July 24, 2024
Mark 7: 1-23
Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders, and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash, and there are also many other traditions that they observe: the washing of cups and pots and bronze kettles and beds.) So, the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders but eat with defiled hands?” He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,
‘This people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.
’
“You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” Then he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban’ (that is, an offering to God), then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, thus nullifying the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.”
Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. He said to them, “So, are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters not the heart but the stomach and goes out into the sewer?” (Thus, he declared all foods clean.) And he said, “It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
God has a miraculous sense of humor. I know this because as a single lady, I prayed for a partner who wouldn’t be intimidated by my choice of a traditionally male profession. Someone with whom I would never get bored. Someone who would challenge me. Then I met and fell in love with Erich and heard God’s laughter.
Erich is an absolute extrovert, at his most energetic in a room full of new people. I’m an introvert who needs a nap after church. He’s an accomplished athlete who can pick up a new sport in a matter of minutes. I only run when chased and have twisted an ankle on three occasions while walking downstairs. Erich isn’t a reader and detests public speaking. I speak in front of people for a living and my dream room is a library, snuggly armchairs, and an endless supply of coffee.
Erich and I are also different in our approaches to everyday life. For example, before we moved to Lewisburg, Erich and I lived with his parents. This necessitated moving 90% of our belongings into storage, a process that almost ended our marriage.
My plan was to take a room-by-room approach, culling out the unnecessary for donation or disposal, then packing, and finally organizing the boxes in the unit by where they’d end up in a new house. Erich was more concerned with making everything fit into the unit and thus he took a more Tetris-like approach to packing. If it fit in a box it went into the box whether the items belonged together or not. And at the storage unit kitchen boxes were mixed in with book boxes, a box of hangers was slid in next to a bag of soccer balls, and our bathroom trash can was flipped upside down on top of a nightstand. But it was when I saw a box marked “Bible and Commentaries” being held in place under our dining table with 3 cases of bowling balls I had to take a break.
I had to take a break, take some deep breaths, and remember Erich and I had the same goal. Our frustratingly different approaches were leading to conflict, despite both of us desperately wanting to be done moving. We were after the same thing but going about it in ways that brought us to loggerheads. And I think we witness the same thing happening in this morning’s passage from Mark.
It’s easy to paint the Pharisees as consistently bad guys, incapable of seeing the forest for the trees, too caught up in keeping the people in line to care about what really matters. But in truth, their goal is to be as close to God as possible, both personally and communally. They’re committed to observing the law in its fullest sense; thus, their standards are higher and more exacting.
It’s a fair comparison to think of the Pharisees as surgeons who take the time to scrub before an operation to maintain a sterile field and protect their patients. Consider how that surgeon would feel if one of us walked in without washing our hands or wearing the proper protective clothing and started touching things. As Dr. Amy Robertson points out, what’s at stake for the Pharisees with handwashing is religious health. “Health that doesn’t just affect the washer, but the relationship of the whole community with God,”[1] which is impacted when people flout the rules.
Even now we trust the knowledge of scientists and doctors who tell us to get a flu shot, a healthy diet consists of more than bread and cheese, and that regular hand washing reduces the spread of disease. Few of us know the exact ins and outs of this trusted information, and yet we continue to teach our children to wash their hands before they leave the restroom.
My point is that the Pharisees’ commitment to cleanliness is not so outlandish when we consider that for them “being unclean creat[es] a barrier to worship and being part of the community.”[2] What’s more, “rituals matter because they’re a way of keeping God in mind at all times.”[3]
And it’s important to notice that Jesus isn’t targeted for having unclean hands, nor does he tell people not to wash. What a highly snarky Jesus takes issue with is what scholars call the oral Torah. As opposed to the written Torah - the first 5 books of the Hebrew Bible which does not command handwashing before eating - the oral Torah is what’s referred to in the passage as the “tradition of the elders.”
Jewish tradition holds these laws were given on Mt. Sinai at the same time as the Torah, though they’re not written down. And as R. Alan Culpepper succinctly describes it, the oral Torah functions “‘a fence around the Law.’”[4] to keep the community from inadvertently being in violation. These are the unwritten rules of the community that everyone abides by.
Around here your unofficially assigned seats here in the sanctuary would fall into this category as would baptisms on Palm Sunday, singing “Silent Night” on Christmas Eve. These are rules and traditions our congregation has decided upon and added to our religious practice that aren’t specifically outlined in the biblical text. And anyone who’s spent time in the church knows all congregations have these unspoken rules. They’re present in all religious systems and tend to be helpful additions, until, as with this text, they’re made out to be as important as the biblical text itself. Or more specifically, the intention behind the text.
