Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Since near the dawn of humanity there has been the impression that certain things in this world are impure, unnatural, abhorrent, and even abominations.
An ancient Near Eastern list of unclean and abominable activities includes eating with foreigners, handling of corpses, self-mutilation (also known as tattoos), and…shepherds (?!).
In Jesus’ time, the list developed from the Hebrew Scriptures and the traditions that grew up around those texts and included eating certain foods, speaking with a woman, sitting down at the dinner table with the wrong people, touching the skin of a pig (sorry, footballers) or wearing a garment made out of two different materials. Some of these we can sympathize with—we know that eating certain foods can cause us not only gastric distress but severe illness or even death.
But in our passage this morning Jesus is clearly running out of patience with those who seek to impugn His actions such as eating with sinners or helping the sick on the Sabbath. Their hearts were no longer in the right place. They had manipulated the law to free them from helping others which meant, in the end, they blamed God for their failure to love.
Jesus’ rejoinder goes straight to the fallacy of their actions and to the heart of Scripture. He reminds them that in ancient times Yahweh became utterly dissatisfied with their worship. In the passage that Jesus quotes from Isaiah, Yahweh is tired of hearing their words of praise which have no authenticity or faith behind them:
“This people honours 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.”
God is exhausted and angered by those who try to placate the divine holiness while practicing a morality void of God’s essence – that is, love.
More to the point for our passage, Jesus observes the way they have so twisted the law as to utterly avoid its requirements.
The most famous of God’s laws are The Ten. And one of those ten given to Moses on Mount Sinai required us to honor our father and mother “so that your days may be long in the land that God is giving you”. Honoring our father and mother is not just meant to be lip service— “Yes, mother.” “Yes, father.”—but to be frank about it, it is meant to cost us money; it is meant to cost us time; it is meant to be inconvenient; it is meant to demand something of us. Just as our parents care for us when we were too young to care for ourselves so are we, to care for our parents when they are too old to do so for themselves.
But the Pharisees had found a loophole. It was something called Korban (which means “offering to God”), and ironically what that really meant was that they were scapegoating themselves by blaming God for their inability to help their parents financially.
The Korban vow was about willing one’s property to the temple. Once this vow was made those funds, while still held by the person, could not be used to care for parents. This meant the person could still use those funds for their own benefit but we're no longer able to use them to help others; this almost makes the people of Enron look like generous benefactors, at least they didn’t blame God for their greed.
Sadly, in some ways, this same pernicious human tendency to consider things impure has spilled over into our times in tragic ways, and at the same time created an identical situation to that in Jesus’s time: using doctrine as a rational to fail to live out the fundamental ethic loving God and neighbor.
Perhaps you enjoyed this summer’s Olympics as I did. It is always thrilling to see people who have pushed themselves to the pinnacle of endurance, agility, fortitude, and excellence. Certainly, these athletes were genetically gifted upon birth, but without the dedication, the medals would never arrive.
But if you watched the news, you might recall that there was a highly criticized element during the opening ceremonies. Listen to the description from New York Times writer Yan Zhuang:
“In the performance broadcast during the ceremony, a woman wearing a silver, halo-like headdress stood at the center of a long table, with drag queens posing on either side of her. Later, at the same table, a giant cloche lifted, revealing a man, nearly naked and painted blue, on a dinner plate surrounded by fruit. He broke into a song as, behind him, the drag queens danced.”
The debate largely centered around whether or not this was a depiction of an ancient Greek feast (a bacchanalian feast) or a reenactment of Da Vinci’s Last Supper. If you want to ask my five-cent opinion, I would say it wasn’t one or the other —it was both; I’m sure Thomas Jolly, the creative director, had enough artistic acumen to develop a scene with many layers.
But for our purposes this morning, it doesn’t matter. I want to focus on not what happened at those opening ceremonies but what happened following—the reaction from certain sectors of the Christian community and what it means for how you and I are called as followers of Christ to witness to His love in this world.
The response was swift and vitriolic. From very socially conservative politicians to actors who are Christians, and even an openly gay, nationally recognized agnostic fitness guru, believed this depiction demonstrated lack of respect to the Christian community and demeaned this most sacred of moments in our Christian faith. And perhaps this is true.
The French Catholic church called it a gross mockery, a U.S. congressman described it as shocking and insulting to Christian people, and the Greek Orthodox Church called it blasphemous, while the Vatican remarked, “[we]deplore the offence done to many Christians.”Organizations with Christian believers withdrew their advertising from the U.S. Olympics.
And I must admit there was a reaction within myself; I was unsettled by the scene. Add to a certain extent, whether it was intended, I did feel as if they were mocking the Lord’s Supper.
But then, when I considered our passage this morning, in which Jesus is eating with the outcasts of His time and reflected on the purpose of the Last Supper, I believe the response from the Christian community was not the one that Jesus would have hoped for.
First of all, rather than take offense at the people who mocked Him, He prayed, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” If Jesus Himself did not take offense at those who caused His death, how can that be our response? And rather than judge others who misunderstood His intentions, He offered them a place at the table.
With those misguided disciples at the Last Supper, Jesus explained His intentions. He was going to give His life for them and for everybody. He told them they were going to abandon Him, and one of them was going to betray Him. But at that supper, rather than condemn them and be offended at them, He told them they were His friends and that they would have a place in the heavenly kingdom. That is why this meal is so special, so sacred to us.
It is for everybody—not just those who stand up straight and act right and treat God and their neighbor like they’re supposed to. It is the promise that despite our failure, God’s love will never leave us, and that we have a promised place with Him for eternity. Furthermore, it was precisely Jesus’ habit to regularly sit down and eat with people that the rest of the world rejected, scorned, and condemned. And He didn’t tell them to sit up straight and do things the way He thought they should be done; He simply offered His friendship, His healing, and His miracles. That is one of the reasons why the religious authorities were constantly after Him.
And this is why I am saddened and frankly angry at the Christian community. For once again rather than using an opportunity to show the depth of God’s love in Jesus Christ, we communicated to the world that we are easily offended and less focused on sharing the blessings of God’s love then we are on condemning others.
We had the ear of the world—a chance to share with them the wonder of this feast and to invite them to this table. It should have been a time for the Christian community to say that “there is nothing you can do to offend us because everyone is welcome to the table. And we do not stand in judgment of you, for Jesus has taught us to forgive as He has forgiven us, and that we are to honor others and to respect others above ourselves, so come and sit down at the table and discover why this is so special to us.”
God has given the Brick Presbyterian Church a mission to work on changing how Christians are viewed in this world. And the Session particularly believes that we are called to be at church with generous orthodoxy meaning we practice a faith that doesn’t use our beliefs to judge or condemn others. That instead our faith leads us to become a spiritual home for anybody in need of Jesus’ love, that we are called to welcome as Jesus did, all people to the table.
For too long, too many of us have allowed the extreme voices of the Christian faith to determine how the world sees us. And as a result, the world sees the nature of our faith in a manner that is not worthy of our Lord.
And so, we seek to be a spiritual home for all, and that we treat them the same way Jesus would have—with forgiveness, with respect, and with love; that we will be a home for everyone, no matter who they are, no matter their lifestyle, no matter their doctrine, no matter their dress, no matter their finances, no matter their gender, no matter their sexual orientation. All are welcome, for if all are not welcome, then neither are we. And this conclusion is drawn precisely from the Last Supper. Amen.
Comments