Susan Warrener Smith

September 3, 2006 Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 17-23

If you were here last week, you might remember that when the author of the letter to the Ephesians tells us to put on the whole armor of God, we are not being asked to launch a holy invasion but to dress ourselves in truth, integrity, faith, and the gospel of peace - all matters of the human heart. But Jesus reminds us today that all matters of the heart have their dark side as well.

From the beginning of the gospel of Mark the cross casts its long shadow over the roads and pathways of Jesus' ministry. A series of healings in Capernaum catapults Jesus to fame to the point where crowds make it impossible for a paralytic to be brought in through the front door to be healed and must be lowered instead through a hole in the roof. In the shadows are scribes who question in their hearts Jesus' right to forgive the man's sins. Then Jesus invites a tax collector to become one of his disciples and goes to this man's house for dinner. The Pharisees are aghast, for if Jesus were truly a good Jew, he would not eat with a traitor who worked for the imperial Roman government, and they grill the disciples about the meaning of this. Others question Jesus when his disciples do not observe the tradition of fasting, and the Pharisees later catch Jesus and his disciples working on the Sabbath, picking grain in the fields, and they object to this violation of the day of rest. Becoming increasingly suspicious, the Pharisees wait to see what Jesus will do next, and their waiting is not in vain, for this time they catch him healing a man with a withered hand - once again ignoring the tradition of the Sabbath. As tensions grow, they now challenge Jesus yet again, this time taking note that the disciples eat without washing and do not observe the tradition of the elders.

It seems that the Pharisees and scribes are out to get Jesus. But even though they seem to be turning a deaf ear to Jesus' message of forgiveness and grace, aren't they just trying to be good Jews? The Pharisees were not priests but were lay people, successors of the Hasidim, lay lawyers who came to power during the period of the Hasmonean monarchy, a dynasty of Jewish high priests and kings who ruled during the first and second centuries before Christ. They did everything in their power to protect and observe not only the Torah itself but also the tradition of interpretation that had been handed down orally "through the elders" since the time of the original revelation on Mt. Sinai. They were the guardians of the Torah AND halakah, guardians of the law AND tradition. They ate the right foods, fasted when appropriate, faithfully rested on the Sabbath, and being perfectionists when it came to purity, they carefully washed their hands before handling any food, meticulously cleansed any food brought from the marketplace, and rigorously washed all their pots and pans and cups and plates and bronze kettles before preparing any food or eating. To the mind of a Pharisee cleanliness was indeed next to godliness. To be ritually unclean was a reflection of your inner soul, a reflection of your spirit. The Pharisees were not concerned so much about catching some disease but were really concerned about catching what Huston Smith calls "the spiritual flu." Along with lepers and dead people and a host of other things, you also could become ritually unclean by eating a camel or a rock badger, a hare or a pig. As guardians of the law and the long tradition of the fathers, it seems that the Pharisees were just trying to be good Jews.

Jesus, a Jew himself, has little patience with them, however. I don't think Jesus objects to ritual per se. After all, there is nothing wrong with a neat and ordered sanctuary, matching choir robes, hymns, prayers, or liturgy in general. But we can become so obsessed with clean hands and dripless candles, shining silver, and polished wood that we can forget what it means to be true to our covenant relationship with God. Jesus reminds us that what God really cares about is what is in your heart. There is nothing wrong with rites and rituals, but when our rites and rituals turn us into self-righteous hypocrites, that is another matter altogether.

This is indeed an ancient issue. The prophet Amos railed at the Israelites: "Thus says the Lord . . . I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies . . . Take away from me the noise of your songs . . . But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." (Amos 5:21-24) The prophet Micah echoes this cry: "‘With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?' He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:6-8) And Jesus himself reminds the Pharisees of what the prophet Isaiah said: "The Lord said: . . .these people draw near with their mouths but their hearts are far from me; and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote . . ." (Isaiah 29:13) We are reminded today that faith is indeed a matter of the heart, but all matters of the heart have their dark side as well.

It's not just the Pharisees that are having trouble getting this. Jesus has to reel in the crowd again and make it emphatically clear to them. "Listen to me," he says. "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." And then leaving the crowd, Jesus goes back to the house where the disciples are and has to drive the lesson home to them, too. "Do you also fail to understand?" he asks. "Whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? . . . It is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come . . ." There is nothing wrong with your rituals as long as you don't forget that faith is first and foremost a matter of the heart.

