Sermon for 2nd September 2012

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 (NRSV)

The Tradition of the Elders

7Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, ²they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them.³(For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; ⁴and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) ⁵So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?’ ⁶He said to them, ‘Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,
“This people honours me with their lips,
   but their hearts are far from me;
⁷in vain do they worship me,
   teaching human precepts as doctrines.”
⁸You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.’

¹⁴ Then he called the crowd again and said to them, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand: ¹⁵there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.’ 

²¹For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, ²²adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. ²³All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.’ 

It is difficult to understand fundamentalism! Even in Jesus day, it was a way of thinking that our Lord Himself strongly condemned, most especially in the Gospel reading for this week.

The Jews revered their Law or Torah. In shortest form it was the 10 Commandments, but also referred to the Pentateuch or first five books of the Old Testament. For most of their history, they saw the Torah as housing the great principles that people ought to interpret and apply to themselves. It was only in the 4^th and 5^th Centuries BC that a new legalism and fundamentalism took hold in some quarters, most notably through the work of the Scribes who had – in Barclay’s words – “… a passion for definition …”They broke down the laws into thousands of little rules and regulations governing every possible action and situation in life. “Life was no longer governed by principles, but by rules and regulations.” These were never written down until long after the life of Jesus and were originally an oral law or the ‘tradition of the elders’. Eventually they became known as the ‘Mishnah’.

In our reading the disciples of Jesus are challenged because they had not washed their hands – and there were definite rules for hand-washing – not in the interests of hygiene, but as part of religious ceremony. The water was kept in large stone jars (as was used by Jesus at Cana in Galilee).

The problem that Jesus is addressing here is profound: the religion of these people had become focused on the outward, based on precision of getting the ritual right, the ceremonial perfect and the rules and regulations – where at its heart true religion is about loving God and other people.

With reference to verse 5-8 ...

Jesus accuses the Scribes and Pharisees of hypocrisy – which in its original form – referred to one who answered, and went on to mean the words of an actor and then finally ‘… those whose life is a piece of acting without any sincerity behind it at all.’ Religious hypocrites are those who believe that they are good, if they merely follow outward observances no matter how they behave and speak toward others. The Scribes and Pharisees seemed to be condoning poor behaviour as long as people carried out handwashings and observed the correct laws about cleanness and uncleanness. Legalism takes account of outward actions, but it leaves out the most important part, our inner motives and intentions. Barclay comments:

“There is no greater religious peril of identifying religion with outward observance. There is no commoner religious mistake than in identifying goodness with certain so-called religious acts.”

Church-going, bible-reading, generous financial giving, regular and faithful prayer – all vitally important in our lives – but they do not make a person ‘good’. What is in a person’s heart is what matters and this is cleansed and purified by God, in Christ, through grace.

We need to listen to God and seek to find his voice as we study the Scriptures, interact with others and pray so that God can transform us and those whom we meet with His love and grace.

Barclay points out that this is one of the most revolutionary passages in the New Testament as Jesus is arguing with the authorities of the day about what mattered to them most – their Law. Jesus had shown the irrelevance of hand-washing and that rigid adherence to the Law can actually mean disobedience to the will of God. Now he is even more drastic because he is saying that nothing that goes into a person can possible defile them because what goes into the body also comes out again. No Jew of his day believed this. In Leviticus there are pages and pages of complex laws regulating what one could or could not eat, and these were taken very seriously indeed, many being willing to even die rather than defile themselves by breaking dietary laws> (This actually happened during the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes when he required them to eat swine flesh.) Some had had their tongues cut out, the ends of their limbs cut off and then they were roasted alive! But they would rather endure all this than eat anything forbidden by the Law. Now Jesus is saying that nothing that goes into a person can make them unclean. Barclay comments:

“He was wiping out at one gesture the laws for which Jews had suffered and died. No wonder they were amazed.”

Things cannot be either unclean or clean, only persons can be defiled and what defiles us is our actions because they are products of our hearts. This was new doctrine and it was strange and revolutionary.

In our world we need to be constantly aware of the possibility of being legalistically bound by laws that are of man’s creation and not from God – and there are always difficult to discern. In the debates that rage in our Churches, it seems that we can sometimes lose sight of the difference.

We now look at what Jesus lists as coming from the heart and making humankind unclean:

(i)Evil intentions: Every outward act of sin is preceded by an inward act of choice, so Jesus begins with the thought.

(ii) Fornication which refers to all kinds of traffic in sexual desire. It used to refer to sex outside of marriage, including sex before marriage. Today many Christians are willing to permit sex before marriage as long as a couple love each another and are on the path to marriage e.g. engaged to be married. I still believe that the harm that is done by allowing sex before marriage far outweighs the so-called benefits. I have seen too many people shattered when marriage does not happen and they have invested so much emotional capital in their sexual involvement.

(iii) Theft – which is pretty obvious, but specifically here refers to one who thieves out of a desire to gain rather than a thief who steals because he is desperate.

(iv) Murder and adultery need no elaboration.

(v) Avarice – wanting to have more and defined by some as ‘… the accursed love of having …’ or as Barclay suggests: “… the spirit which snatches at that which it is not right to take …”This is the spirit that snatches at things, not to hoard them like a miser, but to spend them in lust and luxury. Plato referred to this as: “The desire of man is like a sieve or pierced vessel which he ever tries to, and can never fill …” This sounds like a description of modern capitalism and that which makes our economy thrive – and which has failed and so has caused our present economic plight.

(vi) Wickedness and deceit – referring to the desire to cause harm through trickery and deceit. The word is used in explain the Greek deception with the horse at Troy.

Enough of this terrible list; but a sobering experience nonetheless. Barclay concludes with excellent advice (as always):

“It is a truly terrible list which Jesus cites of the things that come from the human heart. When we go into it and examine it a shudder surely passes over us. Nonetheless it is a summons, not a fastidious shrinking from such things, but to an honest self-examination of our own hearts.”

Blessed are the pure in heart – which we can be when we allow God’s grace in Christ to cleanse us from all sin.

Blessings to you all,

David Owen