The Pharisee in us: Sept 1 2024

 Year B, Pentecost 15                                               Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23                                                                                                              

            Over the last month and a half, we have been reading from the Gospel of John. 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.  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.  That was just the 2^nd 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 people sometimes forgot 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 rule that the disciples were breaking in this story was not a law.  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 when we acknowledge that we sometimes cling to our traditions, I have to admit that the clergy are often the Pharisees.  As a clergy person, I am the one who makes sure that the things we do in the service are liturgically proper.  This was part of my seminary training.  Let me show you an example some of these Episcopal 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.

*These  books are full of Episcopal vocabulary.  That’s right.  Many of these are 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. 

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. Yet 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.  Christ Church is less pre-occupied with liturgical traditions because that isn’t really where the emphasis is.  But we have a default traditions that are based on what we don’t do.  Or we have traditions based on the building itself…because it’s historic.  The walls have to be a certain color.  If you came in and were disturbed by all the random stuff we have in here for the On Buried Ground performance, it’s because you are used to the ways things usually look. It’s unnerving to me as well and I’ve only been here 11 month.

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.  Some pharisees couldn’t recognize the good work that Jesus and his disciples were doing because they were 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.   You might think “I don’t have any Pharisee in me. I am not worried church traditions.” But consider what is underneath the need to protect traditions. It sometimes comes from a desire to defend what is sacred.  Sometimes, it just comes from not wanting to change.  Any of you have issues with change? I am not just talking about church—but any change.  I struggle with change, and I have had a lot over the last year. The hard part of change is that is usually involves some kind of loss.  It might lead to something good, but it can be hard to get past the loss.

          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.” 

When we become too comfortable in our life and our faith, when the status quo becomes our creed, then we will become stagnant. It means that we have become too attached to what once was rather than what could be.  Sometimes it feels like we have protect the church and in doing so, we are protecting God.  But God doesn’t need our protection.   In fact, God needs us to be a little more fearless, a little more open to the unknown.  Let us walk boldly forward.  May our traditions be something that grounds us, but doesn’t bind us.