Pentecost 14(B) – Mark 7:1-23
I have to admit, I have mixed feelings about children’s sermons. On the one hand, they are a way to intentionally include children in our worship life, which I think is very important. They also require the preacher to come up with something very concrete about the gospel, something clear enough that kids can latch on to it. I think sometimes, that’s good for the adults in the room too, because some days that concrete nugget from the children’s sermon is about all we can walk away with.
But on the other hand, I wonder if we do children a disservice by it. We bring them up front, and kind of put them on display for the rest of the congregation, like a liturgical decoration of some sort. And then we send them back to their seats and get on with the important, adult part of the service. I hope we don’t give kids the impression that we think they’re not smart enough to follow the “real” sermon or that the Good News has to somehow be watered down for them.
The reason I say all of this isn’t because we’re headed back to our regular worship schedule, and the 8:00 folks who have been missing the children’s sermon all summer will get to hear it again at 8:30. It’s because sometimes, whatever mixed feelings I may have, the children’s sermon is the way that God seems to speak to me the loudest. As I was preparing for this week’s sermon, I couldn’t find a way to sit with the kids and say anything other than, “Jesus says it’s okay not to wash your hands!”
Why does Jesus say this? What’s so bad about washing your hands? There’s a temptation here for preachers to “spiritualize” what Jesus is saying. We like to do that a lot. Jesus says something in the Gospel lesson that is just, well, crazy-sounding, and so we find some way to smooth it over, make it more palatable. This is something we do all the time; we say, “Well, what Jesus is really talking about is this.” After all, we can’t really take him at face value, can we? Jesus couldn’t have really meant it when he said, “Sell everything you have, and give the money to the poor,” could he?
Well, I don’t want to get into too much trouble this morning, so let’s leave that passage for another day. The fact is, in today’s Gospel reading, the problem that the Pharisees have with Jesus’ disciples is that they really, literally don’t wash their hands before supper. And Jesus says, really, literally, that the Pharisees are wrong for going, “Ew.” That it doesn’t matter whether you eat without washing your hands after you just came out of the bathroom, that you can just let the dropped off bits of your bean burrito congeal and solidify on the plate and you should eat off of it for your next meal without any kind of soap being applied in between, that it’s okay to take the bowl that you just used to thaw your chicken and use it to serve a delicious spinach salad, and maybe the juice that ran off that raw meat will give the salad some extra flavor, and that none of that will defile you at all.
I think anyone who has a basic understanding of microbiology will tell you why that’s wrong. Not washing your hands can make you sick; people can even die from food poisoning. And yet Jesus says… What’s so bad about washing your hands?
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We have a new Bishop in town. Much to my chagrin, the Rev. Margaret Payne, starting yesterday, has now officially retired from the office, and it has been filled by Rev. James Hazelwood, elected at our assembly in June. He’ll be installed at a service on Saturday, September 29, at Trinity Lutheran in Worcester, and I hope many of you will attend what should be a very exciting worship opportunity. You might even contemplate joining the choir for the day, serving as an acolyte or communion server, or even joining the motorcycle procession from Charlestown, Rhode Island! (Don Roberts, are you out there?) Jim says he was pretty surprised to be elected, because he’s not quite your typical pastor. But it’s a sign that change is in the air for the Church these days, something Dan talked about a few weeks ago as he contemplated with us what’s being served up on Wisdom’s Table, and I’m very hopeful as I look forward to what comes next for Lutherans in New England.
But a new Bishop, particularly one who finds himself a bit outside the norm, is liable to make a few people angry. He’s already had the opportunity to do so, in fact, during the election process. When asked about connecting youth to the church and its life, for example, he basically began by saying, “Well, not through WORSHIP, that’s for sure.” To be fair, I’m certain he didn’t say it quite like that, and the other remaining candidates at that stage all agreed, so he was hardly alone in what he had to say. But some of my clergy friends were pretty horrified. And as I stand here in the midst of a WORSHIP SERVICE, it begs the question, what’s so bad about worship?
After all, worship is a very good thing, isn’t it? It’s the primary gathering of people of faith each week, the time when we can all get together as a community and reaffirm our commitment to God and God’s vision for the world. It’s also a time when we can learn how to put our faith into practice, to grow in the ways that God wants us to grow, to hear the teaching of Christ and become better disciples, to encounter the Spirit at work in our lives. Worship is the context of some of the most meaningful moments of our faith lives: Baptism, Confirmation, Marriage, Funeral. These are not only important but integral stops along each of our journeys through life. And yet, even while I affirm the importance of worship, I have to agree with Jim. There are times and places where it’s not helpful. So, what’s so bad about worship?
