Law of Love: September 2, 2018

Year B, Pentecost 15                                                                          
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 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 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 4^th 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 15^th.

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.

 

 

Who are you calling a hypocrite? 8/21/2016

Year C, Pentecost 14                                                          
Luke 13:10-17                                                            

            If you were here last week and recall the Gospel reading, you will know that this is our 2^nd week in a row of Jesus calling the religious leaders hypocrites.  It is easy to villainize the Jewish religious leaders---the Pharisees.  That has been done for millennia and unfortunately has led to considerable anti-Jewish sentiment.  I am not sure that it is fair to beat up on the Pharisees.  I will admit that as a religious leader, I take it a tad personally.  I cringe a little every time I hear Jesus call someone out for being a hypocrite.  That is what he is doing…he is calling them out—in front of everyone. 

            This was the Jewish Sabbath at the local synagogue.  Everyone in the town was present.  While Jesus had no official standing in the community that we know of, he must have been fairly well respected as he was allowed to teach in the synagogue on the Sabbath.  While he had a certain amount of authority, he was still expected to follow the laws of the Jewish faith. These laws were essential to the faith. No matter how great a teacher, preacher or healer he was…he still had to follow the laws.  One of the really important laws was that you did not work on the Sabbath.  That wasn’t just any rule or law--that was a commandment.

            When we hear the word Sabbath, we think of going to church, relaxing a little, maybe having a lazy day at home. That does not mean that we do any of those things, but we assume that is the goal.  When God told us to rest on the 7^th day, surely that is what he had in mind…binge watching Netflix all day.  Not quite.

One of the reasons that the fourth commandment mandated that people keep the Sabbath was to recognize that the Hebrew people were no longer slaves and thus no longer forced to work every day.  Moses delivered the 10 Commandments after the exodus.  The Hebrew people were released from bondage and free to rest.  God was demanding not only that the people who were listening rest from their labor, but that they make sure that their servants don’t work.  It’s a justice issue.  The nice thing about the Blue laws (where businesses were closed on Sundays) was not just that church attendance was higher but that these forced closures allowed everyone to have a day off…everyone.  

That might explain why the Pharisee was a little upset.  He was not against someone being healed.  There were 6 other days that Jesus could have healed this woman.  Why did Jesus have to do it on the one day he was not supposed to?  Now you might think there should be some wiggle room in the commandments, especially given this particular situation. 

There was. That was why Jesus called the leader a hypocrite.  He was reminding the Pharisee that they already did work on the Sabbath when they untied their oxen and led them to the manger for water.  You would not deny your animal water just because that would cause some work.  Why then would you withhold healing from someone who so desperately needed it? The Pharisee was a hypocrite because he was making an exception for a purpose that made his life easier, but refusing to make an exception for another person whose life was exceptionally hard.

The Pharisee seems unreasonable, but I bet we all have little rules in our life that we don’t break.  Some of them are really important rules that have important reasons.  Some of them were important once, but are no longer relevant.  Yet we follow them because it is habit.  Think about your rules.  It might be that you always make your bed, or you always wear a jacket and a tie to church, or you always wash your face at night.  You could skip a day and it would not kill you.  But what I always worry about is the slippery slope.  Once you break the rule once, there is a good chance you will break it again.  Then it is no longer a rule, it’s a recommendation and recommendations are very easy to ignore.

I believe this is what the Pharisee was worried about.  He was worried that we would start making so many exceptions that the commandment would no longer be relevant.  People would forget what the purpose of it was---that it was not just about rest, it was about justice.  That is exactly what happened. The Sabbath is now a quaint memory. 

That’s why I feel for the Pharisee.  I can see that slippery slope all over the place and it scares me.  I see Jesus’ point as well.  We have tons of rules in the church.  Most of them have really good reasons behind them. Some of them were originally based on practical needs but those needs changed and we kept the rules because they became tradition.  Do you know why some churches have rails around the altar?  Hundreds of years ago, there would be dogs that would wander through the church.  The rail kept out the dogs.  Now the rail gives us a place to kneel so that we can be in community around the altar. Having this rail has become a rule for us.  People would be in an uproar if we took it out.  The rail is one of our unwritten rules.

But we also have lots of written rules in the church.  We call them canon law.  We have rules in the Book of Common Prayer.  They are called rubrics.  Do you know why we finish the wine at the end of the service instead of pouring the dregs in the bushes? Page 409 of the prayer book tells us that the sacrament must be reverently consumed by the clergy and communicants.  That makes sense to me because it’s a sacrament.  It’s the body and blood of Christ. Yet there are some rules that do not make sense to me and sometimes I wonder why we keep doing them…why it all matters.  On the one hand I see that slippery slope that the Pharisee was worried about.  On the other I hear Jesus calling me a hypocrite.

Why does all this matter? Often times, rules (whether they are written or not) cause us to exclude people and things.  They give us excuses not to change, not to take risks.  They keep us isolated.  There was once a church rule that African Americans could not sit in the same pews as a white person.  That’s not in the Bible.  It was a rule created by people.  You might think, ok, well that seems like a good way to judge, we’ll follow the rules in the Bible.  There was a long standing church law that women could not be ordained.  That rule came from a Bible passage.  It’s tricky isn’t it?

However, I do believe that there are guides to help us interpret the laws of our church.  Holy Scripture provides an awesome guide.  If we read it literally, we will find a lot of rules.  If we read it in community with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we will find the same rules but we will discover ways to determine what is and what is not truly critical to our faith. 

The most important guide is Jesus.  Some people like to portray Jesus as this big rule breaker who thumbed his nose at authority.  He didn’t break the rules; he reinterpreted them.  Thankfully he provided some divine guidance while he was still on earth.  When someone asked him what the most important commandment was, he responded, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” He interpreted everything through a lens of love.  He healed the woman because he had compassion for her.  He could not let her go one more day in agony…not one more day.  That was what the Pharisee failed to see.  For him, the laws became more important than the people they were created for.

It is vital that we as a church look at our written and unwritten rules and traditions.  We look at them through a lens of love for God and our neighbor.  If we open ourselves up to that exercise of seeing things through a lens of love,  our church will become more open, loving, and authentic.  Because when Jesus calls out the hypocrites.  I don’t want to be the one he is looking at.