Background: Labor Day weekend was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. The Gospel reading was Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23, where the Pharisees and scribes call Jesus out for his disciples not washing their hands before they eat (not following the tradition of the elders) and Jesus explains how it is not what goes in a person that defiles, it is what comes out of us that does that.
“It’s About the Heart”
For the record: Jesus was not against washing your hands.
Jesus was not against the tradition of the elders.
Jesus had a problem with making traditions for the sake of traditions and acting without the heart being in the right place.
Particularly human traditions that went against commandments God put in place. He says:
“You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”
This lectionary reading skips over verses 9 through 13 of Mark’s Gospel, where Jesus gives them an example of this. He says:
“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.”
There was a Jewish tradition that allowed you to make a donation to the Temple, which would absolve you from having to financially care for your parents as they got older. This goes against the whole idea of honor your mother and your father.
Do you think we still have some human traditions that we follow, possibly in spite of the commandments of God?
I will grab some low-hanging fruit here:
“Remember the Sabbath, keep it holy.” Unless your child or grandchild has sports. Or you need to go grocery shopping. Or you want to go out to eat. Or you have work to do….
How about make no idols? Don’t covet? Adultery? Well, these aren’t the big ones, right? These things happen, it’s not like murder. But we can even make murder okay if it’s on foreign soil, and if it’s in the name of national security, if it’s sanctioned by the government (also known as war).
If we stick just to the Ten Commandments, we’ve pretty much found loopholes or ways to justify any kind of behavior we want to normalize.
‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;’
Jesus has no issue with washing your hands and ritual purity. But when he and his disciples are hungry and tired and eating, and that’s the human tradition the Pharisees want to call someone out on, when their holy people are doing things so much worse all while staying within their established traditions, Jesus is going to call them out.
In many ways, our traditions define us—as a country, as a people, as a community, as a church. Even inside our liturgy, we pray a certain way, we say confession together, we celebrate the Eucharist. We consider our traditions in the church to be holy, and they are. Our traditions can also become a form of gatekeeping—if you don’t do things this way, you’re not one of us, you don’t belong.
What would be a good litmus test to ask, are these traditions the kind of thing we want to be known for? Do we like what they say about us as a community? Would God condone/endorse what our traditions look like?
In her book, “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories,” Debie Thomas asks a few questions along these lines:
“Does your version of holiness lead to hospitality? To inclusion? To freedom? Does it cause your heart to open wide with compassion? Does it lead other people to feel loved and welcomed at God’s table? Does it make you brave? Does it ready your mind and body for a God who is always doing something fresh and new? Does it facilitate another step forward in your spiritual evolution? …Like everything Jesus offers us, his encounter with the Pharisees is an invitation. An invitation to consider what is truly inviolable in our spiritual lives.”
Our human traditions may not be physical food, but we take them in, they go into us and become part of us. And this is where the rubber hits the road for Jesus. When what becomes a part of us effects what comes out of us.
Jesus isn’t signing on to become our dietician: he’s not sitting in our car and giving us a lecture when we go through the McDonald’s drive thru. But it’s fair to say he cares how we treat the person working in the drive thru.
“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.” For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come… these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
Over and over again, in each of the Gospels, Jesus talks about and is concerned about hearts. He never tries to legislate what we do, he wants our hearts to be in the right place, and then what comes out of us will be in line with having loving hearts.
How many of us, before we eat, make a habit of washing our hands first? That’s a smart practice, we want our hands to be clean before we take food into our bodies.
How many of us have a similar practice before we say something, before we post something online, before we comment about something we disagree with? Do we have a practice like washing our hands, before something comes out of us?
What if before something comes out of us, we asked ourselves a few questions:
Do I know this to be true? Does it bring me closer to God? Does it help me love my neighbor? Does it bring my neighbor closer to God? Does it help my neighbor love me? Would I want someone saying this to someone I love? Does this sound like something Jesus would say or do or condone?
What comes out of us, both individually and collectively, is largely unchecked and not considered. And we are approaching a boiling point in our country with a Presidential election in a couple months.
