A reading from the holy gospel according to Luke. When Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee came up to him and asked him to dine with him. So Jesus went and sat at table. The Pharisee was astonished to see that Jesus did not first wash before dinner. Remember, they weren't running around in Rolls Royces.
They've been walking along and washing before dinner was rather an important preface to dining. So the Pharisee was astonished to see that Jesus did not wash before he sat down to eat. And the Lord said to him, now notice he's the host, Now you Pharisees, cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside, you are full of extortion and wickedness. You fools, he's speaking to his host. You fools, did not he who make the who made the outside, make the inside also, but give alms for those things which are within, and behold, everything is clean for you.
And this is the gospel according to Luke. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. This letter of Paul's of Paul to the Galatians has to be understood in a in the way it was offered. The first thing about it is is that it's a letter.
It's a it's a bit of correspondence. It's a response that Saint Paul was making to the Galatians for problems which they were having over there for for very serious and bitter controversies. And the essence of the controversy is a familiar theme, that is the reconciliation. Remember, let's go back. When Paul appears before a bunch of Jews, he's a Pharisee from Tarsus.
Keep that in mind. Here he's here they see one of their own. A man learned in the law. A Jew of Tarsus, and he had the extraordinary prestige of being a Roman citizen. And here he comes to a crowd of Jews.
The first place they went was to the synagogue, no matter where they were, whether they were in Greece or in Asia Minor. So they're having trouble of reconciling their Jewishness with a new way of this leader called Christ. So there's the problem. How much of the old ways are we to keep? Well, some said let's keep them all.
We must keep the law down to the the smallest and the tiniest letter of the law. And Paul's coming along and telling them, look, this is something new. The mere observance, the external observance of the law today doesn't count, and it doesn't count for any law in before God Almighty. It's what comes out of the heart that counts. You don't worship God exclusively as a human rational being by imitating a tree or a first rate dog.
They honor God. Take the third chapter of the book of of Daniel. Why there where where he beseeches us to that all of nature should praise God and worship God, of course. But every creature according to its own measure of worship. And man is something between an animal and an angel.
You could even you can look at a human being either as a rational animal, following old man Aristotle, or you may look at man from another point of view, which is far more domestic, as an angel incarnated. An incarnate spirit. So we are a mixture. So when it comes to worship, what matters is the mind and the heart. It always has, it always will.
This was the tremendous controversy in the sixteenth century that that brought Luther among other people. That is the relation of faith to good works. The the relation of good works to salvation. A very serious problem and it's nothing past, it's in our own lives. Now, Christ comes along today.
Now this is a very, very dramatic episode. Here's a man invites Christ to have a meal in his house. And apparently Christ doesn't follow even the most ordinary routine normal procedures of getting cleaned up before he eats. How many times have you heard a mother tell her kid, Go out and wash your hands before you come to the table. Put a little water on your face, it won't hurt.
We'd like to know your color. So Christ comes. He comes right in off the dusty, dirty, sweaty street and starts to sit and sits down and starts to eat. You see, the pharisee wasn't all wrong. He says, what's going on here?
This man knows better than that and Christ doesn't even wait. Christ picks him up and he knows he he talk. He's a pharisee and notice what he says about the pharisees. Pharisees. He never has a good word for it.
And yet there were some good pharisees. We know that for sure. This man, there wasn't anything wrong with him. But Christ uses this as the occasion for trying to hammer home this idea that when you come to God, you must come with your heart, with your soul, your mind, and your whole being. That the externals are notice Christ never said they were not unimportant.
But what Christ did say and emphasized it is that they can be exaggerated. We can lose ourselves in them, and that's the danger. I mean lose ourselves. That because we do good things, we think we are good. It doesn't follow at all.
It doesn't follow at all. A person could do very good things and not be a good man at all. Because common sense says there's a difference between the action and the agent. And so, as I say, this isn't history we're reading about. Christ isn't talking, we're just not taking up a bit of the biography of Jesus Christ and saying this was a very interesting incident in his life.
That's not the point. This is for us. What is honest to God religion? And it's the same for everybody whether you're a Muslim or anyone else. And some of the easterners have a have a better conception of it than the West.
Because in many instances we are practical. We are practical. Well, we can overdo the practicalities of things. Doing that's what practical means to do from procto. We can overdo it.
What there's the they take Martha and Mary. That power seen from our blessed lord. And so we must take to heart this very important admonition of our lord to see what are our prayers. Let's apply it to prayers. Do we lose ourselves in formularies?
Do we think because we use right words that they're going to unlock the door? It because the right word will be the right key. Is that the way we think? Is that what worse prayer means? What does prayer mean?
Because unless we can answer the question, how in the world can we evaluate what we're doing? As I have repeatedly said, how often you hear people say, I can't pray anymore. Well, why can't you pray anymore? Because I don't get any satisfaction out of it. I don't feel any encouragement.
Well, look, I'm not downgrading this. When you see people with all kinds of tragedies and the burdens of life on their shoulders coming into churches, we all have seen and as we have done and building it all out before our Lord in the blessed savior saying, what can I do? I'm at the end of my rope. And we don't feel anything. It's worse than before.
It's a dark night of the soul. Well, how do we handle this? How do we handle it? All I can say, look at Jesus Christ, if you want to know how to handle it. How did he handle it?
He sweated blood. That's how he handled it. He sweated blood in Gethsemane. And we don't stop there. Don't stop there.
There's also the cross. And from the cross, Jesus Christ said, my God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Christ said that. So if you or I, on occasion feel abandoned, my friends, we are in good company. Christ has been there.
Name of the father and the son and the holy spirit. Amen.