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Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 3, 2006
Delivered by Reverend Sandra Stayner
Deuteronomy 4:1-9
Ephesians 6:10-20
Mark 7:1-8,14-15,21-23
Is our God big enough?
One thing I have always loved about Jesus is the incredible freedom people seemed to experience in his presence, freedom to love, freedom to give, freedom to be all that they were created to be. The religious leaders of his day however continually found themselves at odds with the freedom expressed by Jesus' followers. The Pharisees were deeply disturbed by the behavior of the people who were following Jesus around - their total lack of respect for the laws of purity by which, in their thinking, all good Jews should be bound. In the gospel reading today the Pharisees are outraged when they realized that Jesus' disciples were eating without first washing their hands. And their outrage elicits a diatribe from Jesus against the Pharisees.
I want you to understand why Jesus was so outraged with the Pharisees, who after all, were only doing what they believed was right - asking people to be true to God's law as they understood it at the time. In a study on this passage an author remarks, "The actual law which the Pharisees accuse Jesus' disciples of breaking is Leviticus 15:11, which reads, 'all those whom the one with the discharge touches without his having rinsed his hands in water shall wash their clothes and bathe in water and be unclean until the evening'. The discharge to which Leviticus refers is a discharge from the genitals (Lev. 15:2), whether it be semen from a man or menstrual flow from a woman. The Levitical stipulation was clearly created to reduce spreading of infection or contamination. But the Pharisees and priests had taken that stipulation and created an entire religious law-code around it. This was called 'the traditions of the elders'.
The 'tradition of the elders' was the oral interpretation and application of the law that supposedly originated with Moses, but was passed down orally from father to son, gradually becoming more complex as nuances of that law were added to it. Thus, a Levitical law originally designed to protect Israelites from passing along disease had been so elaborated that it now had to do with 'washing of cups, pots and bronze kettles'. All these accretions had now become as much of the Law as the Law itself." (Partners in Urban Transformation)
Jesus attacks the Pharisees because they have over the years twisted God's law until it is no longer life-giving but instead is life- binding. He quotes from a passage in which Isaiah is berating the religious and political leaders of Israel for being blind to God's intentions. "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." (Is. 29:13) The intent of the holiness code had been to bring the people closer to God but in fact, many people spent more energy keeping the letter of the law than in practicing compassion and seeking justice - the heart of God's law.
For Jesus there are just two important things for those who would love God. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these." (Mark 12:30)
I wonder how often we fall into the same trap as the Pharisees in Jesus' time. I wonder how often we try to turn human precepts into doctrines without ever realizing what we are doing. Jesus makes it clear that God is concerned with the intent of the heart from which evil intentions can come. So I ask myself this question. If a person is living a life that expresses the fruits of the spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control are we to condemn that person because of their race, or gender, or sexual preference? Jesus is far more concerned with the evil intentions that come from within than codes of purity instituted from without. Over and over again he made it clear to his disciples that what concerns him most is their openness to love, their willingness to have compassion for the suffering of their neighbors.
As a church we are deeply concerned about the purity of Bishop Gene Robinson, a gentle, humble, compassionate, deeply caring man who happens to be gay. Yet we can watch pictures of children in Africa dying from the terrible disease of Aids without taking any action at all to reach out and help them in their time of direst need. I find myself agreeing with the theologian Anders when he says, "biblical commands never take precedence over what is compassionate and caring. We have learned this slowly - from slavery to the position of women. We are learning it slowly in areas such as gender, sexual orientation and of power. Jesus speaks often about the kind of tradition that fails the test. He points out that there is a kind of tradition that is wrong, that gets in the way of spiritual realities rather than pointing to them."
I once heard a sermon given by Robin Eames, the Archbishop of Ireland, who headed up the Windsor report, a report commissioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury to try and understand how the Anglican communion can be held together in the light of the terrible controversies that have been come about as a result of the ordination of Bishop Gene Robinson. There was a story in his sermon that speaks to me of how Jesus might respond to us in the midst of our struggles right now. Think, he said of a poor, desperately hungry, match-stick-thin child, standing on the scrub landscape of Africa, not knowing where his next meal will come from. And as he stands there, only a few feet away two Anglicans are shouting, Bibles waving in their hands, arguing over the pros and cons of homosexuality, completely ignoring the child and his needs. That, he said is the tragedy of the moment - a communion of Christians around the world so distracted by their fighting that they can't do the very work of feeding the hungry and the spiritually hungry their Lord called them first to do. Jesus didn't seem to care whether his followers kept the rules. He asked instead if they were compassionate; if they loved each other? I can almost hear him asking us what we love more, our certainties or that match-stick-thin child?
You don't have to agree with everything I say or do, but you do have to keep your minds open to the marvelous, wonderful love of God whose arms embrace the universe in which we live, and you have to live in the knowledge that our God will always be greater than our minds. You can only begin to perceive God through love. As you give yourself over to love I believe that your perception of God will grow and grow until not one person is excluded.
In the words of a poem by Edwin Markham
He drew a circle that shut me out-
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win;
We drew a circle that took him in.
I pray that we will all learn the way of love. I pray that love will cause each one of us to draw our circles larger and larger until not one person is excluded from the realm of God's love.
In Christ's name
Amen
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