John and I went to the movies last weekend. I don’t know about you, but that’s kind of a big deal for us these days. In the post-Covid era, that’s one of the social pleasures that we seem to do less of, and we have to learn how to do it again. That and church, I suppose. I do hope that Trinity is a social pleasure for you—cinema doesn’t even have coffee hour, after all—but on this Sunday I doubt any sermon that I can offer has more to teach than Inside Out 2. That’s the recent sequel to Pixar’s 2015 Academy Award winning Inside Out, which explored the inner world of an eleven-year-old girl, Riley. This time around, Riley is now a teenager, and anxiety has entered her otherwise balanced emotional array of joy, sadness, anger, fear and disgust.
Make no mistake, the Inside Out franchise are not movies for kids. Or certainly not just kids. They’re quite sophisticated psychological narratives about how a healthy and resilient sense of self is created and matures. Riley’s childhood memory vault is filled with stories of moral virtue and making good choices and being affirmed for who she is. Not everyone’s childhood is built on such positive memories, of course, but because Riley’s is, she can claim with confidence “I am a good person.” Until puberty, which is where Inside Out 2 begins. Anxiety takes over her emotional headquarters, as Riley goes a bit crazy trying to fit in with her new high school friends. Is she a good person anymore? She’s taking cues from her peers instead of her inner sense of self, and it’s unclear who she is becoming.
In that sense, it’s a movie about “outside in” as well as “inside out”. And we’ve all been there, no? Wondering how to harmonize external expectations with our inward sense of what’s right and wrong. So, we Christians might turn to the Bible for guidance, which tells us to “be doers of the word, not merely hearers.” Be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; care for orphans and widows in their distress. There are more than 100 imperatives in the Letter of James. The list may be long, but at least it’s finite. The expectations are clear; just do these things and you’ll be a good person.
Meanwhile, one commentary described our Gospel lesson from Mark as “straightforward and self explanatory, not needing theological commentary.” Give up fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.” In other words, just don’t do these things, and you’ll be a good person.
Of course the do’s and don’t do’s of today’s lessons are really the same message, and it has less to do with particular actions—which are to some degree culturally specific—than with the fact that the behavior of faithful people does matter. We cannot think our way into being disciples of Jesus. The things we choose to do and leave undone—day after day—are important. In Pixar terms, they fill our memory vaults with consciousness of our life in Christ, and the ways we act to build up the body.
Which may seem entirely self-evident to us: the very fact that we are in church this morning indicates that we want to do the right thing. Except that—James and his 100-plus imperatives notwithstanding—its not always so clear what the right thing to do is. You’ll notice, for example that Jesus’ teaching about evil intentions was in response to criticism that his own disciples were not doing what they were supposed to. The tradition of the elders required several layers of cleansing of bodies and foods and vessels before eating; good and right actions, no doubt, that Jesus’s own followers had evidently left undone.
It’s a bit difficult to get our 21st-century minds around the importance of ritual cleanliness in first century Judaism. Although we surely have our non-negotiable equivalents. They may include anything from cherished personal habits like the way we prepare our morning coffee to shared cultural rituals like what we wear to the big game. Or imagine for a moment if someone showed up to your holiday potluck with a bucketful of brined pigs feet. That actually happened to me! I was gracious about it— as I know any of us would be— but it still felt awkward. Because like the Scribes and Pharisees, we notice the behaviors that are countercultural.
If we think of behaviors as things we do—with or without intention—we might think of the related concept of practices as intentionally chosen behaviors. If we do them frequently and consistently, practices become second nature to us, which can be a great thing if—for example—we are trying to learn a new skill or undertake a new exercise regimen.
There’s a subset of behaviors and practices, however, which are of particular interest to me as a Christian and an Episcopalian. In deference to James Smith, author of a beautiful book called Desiring the Kingdom, I’ll call them liturgies. According to Smith’s definition, liturgies are repeated behaviors—practices—that are shared by a community and also have a telos—a vision of the kingdom—that drive them. Liturgies are practices with a God-ward intention, so to speak.
Likely we think of liturgy as what we do together on Sunday mornings when we listen to the scriptures and practice Jesus’ table hospitality in the Eucharist. And that’s not wrong. But like any practice it has the potential of doing more for us than just filling us with God’s own self, in whatever real or symbolic way we understand Holy Communion. Liturgies habituate our behaviors and desires in God-ward directions. That is, they fill our memory vaults with patterns of loving service that eventually change our hearts to resemble God’s heart. They make our personalities more like that of Jesus.
I know this because I came to faith—from my entirely unchurched childhood—through the Christlike people who welcomed me to God’s table at St. Paul’s in Grinnell Iowa. Although anxiety had ruled my chaotic childhood, I recognized the unconditional welcome I received at the Episcopal Church. It was an experience I wanted more of, and I wanted to offer it back. I wanted to build my adult sense of self upon that kind of behavior, so that I could become that kind of person. When we engage in repetitive liturgical practices, are we making our intentions right in the hopes that our behavior gets better, or are we making our behavior better in the hopes that our intentions become right? Yes… and yes.
Mark gives us a clue to the relationship between our behavior and our personalities in the word today’s Gospel translates as hypocrite. In contemporary terms, a hypocrite is someone who says one thing and does another, right? Hypocrites are people in whom we see a dissonance between words and practice. But the Greek Hypokrisis is less judgmental; it means something more along the lines of acting out a theatrical role or pretending. Which makes sense to me: embodied creatures that we are, how would we change our hearts except through trying on new behavior? Sometimes we just have to fake it ‘til we make it; trusting that our God-ward behaviors and practices will change our hearts, and that our hearts will heal our hypocrisy.
“The fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so,” prayed the great contemplative Thomas Merton. “But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always … I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me… alone.
Amen.