In the Bible the heart is the center of not only our emotions but also our intellect and will. It is the heart that speaks to God. (Psalm 27:8) God's word is written on the heart, and it is in the heart that we observe God's word. (Deuteronomy 30:14) It is in the heart that we receive understanding. (I Kings 3:9) It is through the heart that we are inspired into action. (Nehemiah 2:12) What is interesting is that there is scientific research taking place that seems to be demonstrating that indeed this is true. The Institute of HeartMath in California reports discoveries that "show that the heart plays a larger and more independent role than previously thought in drafting our emotional blueprints . . . [And] some researchers go farther, suggesting there's evidence that the spirit physically resides within the heart." (Bennett Daviss, "A Mind of Its Own," Ambassador, Feb., 1999)

The prophets before him and now Jesus reminds us that faith is first and foremost a matter of the heart. The scriptures are hard on the Pharisees, and in many ways seem to scapegoat them. It's easy to ignore the fact that we must ask ourselves the question whether or not we ever "come up from Jerusalem" just like the Pharisees and scribes, ready to pass judgment on others and impose our way on others with no tolerance for another point of view? Has not the church had its battles over patterns of language, arguing over saying all the right words in the right order? Lord knows, the Presbyterian Church is in danger of making an idol out of The Book of Order. My husband is an Episcopal priest, and I have watched that denomination fuss over its prayer book for years. Has not the church established customs of dress? When I was a girl, I always had to wear a hat, and a woman would not have been caught dead in church with a pair of pants on! Has not the church even burned people at the stake for disagreeing about ritual acts? Thousands of Anabaptists were executed in the 16th century for refusing to allow their children to be baptized. " . . . these people draw near with their mouths," says the Lord, "but their hearts are far from me; and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote . . ."

All of us live with the danger of living behind a veneer of respectability and presenting ourselves to the world as righteous when underneath foments corruption and deceit. From Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to Lon Chaney's wolfman to the Incredible Hulk to Tony Soprano literature and the arts have long recognized the inner struggle of the human heart.

Tony Soprano lives an outward life of respectability in a beautiful home in suburban New Jersey with his wife and his son and daughter and supports his family by working in the "sanitation business." They are Roman Catholics who attend church and celebrate Christmas, say grace at the dinner table and go to confession. Yet Tony meets daily with his cronies in the back room of a butcher shop or at the Bada Bing strip club where he operates a ring of crime and deceit that exploits anyone and everything that interferes with their power and financial gain. I was painfully reminded of my own tendency to morph into a Mafia thug when I watched a series of episodes of "The Sopranos" when Tony's psychiatrist, Jennifer Melfi, was beaten and raped in a parking garage. When her rapist was let go on a technicality, I found myself wanting her to succumb to the temptation to tell Tony what happened, knowing he would exercise his own form of justice on this rapist who had been released with little consequence. Yet at the same time I breathed a sigh of relief when the episode was over, and Dr. Melfi's integrity triumphed, and she resisted the temptation to forego her professional and personal integrity.

"It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come . . ." Even Mother Teresa acknowledged that she knew there was in her the potential to become a Hitler. She countered that potential with acts of love.

Jesus reminds us of our darker side and that we have a higher calling. Through his life and his teaching he made it clear that we are called to let justice roll down like waters, to let righteousness roll down like an everflowing stream, and to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God. This is what we must seek to be and do every hour of our lives.

I'd like to close with a prayer from a book of prayers by Walter Brueggemann. Let us pray. Great and wonderful God,
We arrange our lives as best we can,
to keep your holiness at bay,
with our pieties,
our doctrines,
our liturgies,
our moralities,
our secret ideologies,
Safe, virtuous, settled.
And then you -
you and your dreams,
you and your visions,
you and your purposes,
you and your commands,
you and our neighbors.
We find your holiness not at bay,
but probing, pervading,
insisting, demanding.
And we yield, sometimes gladly,
sometimes resentfully,
sometimes late . . . or soon.
We yield because you, beyond us, are our God.
We are your creatures met by your holiness,
by your holiness made our true selves.
And we yield. Amen.