IT’S AN INSIDE JOB

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this 22 Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B, is, “It’s An Inside Job.”

RELIGION

Religion is an inside job.

Religion, if it’s not deep in the heart of me, then it’s not good religion. If it's not in me, it’s externalism. It’s show. It’s staged. It’s spin. It’s façade. It's an attempt to hide stuff behind the façade that we don’t want others to see.

Religion is an inside job.

The look, the scent, the outside sounds are not the inner me, the inner soul. The skin, the clothes, the titles, are not the person.

Everyone married more than six months knows this more or less. Everyone working close to others knows this in at least a year – more or less.

Marriage and relationships, like religion, are inside jobs.

Religion is a relationship: with God and each other. We can’t hide from the other. We can’t hide from ourselves. We can’t hide from God.

Of course we try – and that’s what today’s readings and message challenge. They want us to go inside – to be honest – to get to the heart of the matter – to say “Hello” to God in our inner room.

True religion is the inner stuff – that leads to great outside random and unrandom acts of kindness – or as James puts it in today’s second reading: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”

Religion – is an inside job – that flows into wonderful outside showings of caring and daring, grace and gratitude, love and life.

MOTIVE

Motive.

Jesus challenged folks to look at our motives.

Motive is tough detective work.

Religion – true religion – gets us to look at motives and then to move it. Quick! Do something for someone quickly. Make each other’s day.

Unfortunately, we often waste all kinds of energy that could be used for service - on worrying about our past - the what if's - the dumb moves - the hurts - the scenarios that we imagined - but never happened.

Maybe people don't like to enter their inner room - because the whining and the resentments in there are too, too loud. Inner "Unfair!" cries - regrets, resentments, reign.

We need to say, "Enough already!" Stick a fork in them. They’re finished. We blew it back then – but today we can start laughing, loving, pinching ourselves. We’re alive. We’ve made it to this day. So let’s start enjoying our gifts, with the ones we’re with – and the ones who need our love.

GOSPEL

Today’s gospel picks on Pharisaism – Gospel Pharisees and today’s Pharisees – the type of Pharisaism that is hypocritical – the type of Pharisaism that is legalistic – the type of Pharisaism that is loaded with externalism – show.

In today’s gospel the Pharisees go against Jesus because his disciples are not following the so called “Big Tradition” of ritual washings. Jesus goes after them and says, “Nothing that enters one from the outside can defile a person. It’s what comes out from within that defiles a person.”

Jesus is not against washing before meals – cleaning pots and pans – kettles and beds. But he is against rituals that miss the purpose behind them – or rituals that are only done to make oneself look better or feel better than the other person. The spiritual competition game.

Jesus quotes Isaiah in today’s gospel, “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” Lip service is out. Prayers and service from the heart are in.

Jesus is for heart washing – heart cleansing – heart felt changes in the center of the person – that lead to love and kindness and caring.

Religion is an inside job.

Jesus continues in today’s gospel with a scathing list of sins of the heart: “From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness [lacking legal or moral restraints], envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these evils come from within and they defile.”

Woooo! Tough stuff today.

Tough message today.

The Word for today should humble us. It should challenge us. It should get us to say, “Wait a minute! Is there a message for me here today?”

And James in today’s second reading says, “Humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you and is able to save your souls.”

So we start with humility. We start with prayer, saying deep within our heart, “Lord, I can’t do this. It’s too deep and too difficult. Help!”

James then states how the inside job has to flow into the outside world we live in. He says, “Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding ourselves.” As the song goes, “Don’t talk about love. Show me!”

Religion is sheer simplicity – inside conversion – leading to outside love.

That I think is the message from today’s readings. It’s simple. It’s basic. Religion is an inside job – that flows into outside love.

CONCLUSION: A STORY - TETSUGEN

At this point in preparing this homily, I realized I needed a concrete example to help bring this message to heart. After a little research, I think I found a good example in a book by Anthony de Mello, Taking Flight – A Book of Story Meditations. So let me close with that story. It’s from another tradition, but I found out: sometimes something from out there brought in here – will help us in here to get it right out there.

Once upon a time there was a student of Zen Buddhism named Tetsugen. He lived in Japan and realized the sacred writings, the sutras that were in Chinese, were not available in Japanese. The writing was the same – but the languages were different. So he had a dream – a dream to have 7,000 copies of the sutras printed in Japanese.

He traveled the length and breath of Japan collecting funds for the project. Some wealthy people offered him as much as a hundred pieces of gold, but mostly he received small coins from peasants. Tetsugen expressed gratitude to each donor, regardless of the sum of money given.

After ten long years of travel, he finally had collected enough money for the printing. Just then the river Uji overflowed and thousands were left without food and shelter. Tetsugen spent all the money he had collected for his cherished project on these poor people.

Then he began the work of raising funds again. Again it was several years before he got the money he needed.

Then an epidemic spread all over the country, so Tetsugen gave away all he had collected to help the suffering.

Once again he set out on his travels and, twenty years later, his dream of having the scriptures in the Japanese language finally came true.

Today, the printing block that produced this first edition of the sutras is on display at the Obaku Monastery in Kyoto, Japan.

Now comes the moral of the story: The Japanese tell their children that Tetsugen got out three editions of the sutras in all: and the first two are invisible and far superior to the third.

Religion is invisible. It’s an inside job – that hopefully is on display all around the world.