Sermon:  Inside and Outside

Text:  Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

22^nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

August 30, 2009

Scripture introduction.  Our second reading this morning is from the seventh chapter of the Gospel according to Mark, selections from the first twenty-three verses.  In this passage, Jesus first responds to a group of scribes and Pharisees who had come down from Jerusalem to find out what all the fuss about this Jesus was.  Immediately, they noticed that some of Jesus’ disciples did not perform a ritual washing of their hands before eating.  Mark implies that this practice was common among the Pharisees, but scholars tell us that not all Jews observed this particular ritual.  The Sadducees, for example, were Jews who did not wash their hands in this manner.  Sadducees followed the written Torah, contained in the books of the Old Testament.  But the Pharisees, like modern Jews, also recognized an unwritten Torah—one that they believed had been delivered by God to Moses on Mount Sinai and had been passed down orally from teacher to disciple in each successive generation.  This is what Mark referred to as the “tradition of the elders” and what Jesus called “human tradition.”  When the Pharisees asked about ritual washing, Jesus responded by criticizing the practice of adding human requirements, over and above what was required by the word of God.

If that is all that Jesus had said, it would have been interesting mainly as an internal dispute between Jesus and the Pharisees.  However, at least according to Mark, as our passage continues, Jesus went even further—declaring flatly that a person could not be defiled by eating any food, even one prohibited by the written Torah.  According to Jesus, what makes us defiled—that is, dirty before God—is not what goes into our stomachs, but rather what comes out of our hearts.

Sermon.  When Amanda and I were recently in Jerusalem, it was very hard not to notice some of the stricter, orthodox Jewish men.  For one thing, they wore very distinctive clothing—a black coat and a black fur hat, together with woolen pants and shiny black leather shoes, all in temperatures that were hitting the nineties.  Peeking out underneath their coats were the tassels from a white inner garment.  Their beards were long and untrimmed; and the same was true of the hair growing from their temples, which hung down in curls sometimes touching their shoulders.  To see a group of these men walking together really drew my attention.  I don’t think they minded standing out.  Because there was a religious basis for their appearance, it communicated to the rest of the world that they were especially devoted to their religious views.  I had the sense they were pleased to be considered very religious.

In more ordinary settings, we all have seen Jewish men who wear the skullcap called the kippah or yarmulke.  My sense is that this headgear is not intended so much to communicate how religious the men are, but rather to identify themselves clearly as Jews.  We see the same practices in other cultures.  People often identify themselves with a group by the manner of their dress.  Some of us this morning have responded to the invitation to wear clothing from our ethnic heritage on this day that we celebrate “Presbyterians around the World.”  If I had a kilt, I would wear it because I am proud of my Scottish heritage, even though my ancestors have been living in the United States for many generations.  Since I don’t have a kilt, I’m wearing this long shirt from Kenya, which was given to me by the parents of Edna Wanjiru, the student who worshipped with us while she was attending ISU.  I’m proud that they felt a Presbyterian connection with us and honored your hospitality by giving me this gift from their home country. 

It’s not only dress that sets groups apart from one another, is it?  Have you ever noticed how fast our young persons develop a special vocabulary when they are socializing among themselves?  “Bad” can mean “good.”  “Fat” [sometimes spelled with a PH] can mean “beautiful.”  And so on.  I have found that, unlike the case with other foreign languages, these youthful native speakers do not appreciate it when I attempt to use their lingo.  It was the same when I was young:  it made my skin crawl to hear my mother say “Wow, Lant, those bellbottom pants are far out!”  What’s going on here, clearly, is that the language—or the dress or whatever it is—is being used to certify that the person is a member of the group.  My mother—bless her heart!—was not a member of my teenage group of friends.  Somehow it felt wrong when that boundary, that border, that line of separation was crossed.

