Mark 7:1-23
Presented August 30, 2009, by J.D. Kline
The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker has a novel entitled Meridian, the story of a young African-American woman who dedicated herself, heart and soul, to the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Meridian had rejected the church as reactionary, but finds herself, without fully understanding her motivations, drawn to visit churches once again. The year is 1968, and as she enters a Baptist Church and observes the community at worship, she begins to sense a different quality to that which she had experienced some years before, in those days when she found much of the church to be wary and anxious about the cost of the civil rights struggle, unwilling to change and to grow. Yet now, there is a new “feel” in the church; writes Alice Walker, “[Meridian] was suddenly aware that the sound of the ‘ahmens’ was different. Not muttered in resignation, not shouted in despair. No one bounced in his seat. No one even perspired. Just the ‘ah-mens’ rose clearly, unsentimentally, and with a firm tone of ‘We are fed up.’”
On the Sunday Meridian attends, the church has invited a father, whose young son had been slain during the civil rights struggle, to share a few words. It is the anniversary of that death. The father’s grief is so intense that he has had periods of insanity, but today, he is willing to stand before the congregation. Yet no words come as he stands awkwardly before the people, even though his throat was working and his eyes, redder than ever, were without tears. All the slain young man’s father could eventually say is, “My son died.” Still, Meridian senses the congregation with him, and feels a new resolve among the people, a determination that no longer would they allow their children to be destroyed by the racism built so deeply into the fabric of American life. Meridian finds herself drawn by that new resolve, and it is as if she hears the church saying that day, “the church, the music, the form of worship that has always sustained us, the kind of ritual you share with us—these are the ways to transformation that we know. We want to take this with us as far as we can.”
This incident from Alice Walker’s novel highlights a common quandary in the life of faith. For some, faith is embraced primarily for its protective functions, with faith operating much like a barrier, holding at bay those threats and struggles stemming from the world around us, providing a sense of order as we live as untainted by the world as possible. For others, faith leads in a markedly different direction, strengthening and empowering persons to live life to the fullest in the world. From this perspective, faith is that which enables us to take hold of the prophetic call to do justice, love compassionately, and walk humbly in the presence of God. Faith is the avenue that leads to transformed living, to a new vision for how to live intentionally and courageously in the world around us.
In this morning’s Gospel lesson, Jesus finds himself embroiled once again in conflict with the religious leaders of his day, and much of the conflict centers on this very question of how faith is to be practiced and lived out, day by day. A group of scribes and Pharisees, eager to undermine Jesus’ growing authority and reputation, asks critically, “Why do your disciples not live according to the traditions of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” (7:5).
Consider the text in more detail. It’s important to grasp the source of the conflict, as Jesus and the religious leaders display two very different perspectives about what it means to be a person of faith. The religious leaders focus on purity, and they ask their question of Jesus, appalled that the disciples of Jesus do not adhere strictly to rules about cleanliness. A ritual washing of hands before eating had become a key component of a highly complex system of purity regulations—regulations that were eventually written down some 200 years after Jesus’ day, but which were already a well-known part of the oral tradition of that time. A focus on hand washing, of course, was a good thing, helping prevent infection and disease. But Jesus pushes beneath the surface, to the underlying source of conflict with the religious leaders—and that conflict, in the eyes of Jesus, centers on the distinction between outward piety, on the one hand, and an inner devotion to God, flowing outwardly from one’s heart, on the other hand.
Jesus quotes biting words from the prophet Isaiah, words that decry those who are content to honor God with their lips, while their hearts remain far from God. And then Jesus claims of the religious leaders, “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition” (7:8). With this scathing indictment, Jesus is not negating the value of physical cleanliness, but instead is asserting that there is a far more significant issue for the life of faith, and that is a through-going change of heart. The religious leaders focus on outward practice, while Jesus calls for transformed living, proclaiming that the faithful are to begin living now as if God’s kingdom were fully present among them. It is a call to love God whole-heartedly and to serve one’s neighbors compassionately.
