2021 08 29 Sermon

Sermon for August 29, 2021 Pentecost 14 B House of Prayer Lutheran Church

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23; James 1:17-27 Rev. Karl-John N. Stone

“The Pharisees and scribes noticed that some of Jesus’ disciples were eating without washing their hands.” This was before anyone had any scientific knowledge about germs or bacteria or viruses, of course, while we know all about washing our hands for health reasons. Especially after the past year and a half, we’ve all learned the rules, the guidance of how to scrub and for how long.

I was talking with an old friend a couple months ago, and we both commented on how nice it’s been to have gone over a year without catching a cold. We joked that after the pandemic is over, we just might keep wearing masks all the time. But even though we’ve got a ways to go to get through this pandemic, when it is finally behind us, he and I will most likely go back to catching colds and testing our immune systems on a more regular basis.

This example has me thinking, though, about how do you decide which guidance to follow, and when? My friend and I could keep wearing masks and obsessively washing our hands for the rest of our lives, and we’d probably catch fewer colds as a result. But when the worst of covid is behind us, there won’t be as much of a reason to keep it up. So, what are the basic principles that we interpret to come up with rules, or with guidance? And I think this question is a helpful frame for looking at what Jesus is talking about in today’s gospel.

Why were the Pharisees criticizing the disciples for eating without washing their hands? There’s a backstory to that, and it wasn’t because they were worried about health or hygiene. They were looking at Exodus 19:6, which is shortly before God gives Moses the Ten Commandments. God tells the Israelites that he had called them to be “a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” So that was the basic principle. And then the Pharisees looked at all the laws of Moses, and took note of how the priests were supposed to serve God in the Temple.

Then the Pharisees interpreted these rules by saying “since all the people are part of a priestly kingdom, then all of the people should honor the holiness of God in every aspect of life.” It’s hard to argue with that! Since the priests were required by the law of Moses to wash their hands before going into the holy Temple or making a sacrifice, therefore (the Pharisees reasoned) all of the people should also wash their hands before meals. This was an easy way for every person to honor God by making mealtime sacred.

The way the Pharisees saw it, people were basically saying “I’m washing my hands because I love God.” On the surface, hand washing and loving God don’t seem to be connected. But it makes sense, if you follow the reasoning behind the rule. So why does Jesus criticize it?

Why does Jesus even quote the prophet Isaiah against them? “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me...You abandon the commandments of God and hold to human tradition.” Jesus criticized them because they had become so focused on the rule of hand-washing (which grew out of human tradition), instead of fixing their hearts on the basic principle that God gave, that they were a priestly kingdom and holy nation. This principle led to the rule in a particular place and time. Rules and guidance are there to help us live better lives. But if they just become rules for their own sake, and don’t help us follow the principles behind them, then the rule no longer helps and can be changed.

Jesus did this kind of thing all the time throughout the gospels, and it’s one reason why religious leaders often got mad at him. “Why are you changing the rules on us Jesus?!?!” It’s because he was trying to help them get re-connected with the principle. In the case of the Pharisees in today’s gospel, I think that instead of jumping straight to criticism of the disciples for not washing their hands, they could have begun with curiosity by saying, “we notice that you don’t wash your hands before meals, so how do you honor the holiness of God at mealtimes?” If they had started there, they would have put the principle in first place, ahead of the rule.

For us, as people of faith, we want to respond to the love and grace of God given us in Jesus Christ, by trying to live as God would want us to live. It can be helpful to follow rules and guidance as we live our faith in daily life. Yet as we see in this story of the Pharisees and disciples, it can be easy to forget the principles that led to the rule. It can be easy to fall into the temptation to judge others who look at the principles and interpret them into a different set of rules than what we follow. It can be easy to fall into a me-versus-them attitude (“I’m better; I’m more worthy of God’s grace than them”) rather than accepting that we’re all part of this life together.

And that’s the ugly side of our human nature--that’s the side that Jesus says “defiles” us. The things that defile us, Jesus says, come from within; from the ugly side of our human hearts; from forgetting the principles from which we develop rules or guidance, or from which we might develop new rules or guidance. While we may each have an ugly side to us, we need to remember that Christ became ugliness on our behalf by going to the cross, and that God transformed the ugliness of sin and death into forgiveness and new life through resurrection. When we turn our ugly side over to Jesus, he can transform us through God’s grace.

So where do we begin? Begin with the main principles Jesus taught, that the laws of scripture are built upon: Love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength; and love your neighbor as yourself.

How might we apply rules or guidance based on those principles? James (who was Jesus’ brother) had some ideas which we heard in today’s first scripture reading. One: “Be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.” How much different would the conversation between the Pharisees and Jesus have been if it had started with listening instead of criticizing the disciples? How much different would our own conversations be if we began with listening rather than criticizing?

And two, James says: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” The ways of the world are always telling us--put yourself above others; regard yourself as more important than everyone else. The ways of the world can easily make us bitter and cynical and ignore the needs of the vulnerable people around us.

The way of God says: care first for the vulnerable people of society--in James’ day that was primarily widows and orphans. In our own day, we can also include victims of human trafficking or domestic abuse, the homeless and chronically hungry, those who face racism or discrimination, the refugees. As one example of care for the vulnerable, I’d like to point out the great job Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) and Lutheran Social Services in Wisconsin (LSS) are doing with assisting our Afghan allies who are now coming here as refugees. Their mission of caring for vulnerable refugees goes back to the aftermath of World War II, and they’ve been at it ever since, applying the biblical principles of welcoming the stranger and caring for the vulnerable, as ways of “loving God, and loving your neighbor as yourself”. Amen.