“No Outcastes”
Mark 7:1-8, 14-23
When I was interning in the News Department of a Television Station during college, the Bureau Chief gave me a nasty assignment.
There was someone running for office, he must have already been in government somehow, and she wanted me to dig up dirt on him.
She didn’t have any dirt on him—she just wanted me to dig some up because she wanted some news.
She had me hide-out in the Capital Parking Garage and watch him get into his car in order to find out whether he was using government vehicles for personal use.
She also had me searching the Capital Building itself, searching for anything that might be news-worthy.
I couldn’t find a thing.
One day this politician came to the station for an interview with this Bureau Chief.
I greeted him and then whispered in his ear: “They’ve had me searching for dirt on you for the past couple months and I wasn’t able to find a thing. Good for you!”
A few days later that same politician had a new commercial on the air waves.
In it a news director was screaming into a phone to a guy in a hat, overcoat and with a big micro-scope— and the news director was yelling: “Find dirt on…”--I can’t remember the politician’s name.
Then the investigator or whatever (who was obviously portraying me) called his boss back saying, “I can’t find anything,” to which the boss screamed back into the phone ever louder and more frustrated: “Find dirt!”
Our Gospel Lesson for this morning reminds me of my experience of searching for dirt on that poor guy and also the funny commercial that followed.
The Pharisees and some teachers of the Law are following Jesus around in order to “find dirt” on Him so they can have an excuse to get rid of Him and when they “saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled, that is unwashed” they are sure they have found some!
Now this had nothing to do with being sanitary or unsanitary.
They had no concept of germs back then.
And the ritual washing of hands before eating was not a law found in Scripture.
It was a “tradition of the elders.”
In other words, it wasn’t a law of God; it was a tradition created by people.
Now, of course, traditions can enrich life and faith.
Traditions can help bring structure and discipline.
Traditions can be wonderful things.
But, sometimes they can be so ingrained in us that we don’t even know why we practice them.
There is a story about a little rural church that got a new minister.
And he began to notice an interesting thing that would happen every Sunday.
At the beginning of the service the entire congregation would sit on the left side of the sanctuary.
But after the offering, the entire congregation would stand and move to the other side.
They did this every Sunday.
The pastor wondered why they did this and so he kept asking folks in the congregation.
People would answer: “It’s just the way we have always done it.
I’ve been going here my whole life and it’s the way we worship.”
Finally, the minister asked the oldest member of the congregation.
She gave him the answer.
A long time ago, the church had a wood burning furnace that would heat the sanctuary.
Someone would light the furnace a few minutes before the service, but it would take a while for the place to heat up.
So everyone sat near the furnace which was on the left side of the sanctuary.
By the time the offering came around it was too hot on the furnace side so everyone would stand up and move to the other side.
It became a tradition.
Once the furnace was gone, people kept doing it.
That’s a little like this hand washing thing Jesus is dealing with in Mark Chapter 7.
It was just human tradition that someone added to their religion and when the Pharisees see Jesus’ disciples ignoring this tradition they figure they have “found dirt” on Jesus.
“Dirt” they can use to discredit Him, to bring Him down.
After-all, they were the ones in charge of the religious rules and traditions.
They were the ones who told people what God expected of people and what was important to God.
How dare this new carpenter-turned Rabbi come in and upset the apple-cart, and thus, threaten their power structure, their jobs, their status, their Temple rules.
How dare He go against the way things have always been, even if He is healing people, and doing so many other good and loving things—even if He is drawing in huge crowds of folks who otherwise would probably have had no interest in Temple worship and their rules anyway—no interest in God.
Lives were being changed, transformed…
…but these people were eating with unwashed hands!
How dare they!!!
So, the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?”
At this, Jesus probably blew out a breath of frustration as He replied:
“Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites…
‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’
You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.”
Jesus turned the “purity system” on its head!
And in its place He announced a new community that would be characterized by inner compassion for everyone, not external rules…
…it would be based on inclusivity rather than exclusivity, by inward transformation rather than outward rituals and play acting—in other words—hypocrisy.
