Mark 7: 1-8
August
29, 2021
One
year, when I was about 20, my aunt
put a whole lot of effort into making
Thanksgiving perfect.
She worked with my grandmother
to make the whole dinner just like it used to be.
We had the usual Turkey and the trimmings,
and in our Italian tradition,
she made a huge lasagna and a pot of sausages.
She
took her wedding china out and
my grandmother crocheted beaded napkin
holders for the cloth napkins,
There was some kind of turkey flowered centerpiece on the table.
It looked like a Norman Rockwell picture
except with a lasagna.
Everything was perfect.
That
is until my family actually
showed up to eat.
You
see, the reason that my aunt was going
through so much effort was
that there were multitudes of family problems.
My uncle had stopped talking to my grandmother,
even though they lived in the same house.
My parents and my other Grandmother
had just moved from Texas to California.
My parents were staying with my Aunt and Uncle,
my Grandmother and two cousins
at my sister and brother in law,
my grandmother had the bed and I was sleeping on the floor.
And the rents were so high in California,
it was looking like we might be there for a while.
Everyone was pretty cranky with everyone else.
But,
the biggest stressor:
My aunt and uncle were getting a divorce.
My uncle had told my father –
my aunt’s brother – but my aunt didn’t know
that my father knew and since my father knew,
my mother knew, and since my mother knew
I knew, but they didn’t want to tell the kids
or either of my grandmothers about it.
We all seemed to know,
but no one was talking about it.
The place was tense.
So
my aunt determined if we had a
wonderful family dinner like we did
in the good old days, that would
make everything better.
SO she made everything just perfect
and invited other relatives and friends over.
Whatever was going on we were going to have a
“traditional” Thanksgiving.
It
didn’t work.
Because at one point
there was an argument, my uncle ended up leaving the house
and my aunt ended up hyperventilating into a paper bag.
We didn’t even get to the dessert.
Now I’m sure everyone else here
has only had wonderful, picturesque, holiday experiences.
I’m sure none of your holidays
has ever been tense or unpleasant.
But maybe you can imagine what mine
was like, or at least what my aunt was up to.
What
my aunt was trying to do was
to cover up the hurt and the pain,
the tension and the distrust
and the bad behavior in my family
with some “traditions”
and a good looking table.
She
reasoned that if we did
all the right things as far as
appearance was concerned,
if we performed the traditions
that would make up for everything.
In
hindsight you could tell that this
was not going to work, but
the reasoning is not too ridiculous
This
has been exactly the reasoning for those
who have worshipped God throughout the ages.
Since
before the Israelites got the
Ten Commandments, we all have reasoned that if we
go through the right motions,
if we comply with the task of tradition,
if we do what our ancestors did,
that will fix anything that is wrong.
Somehow, that will make everything clean again.
It’s
better to look good than to actually be good.
The
Pharisees did this with the rules of the Torah.
The hand washing, the processes with
food and with cleanliness and all the rest.
Now washing before eating is obviously a good idea hygienically,
but that wasn’t why they wanted Jesus
to do it.
It was a ritual.
And in itself, it was a good ritual.
It was an imitation of the priest who
would wash his
hands and feet before going into the
temple.
It meant to signify our uncleanliness,
it stressed our humility and our humanity
before the awesome otherness of God.
But not everyone who did the human tradition
of washing hands remembered their own
humility and uncleanliness.
Like humans tend to do, they started to
do it mindlessly
it started to lose its real meaning,
and they started to believe that
they were better than others just for
performing the ritual.
These
rules were not bad in themselves.
They brought the worship of God into
the Jewish people’s everyday life.
They reminded the people that God
was involved in all they did.
These actions would keep the people
mindful to follow God’s will in their lives.
But
eventually, these rules and traditions
overshadowed God’s will.
And to the people, they became God’s will.
Eventually, the religious leaders only took account of
whether these rules and traditions were being followed correctly.
Instead
of asking
·
Were the widows and the orphans
being cared for?
·
Were the hungry being fed?
·
Were the people being treated
fairly with justice?
·
Was God’s will being done in their
community.
They
only looked to see:
·
Were people washing their hands at
the right time?
·
were all the sacrifices being done
properly?
·
Was the Sabbath being kept perfectly?
Jesus was not amused.
He told them that this kind of thinking was dumb.
It’s not what goes in it’s what comes out of us.
So
then, you think that would all change with Christianity.
But the Christian church in the early and
Middle ages almost instantly repeated this same cycle.
They focused on
·
doing worship exactly the
right way,
·
wearing the right liturgical
clothes
·
on praying the right prayers the
right amount of times
Again,
this stuff was supposed to remind them
of God’s will and God’s desire for the world.
But again, the religious leaders only looked to see
if the new rules were being done properly,
And if someone had the time to do it,
they were deemed them worthy,
and if not they were bound for hell.
Again, the rules took the place of God’s will.
He told everyone that their works wouldn’t save them,
only God’s grace.
So
you think that as Lutherans, we would have this problem solved.
Think again.
We
still do the same things today.
Now we have individually made up our own traditions and rules.
For Lutherans, we want to make sure things were just the same
as when grandpa was worshipping here,
and we always resort to everyone having proper doctrine and
theology
we have elevated that to God’s will for us.
And
there are plenty of other new rules
and traditions for us and for other modern Christians.
·
Do we worship the right way?
·
Do we sing the right hymns?
·
Do we have the perfect doctrine
and understanding of theology?
When
we use these things to remind us
about God’s will, they are great things.
But yet again as in history, we have
made these traditions into the will of God.
The church is like my aunt at that Thanksgiving
dinner.
We think that if we get the table right and the candles
right and the lasagna tastes right,
then we can fool everyone in to believing
that everything is really okay.
In
today’s gospel story,
Jesus comes to tell the Pharisees, and us that the jig is up.
God has not been fooled for one minute
by the table settings, and the smiling faces, and the hand
washings.
And
those of us who have been doing
the traditions well and hiding behind them
should not think that we are any
better than the ones who have not.
God
doesn’t just want to see the
glitz and the glamour and the show,
The beaded napkin holders and the good china.
God wants to reach us,
right down in the pit of our souls,
God wants to love us, and heal us and transform us.
God
wants us to be asking:
·
Are the poor and rejected being
cared for?
·
Are the hungry being fed?
·
Are the people being treated
fairly with justice?
·
Is God’s will being done in our
community.
Not whether our religious traditions are being followed
to the tea, not whether we perform the rituals correctly.
If
we think that we can be made
well by our own ability to follow the rituals
and re-inact the traditions,
then why did we need Jesus?
roams around in our hearts.
Adultery, theft, avarice, envy, slander, pride, folly.
Jesus knows that we are broken and sinful
Jesus knows what the fancy table setting
and the Thanksgiving food is actually hiding.
Jesus is not fooled by it.
But
Jesus still comes to eat with us anyway.
Jesus
knows that our hands are dirty.
All the rituals in the world will not make them any cleaner.
But it doesn’t matter.
We always come to God with dirty hands
our own washing does nothing.
It is only the love of God that makes them clean.
PJ
ReplyDeleteYet another great message. Keep on.