To underscore his contention that the religious leaders reject the heart of God’s commandments, Jesus points to the custom of declaring goods Corban—that is, dedicating them to God. The person who dedicated property as Corban could retain the right to that property’s use, but it could not be surrendered to anyone else, even a parent in financial need. What may well have begun as a noble practice, therefore, could easily be manipulated, providing “legal” basis for ignoring one’s deeper responsibilities. That’s why Jesus refers to the commandment to “honor one’s father and mother.” Some apparently were declaring their resources Corban, thereby averting the Torah’s prescription of care for aging parents. It was a cynical practice, says Jesus, a practice that makes empty the word of God.
After lambasting the religious leaders for their callous manipulation of the law, Jesus once again calls the crowd to him, this time proclaiming, “There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile” (7:15). In yet another way, Jesus is contending that it is not enough to focus on outward purity; there is a much deeper challenge, the re-creating of the human heart, the taking on of new levels of compassion and justice-making in our living, the embracing of a new heart and a new spirit.
Jesus’ concern is that people of faith be set apart—that they be known—by the quality of their living, and not merely by outward adherence to laws and regulations, no matter how good the original intent of those rules. Competing religious leaders, on the other hand, were convinced that the rules and rituals they held so central helped set boundaries in a troubled world. Devotion to the rules set them apart from the rest of the world and served as a visible reminder of who was in—and who did not belong—to the people of God. And that was the real issue that the scribes and Pharisees found so threatening in the message—and example—of Jesus: the conviction that in the unfolding realm of God old barriers are being broken down. Brian Blount, president of Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, VA, asserts in his book Preaching Mark in Two Voices that the preaching of Jesus carries a declaration that “Israel is being reconstituted in a most revolutionary, countercultural way.” In God’s new creation, old divisions between Jew and Gentile come falling down.
In Alice Walker’s novel, Meridian had experienced a church fearful of new ways of thinking and acting. But when she re-connects with the church, she discovers something new, something she had not anticipated. A process of transformation had begun. A new heart and a new spirit were being embraced. And this is precisely what Jesus invites the people of his day to experience.
In his book entitled Life on the Road, writings that explore the nature of Christian discipleship, Athol Gill asserts,
The supreme characteristic of [Jesus’] life was his radical openness to all people, especially to those whom society had relegated to the edges. The despised of the world were the special friends of Jesus. He began and ended his life on the underside of history. Jesus grew up in the obscure, insignificant, and despised town of Nazareth. He worked among the fishermen, the tax collectors, the prostitutes and notorious sinners of Galilee. He ended his life on the rubbish dump of humanity, driven out of the city and put to death on the very edge of society….
The mission of the church insists on breaking down all artificially constructed barriers—especially those which support oppression and marginalization. The good news of the kingdom [of God] addresses people and societies at every level of their existence. There is no area of life untouched by its challenge.
This is precisely what the competing religious leaders of the day did not want to hear. For them, faith—and their cherished law—existed to shelter them from those whom they deemed unworthy. But along came Jesus, proclaiming that these kind of laws—laws twisted to justify indifference to the plight of the poorest of the poor and exclusion of those who look and act differently than do we—these kind of laws are made to be broken.
Tom Wright in his commentary Mark for Everyone asserts that behind today’s text from Mark, chapter seven, stands the conviction that throughout his life and ministry Jesus was bringing the old scriptures, the old covenant with Israel, to a new completion, a new fulfillment. As a result, the Jewish scriptures—what we label the Old Testament—suggests Tom Wright, “aren’t to be seen as a timeless code of behavior, but as the story which leads to Jesus”—the very Jesus who takes us beneath the surface to the fundamental issues of faith and life, the call to transformed living, the challenge of embracing a new heart and a new spirit. Slavish adherence to rules is never enough; we are called to something far more significant. We are called to take hold of a new vision and a new story, the story of God’s new creation, a story that will not let us rest satisfied with business as usual. Instead, touched and transformed by the Spirit of Christ, we find ourselves in the business of tearing down walls of misunderstanding, welcoming into God’s realm those relegated to the edges of society, proclaiming new levels of peace and reconciliation, moving deeper and deeper in the walk of faith.
“Following Jesus in his life on the road,” writes Athol Gill, “inevitably leads us to conflict with the power brokers of the day, but in that struggle Jesus promises to be with us. We can therefore go forth in courage and faith.” Surely that is our calling. Amen.