“Losing the Forest for the Trees”
Rev. Rachel Lewis Cooley
Eternal Hope UCC, Fort Walton Beach, FL
August 29, 2021
Mark 7: 1-23 – The Tradition of the Elders
7 Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, 2 they 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 wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders, 4 and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash, and there are also many other traditions that they observe: the washing of cups and pots and bronze kettles and beds.) 5 So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders but eat with defiled hands?” 6 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;
7 in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.’
8 “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”
9 Then he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! 10 For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ 11 But 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), 12 then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, 13 thus nullifying the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.”
14 Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: 15 there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”
17 When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. 18 He said to them, “So, are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, 19 since it enters not the heart but the stomach and goes out into the sewer?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) 20 And he said, “It is what comes out of a person that defiles. 21 For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: sexual immorality, theft, murder, 22 adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, pride, folly. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
Will you pray with me?
Creator God, we come today to listen together for the Holy Spirit. May She fall afresh on us, melting us, molding us, filling us, using us – all in your love and for the creating of your kin-dom here on earth, as it is in heaven. We come again to listening to the teachings of Jesus, our compassionate teacher who pointed to your love and call for us over and over. It is in his name we pray, Amen.
I have to say that when I first read the lectionary passages for this week, I knew I wanted to bring this one to you all this morning but I really wasn't sure for some time what it had to say to our times. The ancient practice of handwashing, and ritual purification before eating? The handwashing sure sounds like something we’ve heard a lot since COVID, but I’m pretty sure there’s more to this scripture than that. We hear here pieces of a past debate which raged through the early Christian communities, with Jewish-Christians and Gentile-Christians discussing which practices to continue and which to stop. From circumcision –perhaps the most often discussed – to this one, these issues seem distant from the ones we today debate.
I am sure, though, that I don't want to talk about tradition in a way that vilifies Judaism - too often our readings of the New Testament either imply or pretty obviously denigrate the Jewish people then, and by implication, now. Whether it's the way the Good Friday story is somewhat presented as the Jews handing Jesus to the authorities even when Pontius Pilate tries to call Jesus innocent and convince them to free him rather than Barabbas, or the way we read the Pharisees and Sadducees as the evil ones who don't get it, without fully recognizing that what's written by the NT authors with various goals about these particular Jewish people does not represent some fault of the entire Jewish population. To extrapolate about an entire religion based on writings about a few would be ridiculous, and yet it has been done so many times in the history of anti-semitism -- it's been done by Christians -- and so WE have a responsibility to read and discuss our New Testament carefully, out of love for our Jewish neighbors.
Thus, I want to be clear about a few things with this scripture:
Mark says all the Jews practiced this ritual washing the Pharisees and scribes discuss in this story, but that is not factual. Perhaps because the author of Mark was a gentile - as some scholars speculate - he may not have known the practices very well, and thus charicatured them a bit even. My People's Commentary says that the ritual washing mentioned here was likely a practiced passed down from generation to generation of Pharisee - a "tradition of the elders" as it's called.
In the plot of the gospel of Mark, the Pharisees and scribes have already decided that Jesus must be influenced by the devil, in their view, which may somewhat explain Jesus's somewhat curt and even sassy reply - even mentioning something about what goes out of you into the sewer… (my commentary had to call this scatological in order to keep things appropriate for writing. I naturally had to look up scatological, and sure enough, it means "relating to or characterized by an interest in excrement and excretion")
In the time after Jesus, post-Easter, in the early church, there was debate among the gentile Christians and the Jewish Christians about what Jewish practices should be carried on. We've perhaps heard these arguments most often about circumcision. But they were having them about
Again, the debate about traditional practices like this were raging on in numerous communities, as we can see in the book of Acts and the letters from Paul. And even if a group decides not to carry on a particular practice, that does not make the people who do carry it on any more right or wrong, ultimately. Maybe our distance from these practices gives us an advantage in seeing this more clearly.
All of which brings me to the following question: Why do we humans so often get caught up worried about details and rules and being right to the point that we forget the major themes and choices that really matter?? Said another way, why did the Pharisees and scribes in this story get so obsessed with this handed-down practice, or at least they acted very concerned with it and very right in their accusing Jesus, so much so that they wouldn’t listen to his critique or think carefully about it? So much so that they demonstrated the “hardness of heart” Jesus had been so frustrated with them for? When do we demonstrate hardness of heart or stubbornness for our rightness or our detailed rules? When do you?
