesus points out a spiritual truth that's obvious. That truth is, you can follow all of the Commandments, you can follow all the rituals, you could go to church every day, three times on Sunday, read the Bible every day, pray every day, and still be a jerk.
In this Gospel, Jesus is trying to get us to look at the purpose of all the rituals, the purpose of all these forms of worship, and the church, the scripture readings, the stories. The purpose of all of that isn't to do the prayers; the purpose of all of that is to open our hearts so that we can experience the holy. The purpose is so that we can be transformed in our hearts first.
I recently came upon a lovely description of what that transformation of our hearts looks like. I was reading a story about someone who went to a monastery on Mount Athos, and asked one of the monks, "What is it that you do here?"
The monk replied, "We have died, and we are in love with everything."
Listen to that again-- we have died, and we are in love with everything. What a lovely way to express the goal of the Christian spiritual journey! It's to die; to die to all of the things that keep us small, to die to our anxiety, our fears, our petty judgments of other people. To die to all of that, and, to be in love with everything. Can you imagine that? If you could die to everything that keeps you from being free? If you could die to being afraid, and just be in love with everything?
What a lovely way of talking about the goal. The goal is for our hearts to be free, and free to love. Now, to help us die, and to help us love, we have these glorious rituals, and we have these glorious stories, and we have this sacrament of being fed by Christ's body and blood in love. We have this ritual that sends us out into the world to love other people. We have a ritual that invites us, as a tiny symbol of us being in love with everything, where we pause in the service and greet those around us. We have a ritual where you're going to be able to kneel, people lay their hands on you, and pray for your healing.
We have all of these rituals to help us die, so that we can love. The rituals are not ends in themselves; and if we ever turn our belief system into a way of judging other people, then these rituals are no longer working. They are not helping us to die to our petty judgments of other people, they are not helping us love everything. If I say, “If you don't pray like me, or you don't believe like me, then you're clearly not “holy” like me,” that's a sign that these rituals are no longer working.
For me, today's Gospel reading is an important reminder where Jesus says, pay attention to why you're doing what you're doing. The reason we're doing what we are doing here in the service, here at Trinity, is so that we can die to all the stuff that keeps us trapped, and we can fall in love with everything. To help us, we have our prayers and rituals.
If those don't do it for you, if what really works for you is for you to say, "You are three, we are three, have mercy on us," then that's the prayer to pray. Today is the day to be reminded of why were kneeling, why were eating, why were drinking, why were praying, and why we leave this church and go out into the world. It's to die, and fall in love with everything. Amen.