Lip Service 9-1-24
Lip Service
Deut 4:1-2, 6-9; Mark 7:1-8,14-15,21-23
Deut 4:1-2, 6-9
So now, Israel, give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe, so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you. You must neither add anything to what I command you nor take away anything from it, but keep the commandments of the Lord your God with which I am charging you. You must observe them diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!” For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to him? And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today? But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children—
Mark 7:1-8,14-15.21-23
Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and 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.) So 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?” He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘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.’ You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
Prayer
Welcome back to Mark! After what felt to me like a sermon series, and I can imagine to you as well about ‘bread of life,’ I know at least I’m ready to go somewhere else in our walk through the ancient stories of our tradition. But what an odd place to land – right in the middle of an argument so routine it feels a little strange that hand washing was such a big deal in ancient days. I don’t know about you but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who participated in this argument before – you know about washing hands before dinner. In fact, it was a pretty routine argument at our house.
That surely can’t be what is happening in this passage, can it, an argument about washing hands before eating that has probably been repeated in each and every home? Yes and no – yes, it really is about the practice of washing hands; and no, as is often the case in such arguments, there is the thing under the thing that we don’t always see. With our kids, maybe they forgot. Or, maybe they’ve decided that even Valerie and I think this hand washing thing is important, but not so much for them, and while they’re at it, maybe they are tired of all the rules at the house. So maybe washing hands is less about forgetfulness and more about testing the old way of doing things.
The same thing is going on in Mark this morning. It’s not just about washing hands, it’s about the tradition and ways we have always done things. Which is the point the Pharisees press: “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders?” they ask, somewhat aghast that Jesus and his disciples are running rough shod over tradition. What is at stake, then, is not just a specific practice but the larger question of authority, tradition, the old, practiced way of doing things. Why was Jesus pushing folks to change the ways of the elders, the ways of tradition?
Being willing to change is not an easy journey. You’ve probably heard the old joke, “How many Presbyterians does it take to change a light bulb? CHANGE? CHANGE? My grandfather donated that light bulb!” We love our traditions. I love my traditions. They have helped to mediate the faith to us in countless ways. What if they are not doing that for folks today the way they did for us in previous days? What if we’ve come close to worshipping the traditions instead of the God they were supposed to point to? And what if Jesus is calling us to put our mission – whether we care for our aging parents, feeding the hungry, opening our doors to the homeless, making our building available for an after-school tutoring program, sharing the gospel with folks much of the church rejects, partnering with the community to care for more of God’s children, whatever – what if Jesus is calling us to put our mission ahead of even our most sacred and cherished traditions? What then?
This is a “come to Jesus” text, if you will. That is, if we expect to follow Jesus, then this will demand an excruciating examination of oneself, our true intentions, our true beliefs, and on what we stake our relationship with God. “For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like”. How I wish this would end up on plaques and bumper stickers instead of self-righteous claims toward good works and quick judgments that are ignorant of the souls they reveal.
Jesus wades through the waters of traditionalism to get to his more significant point. It is not the external that matters—nothing on the outside defiles. The behaviors and actions that flow from within are what matter. This is a good time for readers to say “ouch” if we are hesitant to say “amen.”
Jesus’ words disrupt the clean/unclean, pure/impure, defiled/undefiled dichotomies that characterized Jewish-Gentile interactions during this time. Jesus calls the leaders and the crowd to consider the internal communing of the heart and the actions and behaviors that flow from an evil heart.
It is a sobering call to contemplation. Sadly, the news is filled with church leaders who are guilty of sexual crimes, fiscal irresponsibility, theological abuse, and ministerial negligence—yet they purport to uphold the moral, ethical, and ritualistic traditions of their faith. Or they partially comply with the traditions while using the traditions as weapons against others. Without proper safeguards and intentional boundaries, leaders may be particularly susceptible to misdeeds that go unnoticed for a time. We empower leaders and we trust them. Jesus calls church leaders, then the crowd, and us, to search ourselves.
I suspect a lot of people view our faith the way we view politics: it’s all a lot of words that don’t mean much. If they’re not completely jaded by religion, they may still look to see if those of us who profess faith follow up with actions that demonstrate it. But many people in our world have already given up on religion. And it’s because we religious people have spent our time and energy arguing about things that tend to appear to the average bystander as something like debating the right way to wash your hands as a religious ritual. Or we’ve done things that have completely contradicted our claim to faith. Or we’ve bogged down our religion with making rules about who’s in and who’s out.
But Jesus took a completely different approach. Jesus demanded that his disciples do two things: love God and love their fellow human beings. While it’s not a long list of rules, it’s still not particularly easy when you think about it. We shouldn’t think that Jesus came to let us off the hook when it comes to obeying God’s commands. Jesus doesn’t make it easier for us to live the life of faith, he makes it harder! He challenges us to “observe the commandments of the Lord your God diligently” by fulfilling the spirit of the commands, not just the letter. Jesus follows the tradition of the biblical prophets when he insists that faith should include one’s whole life. From the very beginning, that tradition has insisted that those who profess faith show that their faith truly makes a difference in the way they live. Otherwise, it’s no faith at all; as Jesus said, it’s just “lip service”.
Now it may seem strange to people raised on the gospel of grace to hear about observing the commandments. But the simple truth is that the biblical witness has always insisted that the way you live your life demonstrates the quality of your faith. For example, James says that “true religion” is to bridle your tongue, care for widows and orphans, and keep yourself untainted by the world. Like the prophets before him, James knew that putting your faith into action has to be specific—faith is a matter of how you use your words, how you treat the powerless and destitute, and how you view “holiness.” If you think about it, these three areas of our lives are where our faith shows up—or doesn’t. How easy it is to turn from our “Christian life” to slandering or condemning another person! How easy it is to make ourselves feel less impotent in this world by mistreating someone who has no voice! How easy it is to rationalize and justify our failure to “do justly and love mercy and walk humbly with our God” by wrapping ourselves in a mantle of false piety.
It seems to me that is precisely one of the great problems with all religions. It is all too easy for religion to become nothing more than a cultural phenomenon—it simply endorses “the way things have always been” and uses God and Scripture to reinforce that tradition. But since God’s word challenges all societies and all cultures to recognize their profound failures, if we are going to simply go along with the way things are, then we must “abandon the commandment of God”.
But Jesus makes it clear in his dispute with his Jewish opponents that it’s not the so-called cultural “sins” that defile us in God's sight. You know what I’m talking about here—those ways we define people who are different from us as “unclean” regardless of their true character! For the Pharisees of Jesus’ day it was washing your hands the right way. We have different ways of defining people as unclean, but they are just as culturally motivated. Jesus says that it is what you do that defiles you.
Jesus presents us with a choice. The reality is that if we choose to live the life of faith, we will have to turn our back on sham religion that justifies our sin—even if it means turning our back on the cultural norms that most of us cling to for a sense of stability. The plain but challenging truth is that authentic faith has always been about God’s grace changing your heart and mind so much that it changes the way you live. It’s not a matter of lip service, but of heart service. Authentic faith is about a different way of living that flows naturally from a heart that has been changed by God’s love and mercy and grace, and therefore a heart that can do no less than seek to make all of life about loving God and loving others. Perhaps no more lip service and true heart service – thanks be to God – amen.