In a recent edition of Reader’s Digest Luanne Oleas tells the story of Santa Cruz, the California town that in the last few years has become the home to the grown-up children of hippies.  And this generation of New Age adults have had children, and as we could guess, have given their children shall we say unusual and original names.  Names like Frisbee, Time Warp and Spring Fever.  Moonbeam, Earth, and Precious Promise.  And so it was that the local kindergarten teacher met Fruit Stand.  The tradition was that at the start of fall semester parents would pin name tags to their children, kiss them good-bye and send them off to school on the bus. So it was for Fruit Stand. The teachers thought the boy’s name was odd (but no odder than Time Warp and Spring Fever), but they tried to make the best of it. "Would you like to play with the blocks, Fruit Stand?" they asked. And later, "Fruit Stand, how about a snack?" He accepted hesitantly. The first day wore on and at dismissal time, the teachers led the children out to the buses. "Fruit Stand, do you know which one is your bus?" He didn’t answer. That wasn’t strange. He hadn’t answered them all day.  But it didn’t matter. They could easily tell what bus stop the lad should be at because the teachers had instructed parents to write the names of their child’s bus stop on the back of their name tags. So the teacher simply turned over the tag pinned on Fruit Stand, and there, neatly printed, was the word "Anthony."

Somewhere the traditional way of doing things in that school had failed.  And in today’s Gospel reading some other people’s tradition failed.  The Pharisees had a lot to learn about the value of tradition, and its limits.  This day that we read about they learned that their traditions were not a good measure of what God wanted.  These religious leaders had come to investigate Jesus.  They had travelled from Jerusalem to check him out.  And as they are watching him in action, the disciples come in from a hard day working in the fields.  And too tired and too hungry to care that their hands and faces were dirty; they immediately sat down to eat.  Now we might think ‘Aaaaagh how disgusting to be out working in the fields and not wash before eating’, but hygiene wasn’t the thing on the minds of the Pharisees.  You see, there were religious reasons why the twelve should have washed before sitting down to eat.  The Jewish traditions demanded people wash before meals.  And the Pharisees seize upon this “sin” and question Jesus: Why don’t your disciples live according to the traditions of the elders and clean their hands before they eat?”

 And Jesus leaps to the defence of the disciples.  He turns on the religious leaders and says, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: “‘These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.  They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’  You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men.”  And then he goes on to give some really radical teaching.  He says “Nothing outside people can make them ‘unclean’ by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of people that makes them ‘unclean.’’  For from within, out of people’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.  All these evils come from inside and make a person ‘unclean.’ ”

Perhaps that doesn’t seem very radical, but let’s just understand what Jesus was saying here.  He’s saying that his followers don’t have to obey the Old Testament ceremonial laws about washing.  And more than that they are free to eat whatever they like because nothing that goes into a person can make them unclean.”  Think of Jesus saying that to devout, Jewish religious professionals.  What matters, he says, is what’s in your heart.  All the stuff which messes up our lives and causes us pain and which wrecks our relationships with God and other people, those things come from in here; and laws about what’s kosher and what isn’t make no difference to a person’s heart. 

Purity was a big thing in the Old Testament laws.  In fact it was THE big thing.  Lying behind most of the laws is the idea that things should be pure.  That’s why strict Jews still today do not wear clothes made of more than one fabric.  If it’s a woolen garment then it must be pure wool and not tainted by cotton, for example.  It’s also what lies behind the Old Testament dietary laws.  If you eat meat then it should be from an animal that is pure – if it’s a fish then it has to be a genuine fish with fins and gills, not a shellfish; if the animal has cloven hooves then it must also have all the other characteristics of an animal that has cloven hooves – like chewing the cud; so pig meat is not allowed.  A pig has cloven feet but it doesn’t chew the cud.  It is therefore impure.  It’s all about purity.       

 So the Pharisees had a pretty sharp eye for anything that the law said was impure.  So you’d better wash your hands before you ate or you’d be ritually impure and would be sinning.  Now actually the Pharisees were not correct about the need for people to wash before eating.  The Old Testament laws forbade people from eating their sacrificial offerings with unwashed hands, but it didn’t say anything about washing before every meal.  What the Pharisees did was add lots of other rules to the Old Testament law.  These traditions became so demanding that nearly every part of life was regulated by the traditions of the religious leaders.  They split hairs so much that this rule about washing your hands before you ate specified the amount of water you had to pour, the position of your hands, and even what type of vessel you could use.

