Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
From Gratitude to Grace
By Leslie Kennard
In my reading this week,
I came across a quote by Fred Buechner.
He said, “We really can’t hear what the stories of the Bible are saying
until we hear them as stories about ourselves.”
That’s certainly true, isn’t it?
The Bible really comes alive when we find where we fit. So I looked at the passage from Mark, and, of
course, Jesus is there, but I’m not Jesus.
The other people in the passage are the Pharisees, the disciples, and
the crowd. I would guess that most of us
don’t want to see ourselves as the Pharisees.
Some of us, if we’re honest, would just as soon hide in the crowd. We’ve just read the passage and we know what
Jesus says, so getting lost in the crowd seems like a good way to avoid being
the target of his piercing message. But
since we’re all here in worship, my guess it that most of us see ourselves as
disciples, gathered around Jesus, trying to understand His point of view about
the Pharisees - those guys from the temple.
But let’s not be hasty. Before we decide which team we’re on, let’s
look at each of the teams.
The Pharisees. Jesus was a Jew, and he knew the importance
of the Pharisees. They were the ones entrusted with ensuring that the written
and oral laws handed down by God were adhered to. They were the first lawyers, in the days
before the separation of church and state.
The Pharisees took their responsibilities seriously, and kept a pulse on
the community to ensure that the traditions that had served God’s chosen people
were followed carefully by all the people.
They--and the people they served--believed that careful observance of
the religious traditions and laws were important in living a clean life. After all, the laws by which they lived were
what God had given them. God’s gift to
them WAS the law of Moses.
In our own Christian community, here
at
The Disciples. As motley a crew as one could expect to find
anywhere. A dairy farmer, a CPA, a stay-at-home mom, a doctor, a teacher’s
aide, a barber, a building inspector, a
wood cutter, a school custodian (I think they called them janitors in Jesus’
day), and a couple more. We know what
they do: they are students of Jesus.
They follow him everywhere he will let them, and mostly they try
to make sense of what he is trying to teach them. Some days the lessons are as clear as a
summer sky: feed my sheep, care for widows and orphans; other times the lessons
are clear as mud, like the strange things he said at dinner in the upper room,
about the bread being his body and the wine being his blood. Even all these years later we only vaguely
comprehend the meaning of the table laid before us here. Sometimes the lessons are exhilarating,
sometimes they are downright frightening, but there’s never a dull moment for
the disciples. They are in the thick of
life with Jesus, learning about God’s love for them and Jesus’ love for God and
the meaning of life--isn’t that Jesus’ bottom line? The meaning of life? So we have some disciples here, today,
too. They are the ones who are asking
themselves and the rest of us, “What would Jesus do?” and asking that question
from the depths of their hearts. Our
life as a congregation depends upon our disciples.
And finally, there’s the crowd. That’s the rest of us. Some of us are alone, and being part of the
congregation helps. Some of us are
lonely and coming into the presence of the One who wraps us in holy love helps. Some of us wrestle with demons and coming
into the safety of the sanctuary helps.
Some of us have health problems and we come to be healed. Some of us are lost and we come for an
orientation session. Some grew up in
troubled families and we come to learn a new way of being a family. Some of us grew up with no religion or with
religious practices that brought us pain and we come because we can breathe
freely here. We are here for as many
reasons as there are people. And the
crowd keeps us honest and diversified.
As long as we have the crowd, we won’t become exclusive or proud. As long as we have the crowd we will have the
Risen Christ in our midst ministering and healing and touching.
So that’s our brief introduction to
the people who were gathered around Jesus this morning. Some days I’m a Pharisee, some days I’m a
disciple, some days I’m a member of the crowd.
This past week, as I’ve wrestled with the message Jesus delivers in the
sermon, I’ve been all three. What is
particularly interesting in this morning’s passage is that Jesus delivers the
same message to all three groups.
Interesting, isn’t it? This
particular message is for each one of us, regardless of who we are and where we
fit.
And like so many of Jesus’ lessons,
this one appears to be clear, but on second glimpse, well…come along
with me.
