Dear friends,
Today’s worship service, in its entirety, may be viewed here:
If you’d prefer to listen to the gospel reading and sermon, you may do so here:
Today’s sermon is based on James 1:17-27 and Mark 7:1-23.
James 1:17-27
17Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 18In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.
19You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. 21Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.
22But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. 23For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; 24for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. 25But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.
26If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. 27Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.
Mark 7:1-23
‘This people honors 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.”
9Then he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! 10For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ 11But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban’ (that is, an offering to God) — 12then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, 13thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.”
14Then 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.”
17When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. 18He said to them, “Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, 19since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) 20And he said, “It is what comes out of a person that defiles. 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.”
Do you remember stories from early on in the pandemic about the effects of lockdown on the natural world? How the absence of human beings—hunkered down at home—led to reduced pollution, less damage to the environment, animals reclaiming their natural habitat?
It was those kinds of stories, which feel like a distant memory now, that came to mind when I read Matt Skinner’s commentary on our gospel reading for today.
Before I turn to that, though, I’d like to share a few paragraphs from a piece by Debie Thomas to get at the context of this episode in Mark.
In our Gospel reading this week, Jesus confronts a group of Pharisees who accuse his disciples of getting religion wrong. Specifically, the Pharisees ask why some of Jesus’ followers eat their meals with “defiled hands”—that is, why they eat without performing the ritual hand washing expected of observant Jewish people before meals.
To our contemporary ears, the accusation might sound trivial. But the Pharisees ask an important question, a question that gets to the heart of what authentic religion is. Consider their context: the first century Jewish people among whom Jesus ministers is an oppressed minority, living in an occupied land. How are they to keep their faith viable against the backdrop of colonization? In the midst of religious and cultural diversity, how should they maintain their identity? Their integrity? Their heritage?
The Pharisees’ solution to the problem is to contain and codify the sacred. How can God’s people best practice their religion among the surrounding pagans? They can create and maintain a purity culture—a culture that clearly delineates who is “in” and who is “out,” who is clean and who is unclean, who deserves God’s favor and who doesn’t. They can practice the ancient rituals of their elders down to the last letter, as if tradition itself is the gateway to holiness…They can set themselves apart as God’s righteous and holy people.
This is religion as fence-building. Religion as separation. Religion as institution for institution’s sake. And Jesus—never one to mince words—calls it what it is. Quoting the prophet Isaiah, he rebukes the Pharisees, saying, “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.”
It’s important to note that Jesus doesn’t condemn ritual hand washing in this story. He doesn’t argue that all religious traditions are evil. What he indicts is the legalism, self-righteousness and exclusivism that keeps the Pharisees from freely loving God and loving their neighbors. What he calls out is their elevation of rite over mercy, heritage over hospitality, ritual over compassion.
Thomas goes on to say that we are not so different from the Pharisees of Jesus’ day and that it can be difficult to discern whether or not our way of doing religion is life-giving. She writes, Notice what fruit your adherence to tradition bears. Does your version of holiness lead to hospitality? To inclusion? To freedom? Does it cause your heart to open wide with compassion? Does it make you brave, creative, and joyful? Or does it make you small, stingy, and bored? Fearful, suspicious, withholding, and judgmental?
I don’t know about you, but I feel compelled to sit with those questions this week. Does my version of holiness make me brave, creative, and joyful? Or does it make me fearful, stingy, and judgmental?
It is stunningly easy for me to point to others’ ways of doing religion as exclusive, small, and suspicious. My heart, to put it mildly, does not open wide with compassion when I look at them.
And that’s where Matt Skinner’s commentary grasped me this week. He begins with these provocative lines: At least one part of this passage is straightforward, although disturbing: Jesus explains where evil comes from. It comes from within all those people who bug you. But also from within you. Me, too. What Jesus subjects to fiercest criticism in this passage is not the scribes, not the Pharisees, not the law. It’s the human being.
Evil comes from human beings.
And so, to return to the start of this sermon, it makes sense that on lockdown—with so many human beings kept from their normal, daily routines—nature began to be healed, freed from the evil inflicted upon it by us. And yet, it’s not quite that simple.
A recent article in The Atlantic had this headline: Nature Isn’t Really Healing.The authors write, New research shows that the true effect of suddenly removing people from so many environments has turned out to be much more complex. An international team..did find evidence of nature benefiting from the sudden drop in air, land, and water travel. But there were also many downsides to the lack of humans…The scale of these negative impacts was unexpected…[and] highlights just how much some ecosystems depend on human support to keep them viable.
Evil comes from human beings. But a whole lot of good does too.
As individuals, and as a church, I’m pretty sure there are days we excel at compassion and other days when we are increasingly suspicious and judgmental.
So where’s the good news?
Jesus, the one who made it clear that evil comes from within us is also the one who went to the cross for us—to make it abundantly clear that nothing (nothing within and nothing without, nothing present and nothing to come) will ever be able to separate us from God’s love for this whole, beloved world. And from that cross, Jesus spoke words of forgiveness for every human being who wavers between wholehearted compassion and wholehearted contempt: Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.
We are forgiven and freed for the life God intends for us—a life of generosity, quick to listen and slow to anger, doers of the word and not merely hearers, caring for those in distress, nourishing creation. We are freed to be brave, creative and joyful. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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You may read the articles referenced in this post at the following links:
Debie Thomas at journeywithjesus.net