|
|
“You Kiss Your Mother with
That Mouth?”
Mark 7:1-23
A sermon preached by the
Rev. Douglas M. Donley
I
remember college as being a wonderfully liberating experience. There we were with lots of freedom, as long
as we got our homework done. We could
stay up and out as long as we wanted. We
could do a lot of things we couldn’t do at home. We could even say things we couldn’t say at
home. I remember once when I came home
from school on break and I had not realized how…um…colorful my language had
become. I let loose with a word or two
that I was used to using at school but not so much at home. My family sat there with their mouths hanging
wide open. My dad said, “you kiss your
mother with that mouth?” Behind this
comment was, “I thought I raised you better than that.” “We pay good money to send you to school and
you come home talking like that?”
Part
of being at college is breaking free from the rules of home. Some of those rules are good. They give us good boundaries. And some are just a bit restrictive. But we should always take care of what comes
out of our mouth. Needless to say, even
though I still slip up a lot, I try to watch what comes out of my mouth.
I
hear Bert Blyleven is concerned about his language too, now that he has been
caught using colorful language. If only
we were as concerned about violent words
as we area bout so-called profane
words.
The
scribes and the Pharisees are a set of parental—seeming adversaries of Jesus in
today’s gospel lesson. Jesus takes on
the Pharisees by calling attention to their concern with cleanliness—which we
could best describe as…retentive.
Remember cleanliness was a big thing.
For you could only participate in the rituals of God if you were
clean. You could only be seen as a
person of holy worth if you were clean.
So who got to make declaration of cleanliness held a lot of power. When Jesus healed a leper, Jesus said for the
leper to go to the priest so the priest can declare him clean. It wasn’t enough to be cured, you must also be
ritually clean.
If
any of you have slogged through the book of Leviticus, you know being clean is
a pretty big deal. By and large men were
cleaner than women, since women were declared unclean each time the went
through their menstrual cycle. And each
time they gave birth. In fact, you were
unclean longer if you gave birth to a girl than a boy. There are clean foods and unclean foods.
There are clean animals and unclean animals.
Think
about what makes us clean and unclean these days.
Are
there practices that make us clean or unclean?
Some
churches don’t let people take communion until they have gone through
confession or if they are not baptized.
Fellow
Baptist pastor Greg Boyd from the Twin Cities was all but declared unclean by
his conservative evangelical brethren and sistren for not being aligned enough
with a political party.
The
Pharisees were not simply good faithful Biblical people. They also decided that they knew the meaning
behind the Torah. They decided to use an
Oral Torah—getting at the supposed spirit behind the Torah. They enacted lots of unbiblical rules and
lots of regulations. When today’s
scripture talks about the Pharisees criticizing Jesus for his hand-washing or
lack thereof, they were invoking, not the Bible, but “the tradition of our
elders”.
The
tradition of our elders. This sounds
like an older group who can’t deal with a new thought. It’s almost like saying, Jesus and his
followers don’t uphold “traditional family values.”
They
might as well have said that.
For
the Pharisees, the purity code was fundamental to the ethnic and national
identity of the Jewish people. They were
its gate-keepers.
All
purity rules were probably enacted for the right, holiest of reasons, but they
can quickly turn into the politics of exclusion. If you live in a certain part of the country,
as a matter of survival you may well have to eat a certain kind of food. But what if some priest or Pharisee in a city
far far away declares it unclean? Then
by definition, you are unclean, too. And
if you were unable to eat with the right “clean” people, then you were forever
relegated to a second-class status The
politics of exclusion.
It
was Jesus’ job to break through the politics of exclusion.
The
method of the Pharisees was this Oral Torah. But Jesus knows the real Torah: the real
rules. He can argue scripture with the
best of them. The Pharisees, who are all
about righteousness, are quick to point out the minimal ways that Jesus’
followers don’t follow their rules. Like
a good magician’s misdirection—focusing on a relatively small thing can help
you ignore a bigger thing or two. Jesus
shoots back with an example of how the Pharisees refuse to follow the Bible’s
rules.
It
says in the Torah that we are to take care of our parents, especially in their
old age. In fact Exodus
The
work of the Torah is to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God, as the
prophet Micah says. Jesus shows time and
again how piety can pre-empt justice.