He says the same thing three
different times in three different ways in Mark. While the lesson is for everyone, each group
is more likely to hear it in the terms of their relationship with him or the
religious community. To one group he
says, “You honor me with your words, but your hearts are far from me. You abandon the commandments of God and live
by contemporary human standards.” To
another group he says, “There is nothing outside a person that by going in can
defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” And, finally, “…whatever goes into a person
from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart, but the stomach,
and goes out into the sewer….It is what comes out of a person that
defiles. For it is from within, from the
human heart, that evil intentions come.” And then He lists the7 deadly sins and
a few more for good measure.
For good measure, I’d like to add
one more version, from Luke 6:45: “The good person out of the good treasure of
the heart produces good, and the evil person out of the evil treasure produces
evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.” I’ve included the version from Luke because I
hear in this version more clearly the question that disturbs me about the
versions in Mark, the question that keeps the lesson from being simple.
Jesus seems to be saying, in both
Mark and Luke, that there are good people and there are bad people, and that
you can tell the difference between the two by what they do (that’s Mark) and
what they say (that’s Luke). But right away, before we even get to you and me
and whether we are good or bad, we run into a problem with the Pharisees (the
first group Jesus talks to) because they are saying a GOOD THING! Their words are upholding the ritual laws of
cleansing that GOD GAVE THEM. WE know
that Jesus bristles at the Pharisees because they TEACH the traditions, but don’t
necessarily live them. The lectionary
cut out verses 9 - 13, where he makes his point in terms of the commandment to
honor one’s father and mother. And don’t
we all do the same thing? I lope along
living the best life I know how, and then Wham! Out of nowhere, a firestorm of
impatient rage! Bill’s not here this
morning, but he will tell you this is the truth. And on one occasion recently I slandered
someone who may have engaged in a behavior that hurt me, but he didn’t do it
for the purpose of hurting me or anyone.
He was just being who he is, and he is NOT a bad person. And folly, well, I’m not even going to go
there.
I do say things I wish I hadn’t
said. I sometimes say things I wish I
hadn’t even THOUGHT. I don’t mind that
God knows my thoughts, the evil and hurting corners of my heart. The grace that is ours at Communion wouldn’t
have any meaning if I didn’t let God in to do a good housecleaning. But I surely don’t like having people having
the goods on me.
My heart is not a swirling cesspool
of evil. Nor is my heart sparkling
bright with un-smudged perfection. My
heart has rooms filled with overwhelming love, and probably my grandchildren
and Bill spend the most time in those rooms. My heart has rooms with storage
trunks of pain tucked into dark corners, moldering and, out of the light of
day, building up pressure until one day a word or act of evil bursts out. And my heart’s central chamber, the one that
keeps the air moving through all the others, of the one God lives in. I’m not good or bad any more than the
disciples are good or the Pharisees are bad.
I am good AND evil. My heart has
an abundance of good AND an abundance of evil.
I think that’s why the Pharisees
keep coming back to Jesus trying to make sense out of compassion that seems
to leave tradition in the dust; why the disciples keep asking the same old
questions (in the lesson today, Jesus says to them, “Do you STILL not
understand?” to which I say, ‘Well, yes,
I think I do‘……. And obviously, ‘No, not quite. Can you say it another way?’), why the crowds
follow him everywhere. We’re here, aren’t
we?
And THAT is the good news. God NEVER gives up. God NEVER stops. In Jesus, God went all the way to the cross
to get the message across to us. We are,
each of us and all of us--Pharisees, disciples, and members of the crowd-- God’s
own children: chosen, called, loved, held, forgiven. AMEN
INVITATION:
As many times as I have come to the table to receive the symbols of God’s love,
the moment always surprises me. We are
all here; we pray together, we sing together, we talk with one another. The whole of worship is familiar and
comfortable. And then I come to the table and suddenly I realize I am in the
presence of the one who is overwhelming in Holy Magnificence. Bread and juice. Life and love. Breath and goodness so abundant as to be
beyond belief.