I know I get caught up with silly rules I make for myself sometimes, thinking I have to do everyday things in a particular way or they won’t be right… I’m a recovering (perpetually recovering, it seems) perfectionist, I struggle with perfectionism. Brené Brown, who I read a lot and super love, owns that she too struggles with it, and she thinks we alllll do, to some degree. In her definition from the research, perfectionism is a process addiction, whereby someone like me or you thinks that if they do everything right, they can avoid pain and feeling vulnerable. So for me, sometimes this looks like a sort of obsession over keeping things clean and tidy in the house, probably because as a woman in this culture and because I see my mom’s concern with it, I’ve been taught that that is what is right for me. but of course there are other cultures where “what is right” is defined differently. It doesn't matter—as long as we think we can avoid criticism or shame, we want to do it right. So I’m getting better now but I used to could spend far too long on an email – particularly if it was about a somewhat difficult request or subject – trying to get every word just right, so that no one could come back and say I was careless, or that I hurt their feelings with my tone. If I were to feel I disappointed someone, whoosh, I feel shame so deep I can’t stand it. This is my trigger from my experience, probably because I was the youngest child by many years and grew up with many adults around and as the primary figures in my life. When I messed up, there were a lot of disappointed parents and sisters. So to this day if I feel I’ve disappointed someone, my face will get red, tears well up in my eyes, my heart races and the fight or flight system in my body can even go a bit crazy, adding to my anxiety. So to avoid all that, I'll just have to be perfect! No problem, right?? No harm, no foul! In taking much too long to write an email. Mmmm nope, because I could have instead spent that 15 minutes doing something else perhaps of greater significance and impact on my life and on the lives of others, like meditating or loving on my dog or loving on myself or exploring a creative outlet or calling a friend or talking with a neighbor or learning about potential solutions to some of our continual justice issues – like what could we as individuals and perhaps through our government be doing about affordable housing already to help get some folks off the street in these storms! – I could have been doing so much else that gets me more in contact with God, more grounded in God’s call, and in taking action for it. More time loving God, loving neighbor, loving self, which Jesus says without a doubt, without hesitation!, when asked what is the greatest commandment. The other rules may be out there—whether we make them up ourselves or learn them from elsewhere—but these are the keys. From Mark 12, 29 Jesus answered, “The first commandment ‘Hear, O Israel! The first commandment is : the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30 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.’ 31 The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
How do you remind yourself of this commandment continually? And when do you get distracted from it, perhaps because of habits or rules you make because you want to avoid feeling vulnerable?
I think a helpful place to turn now is to Ekhart Tolle, the spiritual teacher and writer of The Power of Now and A New Earth. He brings in spiritual teachings across different religions including the teachings of Jesus to discuss the ego and how we get lost in the voice in our head, which is not in fact, us. We are children of God, we have a being which we can sense when we get still and quiet with ourselves, and when we stop trying to label or understand with our minds. This voice in our heads is our ego, which he talks about in great depth for chapter and chapters, exploring the different ways we behave to make our egos feel even bigger and better, to feel bigger and better about ourselves. From page 66, the section “Being Right, Making Wrong”
I think the pharisees and scribes bringing this argument to Jesus were trying to inflate their egos, and to avoid the surely impossible thought that they could be wrong! So they got fired up and complaining amongst themselves about Jesus and the disciples washing or doing the ritual purification and when they were all sure of their rightness, they went over to confront Jesus and those with him.
Perhaps this ego is what Jesus is talking about when he says “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.”
You see, the ego has such a voracious appetite and wants to identify with so many things to make it stronger and to take up more and more space in our brains. All the time we spend stroking our egos is time we could spend remembering the fundamental truth, from which all our lives should be lived! That we are children of God, in a creation that God calls GOOD. And that we are called to love God, love neighbor, love self, love creation!
Love doesn't look like sitting around and talking about how right we are and how wrong others are. But how often do we do it? I think we do it some with the COVID pandemic and that wanting a sense of control and knowing is a key factor in how we’re talking about it, on all sides. Those insisting they know best when the truth is we do have little control over this pandemic and that is a scary reality to face. I don't mean to say that we shouldn’t follow what is found to be true through research – like that masks work and the vaccine can help save lives. I don't want to spend too much time talking about this this morning, but I invite you to reflect on some of how you talk about the pandemic and talk about what others believe and if there are places where your ego gets too excited about your rightness. I know mine does sometimes, with COVID and with other issues and spaces where I tend to feel holier-than-thou. But ego and holier-than-thou-ness is not where love is.
And sometimes love is not in the traditions and practices that’ve been handed down to us. Sometimes love and grounding in God may be there, and sometimes not. You’ve got to decide. I think part of what Jesus implies here is that just because something is handed down through generations does not make it in line with God’s love and call. God knows that white supremacy and sexism and ableism and classism and so many other isms that “we’ve got to be carefully taught” create hate and fear rather than love and solidarity.
What else does love not look like? And what does love look like in your life? When are you most grounded in the love of God for you, God’s child, and for all? How can you remember and remind yourself of God’s love more and more??