There would be no outcasts in the Kingdom of God.
I’ve found it helpful and humbling in my spiritual journey to ask myself: “what ‘people’ do I sanctimoniously look down on as impure, unclean, dirty, contaminated, and, in my mind—far from God?
How have I distorted the self-sacrificing love of God into some sort of self-serving, exclusionary elitism?
What boundaries do I wrongly build?
What boundaries is God calling me to bravely shatter?
Sometimes, we hold on to things which cause others to stumble and which keep others out.
What is truly important to God?
And What should be truly important to us?
Over and over again in the Gospels Jesus instructed the religious leaders to “go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy not sacrifice.’”
I want to learn what this means as well.
After Jesus spoke to the Pharisees, He called the crowd together to Him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this.
Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them.
Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.”
I don’t think we can even pretend to grasp the magnitude of what Jesus said here.
To know the context and to whom He is speaking is crucial.
This is a culture that prizes Jewish food laws.
The Old Testament goes into great detail regarding clean and unclean foods, and Jewish people distinguished themselves from their pagan neighbors by observing these food laws.
To say that a person is not defiled by what he or she eats is a seriously bold statement, although it is in keeping with what Jesus did in other situations…
…He ate with unclean people, He included women in His ministry in a society that excluded them from everything—and some of them didn’t exactly have very good reputations…
…He had compassion for people—for sinners rather than contempt.
In any event, we get a glimpse of the magnitude of what Jesus has just told the crowd because even His disciples can’t grasp what He is really saying.
It’s too radical.
In verse 17 we are told that Jesus’ “disciples asked him about this.”
Think about it, many Jewish people had been martyred, tortured, killed for refusing to eat unclean food, pork in particular.
And Jesus is shining a light on something, a deep truth about the way humans are.
He knows the message of the Kingdom is not going to go down easily.
You might as well try to tell the leaders of the old South Africa that all races are equal in the sight of God.
It’s not something they are going to want to hear.
That’s why Jesus used parables, not only here but in other places.
It was the only way He could say some of the most devastating things He wanted to say.
But His disciples don’t get it.
Only when they get back to the house does Jesus explain.
He is talking about what comes out of the heart.
Eating meat from crocodile to kangaroo, from pig to porcupine has nothing to do with that.
And when people get stuck on regulations about food and so forth, they never move on to the truly important things.
And the truly important things are what is in the heart.
The Prophet Micah wrote some 2,750 years ago: “With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before God with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of olive oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgressions, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
God has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
Our world is on fire.
We have people who are living in the streets—homeless.
We have children who are neglected—basically raising themselves.
We have extremely high suicide rates, a big problem with racism, bigotry and political division.
We have a younger generation that is basically absent from the Churches.
And we so often waste our time caught up and angry about things that don’t matter.
In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus tells the Pharisees that they are shutting the Kingdom of God in people’s faces.
They are dragging folks down with their rules and regulations while neglecting what is truly important to God: “Justice, mercy and faithfulness.”
Isn’t it a relief to know that God is so unlike us?
And God’s Kingdom is so unlike the world.
The world is full of judgment, meanness, anger, bigotry, greed, arrogance, and so many other horrible things that drag people down and make life so difficult for so many.
But God’s Kingdom is about freedom from all this.
Freedom to love all people no matter who they are, what they look like and who they love.
Freedom to be our true selves as God created us to be and therefore being given the opportunity to love ourselves, love God and love others.
This is what God’s Kingdom is about—and the Church is to be the Representation of God’s Kingdom on Earth.
We are to be different from the cold, cruel world.
As Jesus said, we are to be in this world but “not of this world.”
I know we all have a long way to go with this.
I have a long way to go.
But that’s what the journey is about—learning what it means to be like Jesus.
To have hearts that habitually love like Jesus.
“To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with…God.”
Will you pray with me:
Lord, give us the grace to be people of grace.
For the sake of Your Kingdom.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.