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A story will illustrate. A few years ago, when I was at seminary, a student suggested that during Lent, we swap out the chapel’s brass candlesticks with a simpler, starker setting, just a few pillars on a plate with some stones. As soon as the new candles were in place, a certain professor sent a letter to the chapel staff, insisting that the old candlesticks be returned, and refusing to come to worship until the change back had been made. Since that professor had been scheduled to lead worship on Ash Wednesday, the staff found themselves in a bind. Tempers flared, heated words were flung, relationships were broken— All over a few candles.
I need to say again, this was a seminary professor, a person who is so in love with God, whose life has been so transformed that he’s devoted his life to preparing people for public ministry! And despite that, he was so attached to a certain way of doing worship that he was willing to let a set of candles defile his relationship with other people, and with God.
And four years later, I still get angry about it. I still let myself be defiled by righteous indignation. I’m still captive to sin, and cannot free myself.
* * *
I know I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. We forget, sometimes, that the Pharisees weren’t horrible people. In fact, they were really good people. People whose faith was very deep, who were trying to act in a way that would please God because, after all, they loved God and wanted to please Him! But their problem was that they got caught up in the details, the specific actions of their religious practices, and those things became what was important.
Why did the Pharisees have a rule that said you must wash your hands before you eat? Where did this tradition come from? There was an ancient practice of hospitality that said when a guest came to dine with you, to be a good host, you should provide a wash basin and water for your guest to wash their hands. It was a way of welcoming a person to your table, including them in your family, a sign of your relationship. And after all, it’s a little silly for your guest to wash their hands and you to leave yours dirty. So you’d wash yours too.
It wasn’t that washing their hands was wrong. It was that for the Pharisees, washing their hands became all that mattered. It was that washing their hands became more important than the meal that was shared, than the relationships that were built and affirmed around the table, than the love of God that directed them to show hospitality to their guest, that sent them to the wash basin in the first place. They became captive to sin, and could not free themselves.
And so Jesus called them hypocrites, because they were so busy trying to make sure that their relationship with God was good that it got in the way of their relationship with God.
If that can be true for the Pharisee’s worship, it can be for us too. Which is why our new Bishop is right. Worship is good, very good, essential even, but it’s not the way in for most youth—or “unchurched” adults, for that matter—today. Sure, there are many of us who love worship. But there are many more people who don’t see the point. Ask them why, press them on it, and most who are honest will say it’s because Christians seem like hypocrites. People get dressed up in their Sunday best and go worship, we say the right words and do the right things, and then we go back to our ordinary lives which look nothing like that hour on Sunday. We think that because we worship, that our relationship with God is in good shape, when in reality, we’ve forgotten all about our relationship with God.
* * *
So what do we do?
There’s a problem with the question. In our culture, we’re so focused on DOING something that we often go and DO before we’ve even thought about what it is we should do. Do you know, back when I taught college-level Computer Programming, we had a whole course about what comes before you even get started doing programming? And then once you had a year’s worth of programming behind you, you took another course that said the same thing—what to do before you do anything. How to make a plan, how to think about the development task, what the life cycle of software is, what patterns and frameworks to use, what guidelines to follow.
The key is in that word. Follow. We know we are captive to sin, and cannot free ourselves. We need someone else to free us. We need Christ.
It’s hard to find some good news for the Pharisees in today’s Gospel—or for anyone else, for that matter. Jesus has a lot of scathing things to say. But the good news is that Jesus is there, encountering the Pharisees in the midst of their practices. Yes, the things they’re doing get in the way of their relationship with God. So instead, God comes to them.
Just as God comes to us. “Every good thing is from the Father of Lights,” James says in his letter. And so the Father gives us every good thing, in the person of Jesus the Christ, He reveals Jesus in and among us, and beckons us to come and follow Him.
We’re going to be talking a lot about discipleship this year, the practice of following Christ. Each month, we’re going to take up one of the practices of discipleship, something we can DO to live out our faith and to become better followers. But the reality is, before we can follow, we have to know who it is we are following.
And so, in our worship and in our daily life, in everything we do, may the holy words that God speaks to us, and the words of our mouths, and the words of our hearts be acceptable in God’s sight, and may they always reveal to us the one we are following, God’s holy Word, Jesus the Christ. Amen.