Mark 7: 1-23
Over
the last month and a half, we have been reading from the Gospel of John. It’s
been a little heady and dense. The
Gospel of Mark is a welcome reprieve from the theology of John. However, it’s a
little unsettling to be suddenly dropped in the middle of an argument between
Jesus and the Pharisees. Therefore, let
me provide a recap of the chapter that preceded our Gospel reading for today. It’s
been a busy time for Jesus and his disciples. He fed the 5000, he walked on
water and healed a bunch of people. This
was just the 2nd half of chapter 6.
As a result, Jesus was a rising star, which meant that his actions and
the actions of his disciples were more closely scrutinized then they had
previously been.
Who
better to scrutinize actions and make judgments than the Pharisees and Scribes? These men were the experts in the laws and
the rules around the laws. They had dedicated their lives to the study of these
laws. It was their job to explain the laws to people and make sure that people
were following them. Often times, they get a bad rap and I am not sure it is
always merited.
A lot of people like to
paint Jesus as this anti-establishment rebel who was trying to change the
Jewish faith and dismantle the institution.
But this was not what he was doing.
He was trying to get them to go back to the basics, consider what the
important things were The laws of the
Jewish people were the 10 Commandments and the first 5 books of the Hebrew
scriptures (what we call the Old Testament).
However, over the years leaders of the faith built up rituals and
traditions to protect these laws.
Many people compare
these rituals and traditions to a fence.
They built a fence around the laws so they could protect the people from
breaking the laws. This fence became so
high and so dense, that no one even knew that there was something behind
it. This is what Jesus was talking about
when he said, “You abandon the commandment of God and hold on to human
tradition.”
The law that the
disciples were breaking in this story was not a law at all. It was a ritual that had been created by
religious leaders over hundreds of years.
It was not for cleanliness, it was ceremonial. It came out of the act of thanksgiving, like
how we say grace before a meal. It
started for good reasons. They wanted to recognize that every meal was an
opportunity to give thanks and an opportunity for religious fellowship. Then some people got so obsessed with the
ritual, they put more emphasis on that than the thanksgiving and
fellowship. Jesus was showing them that
they could still give thanks and have fellowship without all these add ons.
Thankfully getting lost
in the details never happens in Christians Churches. We never create traditions and rituals and forget
the reason behind the tradition. We
never get upset when something changes.
No one has ever said, “We’ve never done it that way before.” Of course
we do. We also have our own oral laws
(or what Mark refers to as the tradition of the elders). Some of our traditions have been honed over
100s of years. But some have only been
around for 5 or 10 years. It is amazing how quickly traditions can take root in
the church.
Unfortunately in
admitting that this clinging to tradition happens in our churches today, I have
to admit that the clergy are often the Pharisees. As a clergy person, I am the one that makes
sure the things that we do in the service are liturgically proper. This was part of my seminary training. Let me show you an example of these oral laws
that have been written down.
*These are essentially text
books. They tell you how to stand, when
to kneel, when to cross yourself. They don’t all agree. (In the spoken sermon---I show books!)
*This book is full of
Episcopal vocabulary. That’s right. These are all words that we made up. We had to memorize them and I have forgotten
at least 50%.
*This is a commentary
on the Book of Common Prayer. It tells
you what all the things in italics really mean.
*This is a book on the
canon laws of the church. Apparently
there is another book explaining the laws which only the most exceptional
church nerds know about.
Now some of these
things are helpful, some of them even necessary. But a lot is just unnecessary detail. Many
clergy will disagree with me on that…and they are the one who own more of these
books. We could argue about it, but that would probably make us even more like
the Pharisees in this text. Of course if
we are honest, we will admit that it’s not just the clergy who guard tradition.
We all do. Some of these traditions that we guard are shared by many churches
and some are specific to individual churches. Recently someone told me that you
need to wear a tie to be an usher at St. John’s. This surprised me as I have never seen this
written anywhere. I have read our church
bylaws. That rule is not in there. Maybe it was a rule at some point, but I
challenge any of you to find it written.
Or let’s look more
broadly at a rule that many liturgical churches are passionate about---that there
can be no Christmas music or decorations until after the 4th Sunday
of Advent. I assume this is written down
somewhere, but I’ve never seen it. I
know the reason behind it, but we tend to go a little overboard with it on
occasion. It’s not like lightening is going to strike us if we sing Away in the
Manger on December 15th.
The traditions that we
have, come from a rich history and the great majority of them have a holy and
profound purpose. The problem comes when
our commitment to these traditions gets in the way of how we love our neighbor
or when we spend more time arguing about the rules than we spend actually doing
the work God has called us to do. That
is when these rules and traditions are dangerous.
The Pharisees were
upset because the disciples were eating with defiled hands. This is not because their hands were
literally dirty. Their hands were defiled because they had not been ritually
cleansed. They were blind to the good
work that Jesus and his disciples were doing because they were so concerned
with how it all looked, how it reflected on them. They were so focused on the change itself,
they never noticed the positive outcome of that change. They could not see the
people who were drawn to Jesus because he didn’t worry about laws that
determine ritual cleanliness.
There
is a point in our spiritual journey, when we should look for the Pharisee
within us. Just like the Pharisees
built a fence around the law, we have built fences around our hearts. Jesus was not only concerned about the heart
of the law, he was and is concerned about the heart of each one of us. Jesus said, “This people honors me with their
lips, but their hearts are far from me.”
We can do all the right
things in worship. We can cross
ourselves at the right time, we can kneel when the prayer book tells us
to. But if all those actions are devoid
of any real feeling, what’s the point?
When we become too comfortable in our life and our faith, when the
status quo becomes our creed, it is then when we have to ask ourselves: Are we protecting
God’s law or are we protecting ourselves?
And what exactly are we protecting?
Because I am fairly certain that God’s love doesn’t need our human made
protections. God’s law of love, doesn’t
need our fences.
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