Down By Law (Mark 7:1-15)

     This morning’s passage is about the law, about Torah, and it’s also about the Pharisees, those perennial opponents of Jesus, and the first thing we need to understand is what they were . . . and what they weren’t.  First – what they were was a sect within Judaism in Jesus’ day – and especially prominent 40 years later, in Mark’s time – who were concerned with keeping the Jewish people holy, that is, keeping them set-apart from the nations, from hoi polloi, from the Gentiles.  And the vehicle for that was strict Torah observance.  By one count, there were 613 commandments in the Torah – 613 mitzvot, as they were called – and at the heart of them were the purity laws in Leviticus, which regulated just about every aspect of life for the Hebrew people, from who they could marry to what they could eat to what they could touch.  As scholar Dan Clendenin put it, they “encompassed nearly every aspect of being human—birth, death, sex, gender, health, economics, jurisprudence, social relations, hygiene, marriage, behavior, and certainly ethnicity (Gentiles were automatically considered impure).”

     The upshot of the purity laws was to encode and thereby follow God’s exhortation from Leviticus 19 – “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.”   And by holy, of course, I mean in its strict sense, that of set-apartness, of special-ness, of consecration.  The Pharisees were the promoters  par excellénce of the idea that by strict law-observance, one can preserve this separate-ness, and thereby the identity of the Jewish people.  And one of the interpretations of the law the Pharisees was that no Jew – whether priest or not – could eat with unclean, that is, unwashed, hands.  Note that this was an interpretation only, there was no one of the 613 mitzvot that forbade it, just some stuff about priests washing their hands and feet . . . and therefore the charge against Jesus and his disciples is going against the traditions of the elders, of disregarding the teaching of those who had gone before.

     As for Mark, 35 or 40 years later, he doesn’t think much of all this . . . he gives a helpful summary of the customs that borders on the sarcastic . . . “The Pharisees,” he says, “and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders . . . there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.”  You almost expect him to add “windows, and doors and phonograph records” and in fact other manuscripts do add “couches” . . .

     But in the Pharisee’s eyes, eating with unclean hands – with defiled hands, as Mark puts it – makes them unclean, unholy, and thus unfit to participate in Temple fellowship.  In other words, to them, Jesus and his disciples were sinners, which, in 1^st-century Palestine referred to somebody who, for one or more of any number of reasons, is unclean, who could not participate in the rituals of the Hebrew religion.  Not following Torah -- or the Pharisitical interpretation of Torah -- made you an outcast, it marginalized you, it put you right out there on the edges of society along with those arch-outcasts, those über-sinners, the gentiles.  Israelite society in 30 AD was divided pretty sharply into those that were in, and those that were out.  And Jesus’ disciples were being cast as those who were out.

    “Why,” say the Pharisees, “do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”  And I would be remiss if I didn’t point out at this juncture that the Greek word here translated as “elders” is Presbyteros . . . that’s right, the word we get “Presbyterians” from, it’s as if the Pharisees say “Why aren’t your disciples not living according to the tradition of the Presbyterians” . . .

     Let’s pause here for a little reverent reflection on this ironic . . .  coincidence?  There’s an old joke that goes “How many Presbyterians does it take to change a light bulb?” and the Presbyterians go “CHANGE????”  You know, sort of like Maynard G. Krebs used to say “WORK???”  There’s an acronym floating around as well . . . WADW which stands for We’ve Always Done it that Way (note the only superficial resemblance to WWJD)  Churches have a tendency to live according to the tradition of their elders that have gone on before . . . many times, they live according to these traditions right into the church grave, resisting change with all their might . . .

     But Jesus has come to institute massive change, and so when they ask him why he’s not following the law, why he’s not living in the tradition of the Presbyterians, he answers by calling them hypocrites ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’”  They mistake the interpretation of God’s commandments for the commandments themselves,  the human tradition based on the Word of God for the word itself  . . . in other words, ithey mistake their interpretation of God for God’s own self.

     And then he proceeds to give an example of what he means . . . if you declare your assets Corban, if you declare that they are dedicated to the temple, then you can get out of other obligations, like taking care of your parents in their old age.  It seems that what Jesus said reflected a debate in those days, between religious schools, perhaps, or individual rabbis about what it meant to give to the temple, whether something declared Corban could ever be de-consecrated or not . . . and you can guess the development of Corban, of the rules of giving to the Temple . . . the temple was holy, therefore what is given to it must be holy, must be set aside, and undoubtedly all kinds of rules rose up governing the use of Corban, who could declare it and the like, and how and when you could declare it, and the Pharisees debated about these rules, but Jesus cuts to the chase: for him, Corban exemplifies human-inspired, human-driven tradition and how it can be set above, and indeed contravene and contradict the Word of God.

