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13th Sunday after Pentecost

9/3/2006

Jesus can’t seem to stay out of trouble. We begin reading again today in the gospel of Mark having had six weeks hearing from St. John. As we pick up the story once more, let me refresh your memory about what went on before today’s lesson from the 7th chapter of Mark. In Chapter 6 Jesus fed 5,000 people, walked on water and calmed the sea. When he landed ashore at the village of Gennesaret, crowds of people brought the sick on mats and lay them in the market places where Jesus would come, they knew that he could cure them. Mark reports, “…begging him (Jesus) that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak, and all who touched it were healed.” Now we jump from that kind of hope-filled faith in Chapter 6 to the beginning of today’s reading in chapter 7. The Pharisees and some of the scribes come from Jerusalem take Jesus to task because his disciples do not wash their hands. Not only that, but the disciples and evidently Jesus himself do not follow the traditions of the elders, that is washing everything in which they come into contact. Washing and touching, people begging to touch even the fringe of Jesus’ cloak, washing everything in sight in order to be ritually clean. Let’s unpack this lesson and the implications of what it means to be clean.

Jesus challenges those who think they walk the walk and talk the talk but do not. In Matthew’s gospel Jesus will say to this same crowd, the Pharisees and scribes, “you are like white washed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”

Five times in this 23rd chapter of Matthew he will call them hypocrites; he will also call them blind guides and descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Yes, Jesus is really getting into trouble with the recognized religious establishment. In the end, it will cost him his life.

The crux of this controversy comes from a ritual act of washing the hands and washing everything that is “common.” Hand washing is not a bad thing at all; each time I leave the parking lot of Forsyth Hospital I notice a sign that reads, “Whoa! It is dirty out there, wash your hands.” Every time I visit the rest room of an eating establishment there is a sign posted that reads something to the effect, “each employee must wash their hands before returning to work.” I certainly don’t wish to eat in a place where the food handlers don’t comply with that request, and I am certain you would not either. In the case with the Pharisees, they are simply taking into the public arena what they are changed to do privately and that is to be clean; to be pure and holy. Not only must their hands be clean, but everything else they lay their hands on: food, cooking pots, work utensils, everything they touch. This may seem silly but it is not. In doing some reading on the text I came across this quote, “Those who dismiss such questions as trivial betray a fundamental misunderstanding of the whole Pharisaic enterprise, which isto sanctify all of life. The tradition of the elders was not an attempt to bury the commands of God in trivia, but to apply the torah to every facet of life.” Most of us do something like that, we claim a value and apply it to everything we say and do. For instance don’t we teach our children, “honesty is the best policy” and reinforce that by saying, “look, if you always tell me the truth, then I can deal with it, but if you lie to me, that destroys your credibility.” The washing of the hands in these verses is not a washing to clean dirt off the hands, but a religious or ritual washing. Not only were hands dirty that had weeded the garden, or shoveled out the stable or cut and sanded wood; they had also become “common” through these common chores. They not only needed to be cleansed, they also needed to be purified—made holy again. Indeed, for Jews of that day, one of the ways to be reminded that all of life is under the care and command of God was for the males to wear a little leather box on the left wrist which contained four scripture passages from Exodus and Deuteronomy. Every time one reached out the hand they were to remember that God demands that we be clean and acceptable to God. But sometimes outward appearances do not bring us any closer to God any more than living in a garage makes one an automobile. Talking the talk does not always translate into walking the walk. But we are not Jews under the law of ritual washing, so what does this text mean for us today? I think the key is what Jesus says here about what is in the heart, what is on the inside rather than what we do on the outside. Jesus quotes from the prophet Isaiah, “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me…” What is it that is in your heart, rather than what is on your lips or in your hands? Two places in our confessional service point us in the right direction.

First, we acknowledge the fact that God knows us through and through. We say in the confession, “Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid: …” God knows what is in your heart and there is no way you can hide from God. And there should be no need to hide from God because if we think we can, all we are doing is deceiving ourselves. That is what Jesus was telling this crowd, “Listen to me, all of you and understand…evil things came from within, and they defile a person.” We can’t hide anything from God so don’t even think about it. God knows you from the inside out, so outward displays of reverence don’t impress God. Come clean; confess that you need to have a new heart, a clean heart, a loving and obedient heart. God will forgive and make new when we are honest and don’t pretend to be what we are not. The word hypocrite that Jesus uses over and overin Matthew chapter 23 began with the meaning, “responder and interpreter. It was then applied to the acting stage “one who plays or interprets a part, an actor.” Don’t hide behind the mask of pretending, you are who you are and one simply must claim that. You can not “act” you’re your way into loving God with your whole heart. We are in bondage to sin and we can not free ourselves. God will forgive but first you need to acknowledge the grip sin has on you. The confessional goes on to ask God to “cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of (God’s) Holy Spirit…” How can our hearts have “thoughts”—isn’t it our heads that have thoughts and our hearts have feelings?

Well, think about this. There is an expression that captures the idea here and that expression is “what you set your heart on; your mind will seek to achieve.” How often have you be inspired by the story of someone who longed to be the best they could be in a certain area of life—music, sports, professional excellence. Recently I saw a television adaptation of the ovie, The Loretta Claiborne Story about a woman born partially blind and mildly retarded. She could not walk or talk until age four, but as a young teen Loretta discovered running and the Special Olympics. She is now in her fifty’s but continues to run daily. In 1996 she received the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage. Loretta Claiborne has completed 25 marathons, carried the torch in the International Special Olympics and holds the 5000 meter record for her age group. She says, “I got support from family, community and God—he is the strength of all and can make anything possible.” Loretta Claiborne set her heart on running, and like all who wish to fulfill a dream the heart has to be willing in order for the mind and body to find a way. Our hearts really do have thoughts—thoughts to be the best, to achieve something important to us, to dedicate ourselves to a dream and to love and serve God. But we continue with the confessional. We say that “We are in bondage to sin…” that, “We have not loved you, God, with our whole heart; that we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.” Jesus is not having much success in getting this crowd to understand, that we are by nature sinful and unclean. They don’t get it and often we too fail to see the truth.

No matter how much we wash our hands, brush our teeth, put on deodorant the outward signs of religiosity don’t testify to inward love for God. These folks and we too either can not or will not understand that outward display of reverence does not overcome the fact that we have inward disobedience to God.
Jesus takes our religious rituals and turns them inside out and upside down. Only when one comes to realize that it is our “insides” which are the problem and that no cure can be found within ourselves, and that it is only when we turn to God can our “bondage to sin” be overcome. Outside things do not defile us, what is inside makes us corrupt, but by the same token nothing in us can make us clean, it is only God who can do that. It is God, who is outside of us, who comes into our insides to purify us. It is what God does rather than what we do that brings us close to God and makes our hearts clean and our hands holy enabling us to serve God by serving others.

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13th Sunday after Pentecost