This is why Jesus’ response to the Pharisees' accusations can be boiled down to “God didn’t say that.”[5] God didn’t say that washing hands and cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches is necessary. You’re beginning to sound a bit like those folks Isaiah was warning the people of a long time ago. God didn’t say anything about “Corban,” tithing so stringent it doesn’t allow people to care for their parents. Fellas, this isn’t what Moses had in mind on Sinai and it isn’t what God has in mind now. We can’t keep choosing tradition over people.
Jesus then turns to the crowd and, as commentator Robert Williamson notes, he hands back an element of control. For if defilement, uncleanliness, separation from God and the community isn’t caused by what’s put into us. Whatever goes in eventually comes out. Rather, “it is what is already inside of us – in, that is, our hearts – that makes us unclean. And, indeed, from our hearts and out of our mouths comes all kinds of harmful things.”[6] But this is also where control comes into play. For, at least in theory, the crowd listening to Jesus then and all of here listening to him now can control our mouths, our actions, and our choices.
But as we all know, such control, such focus on only producing good things is hard to come by. And the vice list Jesus gives at the end of the passage doesn’t instill much confidence. He quickly rattles off “sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly” and says these all come from inside a person and defile them. After being so critical of the Pharisees who in their attempts to give the people a system to keep them close to God, Jesus not only obliterates their system but doesn’t seem to have much hope in the people.
The way this passage ends reminds me of St. Augustine of Hippo who, as you know, is a Father of the church who helped shape Church doctrine and theology. But before he was a Bishop Augustine was a young man who very much enjoyed female company. Aware that he was getting lost in lust and women Augustine famously prayed to God, “Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.” As he goes on to say, “For I was afraid lest thou shouldst hear me too soon, and too soon cure me of my disease of lust which I desired to have satisfied rather than extinguished.”[7]
We can see the humor in a serious young man praying for chastity “but not yet.” It’s harder to stomach Jesus, our Savior, and friend, rattling off this list of nasty things humans are capable of. He’s not wrong, but we don’t like to think of ourselves as capable of such defiling behavior. So, what do we do with his passage? Where do we go from here? How do we make all this talk about handwashing and defilement make sense?
First, we stop taking ourselves so seriously and admit that some of our traditions and unspoken rules really aren’t necessary, even if they’re comfortable. Then we admit that given the right set of circumstances, we are, in fact, capable of the things on Jesus’ list at the end of the passage. We’re human; inherently messy, inherently flawed, and always in need of God’s grace and love. Finally, we let the Pharisees off the hook and notice that just like Jesus they have the people’s best interests at heart. Like Jesus, they understand that we’re shaped by the world around us.
Our hearts, our attitudes, our feelings, and our emotions are shaped by the world we curate around ourselves. So, we must be careful about what we regard as authoritative and what we’re influenced by, not because these things matter in and of themselves, but because they make us a certain kind of person, and what kind of person you are matters.[8]
My friends the Good News this morning is that God is more interested in our hearts than our rituals. God is more interested in the work of our hands than if our hands are clean. And through all of it, God knows we’re human. Jesus makes no bones about all the things people are capable of, so there’s no need to hide behind our traditions and efforts at tidiness, our Creator sees through it anyway.
The title of this sermon comes from a song I learned at youth camp as a sixth-grader. I don’t remember the rest of the song, only that this line was the girls’ part we sang in the round with the boys. It likely seems a little nonsensical, but this phrase comes back to me from time to time as it did this week. It reminds me of who and whose I am. It reminds me of the purpose and focus of my life. It reminds me not to take myself or my work so seriously, and my hope is that it can do the same and more for you.
[1] Amy Robertson, Bible Worm Podcast, Episode 25, from https://www.biblewormpodcast.com/.
[2] Rolf Jacobson, Craig Koester, and Kathryn Schifferdecker, I Love to Tell the Story Podcast, #396 - “What Defiles?” from http://www.workingpreacher.org/narrative_podcast.aspx
[3] Robert Williamson, Jr., Bible Worm Podcast, ibid.
[4] R. Alan Culpepper, Mark: Smyth and Helwys Commentary Series, pg. 231.
[5] Bible Worm Podcast, ibid.
[6] David Lose, “Mark 7:9-23” from http://www.davidlose.net/2012/06/mark-79-23/.
[7] St. Augustine, Confessions, Book Eight, chapter VII.
[8] Robert Williamson, Bible Worm, ibid.
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