I had to dig back in my mind for more than a decade for the last time two Presidential candidates treated each other with respect: Obama vs. Romney. They didn’t see eye-to-eye, they didn’t agree with what direction the country should go in, but when they debated, when they were asked questions about each other in interviews, and even Romney’s concession speech, they treated each other like human beings.
What has been modeled for us ever since has become a big part of the way we think about people who don’t agree with us, people who have a different vision for where we should go as a nation, as a people, as a community. If you don’t see things like I do, your opinion doesn’t matter—I am going to call you names, I am going to belittle your views, attack your credibility—because you clearly aren’t even human; by believing what you believe, you aren’t worth the air you breathe.
Does that sound familiar? Do we recognize that in ourselves and in each other? It’s dehumanizing, degrading, and heart-breaking. That’s what we are taking in. That’s what is being modeled for us.
Ultimately, we decide what comes out of us. We decide what behavior we are going to model. That’s what Jesus is talking about. We’re defiling ourselves and each other. We are so far from where Jesus is calling us to be in loving God and loving our neighbor. Is there another way, is there an alternative to thinking about what comes out of us?
Here’s something we might give a shot. I’ve been reading “An Altar in the World” by Episcopal priest and professor Barbara Brown Taylor this summer. Her book is about giving us concrete practices that we can do to find the holy, to find God, everywhere and in everyone. She spends the last chapter of the book on “The Practice of Pronouncing Blessings.”
In our church, there are certain things that only a priest can bless—the elements for Communion, a marriage, or the congregation as we leave: the priest confers blessings. Those aren’t the kind of blessings Barbara Brown Taylor means. She says that to pronounce a blessing on someone or something is to see them as important: to see them as created by and loved by God.
We don’t make anyone or anything blessed, loved, or holy—God has already done that. We’re just giving our words to it.
She says that when we choose to bless, it requires us to ease up on judging what is good and what is bad for us or for the world. It’s God who ultimately reveals that.
And she says that pronouncing a blessing puts us as close to God as we might ever get because we are asking ourselves to try to look at someone with God’s eyes.
“To learn to look with compassion on everything that is; to make the first move toward the other, however many times it takes to get close; to open your arms to what is instead of waiting until it is what (we think) it should be… to pronounce a blessing is to (try to) see things from the divine perspective.”
What if we thought about trying to see things from God’s perspective before we let something come out of us? That’s a tall order, one that takes practice and effort. But it’s a practice that can help us love each other.
What if we offered a blessing to those we encounter, instead of our anger, our judgment, and our doubts.
Let’s give it a try. Here’s a blessing to take with you:
May the Day
May the day bring you closer to love—
real love, big love, the kind you feel in your bones and your soul,
that opens you up and comes out of you like rain, like tears,
like laughter that leaves you shaking.
May the day bring you closer to God—
the One who loves you, who knows you, who created you,
whose face you want to see and study and hold
and never turn away from.
The One who knows your questions, your confusion,
your sorrows and joys and
whose presence holds all the answers you seek.
May the day bring you closer to your neighbor—
the neighbor who you know and love,
the neighbor who annoys you and who you avoid,
the neighbor who smiles at you when you walk by them on the sidewalk,
the neighbor who is afraid to make eye contact,
the neighbor in the produce section of the grocery store,
the neighbor who just got news they don’t think they can recover from.
May the day bring you closer to understanding—
that love, God, and neighbor are the same,
we need them and they need us, and that we are connected
in ways that we can see and ways that we can’t,
but connected nonetheless and always.
May the day bring you compassion—
when and where you need it,
to be seen, heard, and cared for,
and also to see, hear, and care for
those who need it in their day.
May the day bring you peace—
the kind that slows your heart rate, eases your pulse,
emanates from your soul, drives away your worries
and leaves a contagious smile on your face.
May the day wake you up—
To all these things—love, God, neighbor,
understanding, compassion, and peace—
may you be aware of and know these truths
today, this day, and all days,
knowing and loving God and all of God’s creation
more each day.