     Well.  You remember a while ago I said we needed to understand what the Pharisees were and what they were not?  Well, what they were was a sect within Judaism concerned with keeping the Jewish people holy, that is, keeping them set-apart from the nations.  But what they were not were . . . devils.  They didn’t have horns or forked tails, even though centuries of Christian interpretation and Mel Gibson paint them that way.  They were good, God-fearin’, church-goin’ folks, maybe a bit on the fundamental side, maybe of a conservative bent, but good religious people from Iowa or maybe even Cincinnati.  In other words, in some respects, they were just like us.

     But not me . . . not a lot like me, you understand . . . I’m not like that, I don’t advocate strict adherence to some set of rules – or at least, a set I don’t agree with.  As a matter of fact, I don’t like rules, and I fell asleep anytime anybody forced me to read Leviticus or Deuteronomy in seminary . . . and if any preacher – other than me, that is – starts yammering on about ‘em too much, I’ll vote with my feet, that’s what I’ll do, I’ll be outa’ there, ‘cause we Presbyterians like to hear grace, man, nothing but the grace, that’s the tradition I like, I like it decently and in good order, the way it’s always been . . . and what’s all these alternative names like Compassionate Mother, Beloved Child, and Life-giving Womb or Giver, Gift and Giving I hear coming out of our General Assembly?  If Father, Son and Holy Ghost were good enough for Augustine, they’re good enough for me . . . and while we’re on the subject, I like solemn worship, worship with great classical dignity like we’ve always done, not like those Pentecostals, or Baptists, who whoop it up with contemporary praise-songs . . . not like those “new age” churches, the ones with video screens on the wall and young people busting down their doors  . . . those youth oughta suck it up and worship like their mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers ... whatsa matter?  Five-hundred year old hymn aren’t good enough for ‘em?

     Well . . . you get the point.  In some ways, we modern Christians can be just like the Pharisees – we put so much store in the tradition of our elders, in their worship traditions, their doctrinal traditions, their theological traditions, that we lose sight of God’s Word, we lose sight of our mission, which is to proclaim that Word and spread it to the ends of the earth.  The world changes around us, and many of us – not all of us, but many of us – just keep on the straight and narrow, because the way we’ve always done it is the way we like it, the way our elders have always done it, the way our Presbyterians have always done it . . .

    And now Jesus calls the crowd and they gather around him once again, and they’re all there, disciples, crowd, scribes and Pharisees, and he says listen to me and understand:  there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.  There is nothing that we can take into ourselves that can make us unclean, he says, but what comes out can defile . . . look to your hearts, look to what is deepest inside of you, and that will show your worth . . . and this is shocking to the crowd and the scribes and the Pharisees, it’s shocking to the disciples as well it should be, because with one fell swoop, he has abolished the kosher food laws – a fact Mark notes a few verses later – which are symbolic of the whole of the purity rules and regulations . . . their religion had always defined a person’s worth, whether he or she was on the inside or the outside, by what they did, what they ate, as well as who they did it with and who they ate with . . .

     The purity laws, and indeed the whole Torah enterprise, in essence fenced off their religion, fenced off their God from anybody who wasn’t like them, anybody who didn’t act like them, who didn’t look like them, who didn’t worship like them . . . and of course, when we modern Christians insist that everyone believe like us, act like us, worship like us, we do the same thing, don’t we?  When we insist on doing the same old thing, week after week, Sunday after Sunday, no matter that the world has shifted radically around us, don’t we create a barrier to the Gospel, a block to those who might otherwise partake?  Don’t we fence our religion off as much as the Pharisees?

     Sisters and Brothers, Christ came to set us free . . . but we can’t let our freedom become a stumbling block for others . . . we have the freedom to believe what we will, worship how we will, but when it impedes our mission, which is to spread the Gospel in thought word and deed, then something is wrong . . . but remember, we can be assured that no matter where we go, Christ is along for the ride, supporting us and walking with us in the difficult task that is the proclamation of the Gospel.  Amen.