 A very poor holy man lived in a remote part of China. Every day before his time of meditation in order to show his devotion, he put a dish of butter up on the window sill as an offering to God, since food was so scarce. One day his cat came in and ate the butter. To remedy this, he began tying the cat to the bedpost each day before his prayer time. The man was so famous for his piety that others joined him and became his disciples and worshipped as he did.  Now, hundreds of years after his death his followers still place an offering of butter on the window sill during their time of prayer and meditation. And they still tie cats to the bedpost, but none of them knows why.

In our big cities we are getting used to seeing cameras in strategic locations.  In the UK they are on ever street corner in all medium-sized towns, on the platforms of every railway station, every London bus, and on the sides of thousands of roads.  Those ones clock your speed.  If you’re speeding a camera flashes as you pass and a week later you get a ticket in the mail.  And as a deterrent it works.  When drivers see the sign telling them that they’re approaching a speed camera there is a sudden and miraculous drop in their speed.  And what the British police have discovered is that when people are being watched they are on their best behaviour. No matter how they might be feeling at the time, no matter what they might be thinking, their behaviour is always decent, lawful and courteous.  The drivers might be angry at having to slow down, resentful of the police for putting cameras at the side of the road, may be muttering to themselves about living in a Communist state, but they will still drop their speed to what is legal.  The police don’t care about what is going in the driver’s heart, just what the speedo is saying.  And likewise the Pharisees didn’t care about the internal condition of a person – what their heart was like, just that they went through the outward motions of keeping the rules.

A young man once came to a great rabbi and told him he too wanted to become a rabbi. It was winter. The rabbi stood at the window looking out at the yard, while the candidate droned on about his piety and learning.  The young man said, "You see, Rabbi, I always dress in spotless white like the holy men of old. I never drink alcohol; only water ever passes my lips. I live a plain and simple life. I wear sharp nails inside my shoes to cause myself pain. Even in the coldest weather, I lie naked in the snow to torment my flesh. Daily, I receive forty lashes on my bare back to complete my penance."  As the young man spoke, a white horse was led into the yard and to the water trough. It drank, and then it rolled in the snow, as horses sometimes do.  "Look!" cried the rabbi. "That animal is also is dressed in white. It also drinks nothing but water, has nails in its shoes and rolls naked in the snow. And, rest assured, it gets its daily ration of forty lashes on the rump from its master. Now, I ask you, is it a saint, or is it a horse?!?!"

It seems that a sure-fire way to create a well-behaved society is to put cameras everywhere.  It’s a kind of virtual morality.  Laws are very good at imposing virtual morality on people, but they don’t change people’s hearts.  Outward behaviour does not necessarily reflect inward character.  When the cameras aren't rolling, we're more likely to drop the part we've been playing and just "be ourselves."  Character is who we are when no one is looking.

The unnerving fact for us outwardly pious Christians is that God has a camera.  And this Godcam looks right through the outward behaviour and sees the heart of each of us.  We may think we can get away with an outward, virtual morality, and that no one will be the wiser. We might fool the wife, or the husband. We might fool our co-workers.  But we can’t dodge the Godcam.

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus redefined what it means to be holy.  It is not about just what we do, but about who we are.  You do not need to commit adultery to be adulterous, he says.  You do not need to murder someone to be murderous.  Acts of adultery and murder, says Jesus, come from hearts that are adulterous and murderous. The one gives birth to the other. What we do flows out of who we are.  How we behave reveals the character of our hearts. 

Do you feel in need of a heart transplant?  Well, be encouraged.  We have actually received one.  When we turned our lives over to Christ he gave us a new heart.  Now it’s as if we have two hearts.  We know the impulses of the old unclean heart, those ugly things that Jesus mentions, “evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly”, and the like.  But we have new hearts too.  He has put a new heart in all people who have submitted themselves to Christ.  This is not a claim that we are more moral or better than others.  Tragically, our behaviour is often indistinguishable from that of people without a Christian faith.  The difference is we have no excuses.  We have Christ; we possess new hearts and a new power to live right.

So this morning let me encourage all of us to look deep into our hearts.  Take a good long hard look at what’s there.  And let me ask you “do you like what’s there?”  You see, I think you should like many of the things that are there.  I know lots about each of you, and I know that there are many wonderful gifts in your heart.  Be grateful for who you are.  But then, as you look inside yourself, maybe there are some things that you are embarrassed about.  Some things that make you glad the camera at the ATM takes photos of your face, and not X-rays of your soul.  The Godcam, of course, picks it all up. Inside and out.  And do you know what?  God loves you anyway.  He wants to touch your heart, and heal those things that cause you pain.  He wants us to be whole because the life he is calling us to is so much better than the one religious people often settle for – with its rules and its slavery and its deadness.  Christ brings us freedom and life and new hearts that are filled with his joy and peace.  Don’t settle for any legalistic imitation.