Mark 7:1-23[1]
Religion can bring out
the best in us and it can bring out the worst in us. It can lead us to have the
compassion to care for those who are suffering. More than that, it can lead us
to give not only our time but also our dollars to provide what they need. But
religion can also bring out the worst in us. In the name of religion, we draw
lines that separate “us” from “them,” convinced that “they” are “unworthy.”
They don’t deserve God’s love and therefore they don’t deserve even basic
respect and kindness from us. People of all faiths inflict all kinds of harm in
the conviction that they are doing “God’s will.” I would say that kind of
religion has lost its way.
This problem is found
not only in “other” religions. Church can bring out the best in us, but it can
also bring out the worst in us. Our beliefs about God are closely connected
with our beliefs about ourselves. We tend to hold near and dear whatever
touches upon how we view ourselves. We can wrap up our whole identity in our
personal view of God, of our destiny, and of what’s right and proper. And if
anyone dares to suggest that there might be another way to look at these
things, we can get pretty bent out of shape. We can take it as a threat to our
well-being, to our very identity, and nobody responds very well to that kind of
threat.
This is what’s going
on in the background of our Gospel lesson for today. While the issue on the
surface of things was about washing hands, the real question went deeper. It
had nothing to do with hygiene; it was about how to honor God. The Jewish
leaders believed that the only way to honor a holy God and live as God’s people
was to observe the many rules about avoiding what was called “unclean,”
including certain foods and even people that were considered “contaminated.”
They believed they could stay “clean” in God’s sight simply by washing their
hands! Along with rigidly keeping the rules about what they ate, or the clothes
they wore, or who their friends were, washing their hands was how they believed
they were obeying the command, “you shall be holy, for I am holy” (Lev 11:45).
This mindset is so
different from our way of thinking that it takes some explanation. They
believed God’s holiness was so incomparable and so powerful that you could only
approach God at certain times and places, and under very carefully prescribed
circumstances. That also meant, in their way of thinking, that anyone who didn’t
follow those rules would be destroyed if they got “too close” to God. They
believed that’s what a “holy” God did—eliminate any trace of contamination from
his presence. And so, for them to live as the people of a God like this,
keeping themselves “pure” with their rules was not an option, it was a
requirement.
Jesus turned their
whole world upside down when he said that what you eat, or what you wear, or
who you hang out with, or whether you wash your hands cannot make you
“unclean,” or unacceptable to God. Jesus taught that truly honoring God is a
matter of the heart; it’s about the quality of your character; it concerns how
you live your life. At a deeper level, Jesus insisted that true holiness, true
faith, truly honoring God is about loving God with all that you are and loving
your neighbors as yourself. God’s holiness is not something that destroys what
is flawed, but rather God’s holiness works through the love that seeks to
restore and heal what is flawed and broken, which includes everyone and
everything!
In our lesson for
today Jesus lists some of the kinds of actions that dishonor God. These
behaviors dishonor God because when we do them we harm ourselves and others.
Unfortunately, it’s easy for us to turn a list like that into just another
system of judging who is “clean” or “unclean.” But if we look at how Jesus
lived, we see that honoring God is not about drawing lines and avoiding people
we may judge to be “sinners.” It’s a matter of extending God’s love to all
people, especially the most vulnerable.
I must confess that I
don’t understand the notion that God is so holy that if anyone gets too close
to him when they’re “unworthy,” God will destroy them. That’s not what Jesus
taught about God. He taught us that God pours his love into our lives to draw
us into relationship with him. Jesus taught us that the way to love God with
“all our hearts” is to go out and share God’s love with everyone around us. If
we do that, we may “get our hands dirty” because we encounter people labelled
as “sinners.” But that’s what Jesus did; he didn’t hesitate to share God’s love
even with “sinners,” whom “religious” people believed were unfit for
compassion.
Some of us may be
wondering how we’re supposed to really do this given our shortcomings. St.
Augustine believed that the answer to that question is to “love, and do what
you want.”[2] I think he was saying that if we truly love God and truly love others, what we
“want” will be an expression of that love toward God and others! What enables
us to live like this is that God’s love changes our hearts from within. Of
course, that kind of change takes place over time. As we keep seeking to honor
God the way Jesus taught us, by loving God and others, this will become
something we can’t help doing because our very character has been shaped by
God’s love.
[1] ©
2021 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm, Ph. D. on 8/29/2021 for
Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2] Augustine, Ten Homilies on the first Epistle of John, 7.8 (on 1 John
4:4–12); https://ccel.org/s/schaff/npnf107/cache/npnf107.pdf
(p.862).
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