The temple is important, but our family obligations are more important, for in them lie the
heart of the Torah.
I
got a flyer from Focus on the Family about a great opportunity for non-partisan
voting guides for use in our church. It
listed how we can make sure that our Christian values are represented as we go
to the polls. I was excited, because I
certainly do go into the voting booth as a Christian and I certainly vote my
Christian conscience. I was looking
forward to see how they would give perspectives upon how candidates viewed
poverty, war, tax policy, global warming, the minimum wage, ensuring fair
access to education, health care, dealing with racism. These are my big Christian issues. But what it said was that I could see how the
candidates would vote on abortion rights, gay rights, gun rights and
immigration. As if these are the only
things that matter to Christians. This
group has made these things their oral torah.
Maybe
we need to take a cue from the prophets.
The Prophet Isaiah said, “Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; remove
the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do
good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the
widow.” (Isaiah 1:16-17)
In
the 58th chapter, Isaiah says “If you remove the yoke from among
you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food
to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall
rise in the darkness and your gloom be like noonday.” (Isaiah 58:9b-10)
And
in a searing indictment of the form of religion without the function of
religion, Amos bellows “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight
in your solemn assemblies. Even though
you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them;
and the offerings of your fatted animals I will not look upon them. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I
will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an
everflowing stream.” (Amos 5:21-24)
Jesus
rightly points out that it is the heart, not the body that is the site of
purity. Therefore, we ought to not worry
so much about the surface, but what is at the heart.
The
heart is where the blessings and the curses lie. Jesus says that it’s not what goes into the
body that defiles us, but what comes out.
What is really unclean are the things from inside that hurt and damage
people. Jesus implies that the words of the Pharisees defile them. As they try to believe they are pure, they
are actually quite the opposite.
As
Jesus says, “For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions
come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit,
licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.
All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” Pretty strong words. Thirteen to be exact. Ironically, Jesus will later be accused of blasphemy—not
being pure enough and saying the wrong thing.
Over
five years ago, the Rev. Dr. Mel White preached here at the occasion of my
installation as pastor of this church.
I’m looking forward to seeing Mel this coming week as he is in town to
promote his new book, “Religion Gone Bad”.
For those of you who don’t know, Mel White was a ghost writer for Pat
Robertson, Jerry Falwell and others before coming out of the closet and
founding Soulforce which uses nonviolent methods to confront the spiritual
violence perpetrated upon the LGBT community by religious folk. I remember that during his sermon he read
letters of people who had heard the language and rhetoric of exclusion dressed
up in piety and dripping with prejudice.
He quoted Mark
He
was referring to the rhetoric of the religious right, but I think the principle
holds true for us progressives, too.
Think
of the words that we might say.
Think
of the faux pas that might slip out of our mouths unexpectedly. This does more
damage than what we eat or drink or take on.
I
tell people that are going through pre-marital counseling that we need to watch
our words carefully and work real hard to make sure that our heart is in the
right place. For when our defenses are
down, what’s in our hearts tend to come spilling out. I think of Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic tirade
that got him in trouble. Was that his
heart or was it the alcohol that was talking?
I
think of the words of vengeance that come out of so many of our mouths in the
aftermath of September 11th.
Do these words speak to the best of our hearts or do they defile
us. I think of the venom that comes out
of Osama Bin Laden’s mouth—defiling himself.
I think we ought to be better than that in how we answer back.
Think
of the things that defile us.
We
ought to be careful what we say.
We
ought to consider well what we do.
We
want to have a mouth with which we would be unashamedly willing to kiss our
mother or lover or son or daughter.
But
more than that, we want hearts that are holy, for that’s where the words come
from.
And
most of all we want to live a life that is worthy, clean, pure and holy enough
to do right and be right at all times.
So
take come time to look deep into your heart.
Since we are all made in the image of God, within our hearts exists a
part of God’s heart. Prayerfully connect
your heart to God’s and chances are what comes out of your mouth will be
worthy, just, clean and perhaps even true, audacious and healing.
Let
me close with an old spiritual:
“Give
me a clean heart so I may serve you
God
fix my heart so that I may be used by you.
For
I’m not worthy of all these blessings.
Give
me a clean heart and I’ll follow you.”