In our text for this morning, it’s that sense of boundary, border, and separation, which was at the heart of the Jewish practices being enforced by the Pharisees.[1]  Separation was important for them and for the history of Israel.  In a world in which every nation worshipped many gods, Israel was the one nation that worshipped one God.  They understood themselves to be God’s chosen people and that they were in covenant with God.  This covenant required that they be a holy nation, a witness to the rest of the world—in biblical terms, “a light to the nations.”[2]  Many of the dietary laws of the Old Testament made sense from the standpoint of health; but even if this had not been true, the Israelites would have followed these food laws because they were a mark of identity, a sign of their covenant with God.  Indeed, it was this peculiar set of dressing, washing, and eating habits that set the Jews apart from the rest of the ancient world.  Jews whose occupations gave them the option of avoiding contact with Gentiles often separated themselves physically from the world of non-Jews.  We now believe that the Pharisees were a group of Jews who worked very hard, within the realities of Israel’s status as a land occupied by the Romans, to maintain as much separateness as possible.  So when we read the stories about Jesus’ arguments with the Pharisees about food and washing, it was not some trivial dispute.  And maybe we can even understand the point of view of the Pharisees.

Jesus, too, understood them.  He understood that the origin of the rules was in scripture and that the purpose of the rules was to reinforce the covenant between God and the Jews.   However, at least as Mark presents him, Jesus had a broader view of that covenant.  Jesus clearly believed that it was more important to be connected with God through righteous behavior than by outward practices.  Following the law had minimal value unless it was matched by the attitudes of the heart.  Thus Jesus, speaking to observant Jews, states flatly that they are defiled not so much by what they put into their stomachs, but by what comes out of their hearts.  For what is in our hearts will eventually be revealed in our actions.  By this argument Jesus implied that living a moral life was more important than observing the food laws of the Jews—even the food laws that were actually written in scripture.  Not all the gospel writers make this point, but Mark leaves no doubt about it.  In verse 19, which is not a part of our lectionary reading, Mark adds a parenthetical:  “Thus [Jesus] declared all foods clean.” 

Mark wrote his Gospel about forty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Many believe that he wrote it for the church in Rome, which would have had many Gentile members.  The biggest single crisis in the Early Church was how to integrate believers with Jewish and non-Jewish backgrounds.  In the book of Acts and in the letters of the Apostle Paul, we see examples of this problem and of some attempted measures for solving it.  In writing his Gospel, Mark seems to have had an interest in emphasizing Jesus’ ministry with non-Jews.  To be sure, most of Jesus’ interactions and teachings involved his fellow Jews; but Mark highlights the ones involving Gentiles.  Immediately following this morning’s passage, for example, Mark tells the story of Jesus healing the daughter of a Gentile woman.[3]  Mark presents Jesus clearly as laying the foundation for breaching the separation between Jews and Gentiles.  Mark understood Jesus to be breaking the walls of separation, and this morning’s story is one of the best examples.

On a day when we recognize and celebrate “Presbyterians around the World,” we would do well to ask, “What, in our time, are the things that separate?”  What, for us, would be equivalent to the food laws and washing restrictions against which Jesus argued?  Would it be our styles of worship?  Perhaps it would be our various theologies—some focused more on intellectual ways of knowing God and others on the ways of the heart.  Would it be the way we dress—some with coats and ties and others with golf shirts and still others with blue jeans or overalls?  Would it be our respective levels of education?  That is, can the insights of all persons—children included—be respected in our congregations?  Could it even be our denominations themselves?  I hope that a Catholic or a Baptist or a Pentecostal would feel welcome here, even if our practices might seem somewhat unfamiliar.  Our celebration this morning—the varieties of dress and nationalities represented here under one roof—is a metaphor for how we all must come together as the body of Christ.  I’m not saying that we all must be the same—rather that we must value our differences and work to accommodate them.  Each congregation and each denomination will always have its distinctive flavor, and persons will be drawn to those churches in which they feel most comfortable.  But we must never let those differences blind us to the fact that we are all in this Christianity thing together.  And, to the extent possible, each church should work to be more open and more welcoming. 

This is hard work.  Accommodating cultural differences is hard work.  It is much easier to be with people who are just like us.  The problem is, no one is just like us; and if we keep narrowing our focus to the people who are just like us, pretty soon we will be a church of one person, alone unto ourselves.  But Jesus calls us into community.  He knows, and we are learning, that good community is worth hard work.  As we work to value our differences, we learn better what it is to be human, created by God as different persons, but having the same basic needs and hopes and fears.  By broadening our community we will learn truly what it is to love.  It is not what is on the outside that makes us Christians, but what is on the inside.