It Is Not The
Cover ...!
Mark 7:
1-8,14-15,21-23
September
3, 2006
Now when the
Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered
around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with
defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all
the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus
observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from
the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions
that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the
Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live
according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” 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; in vain do
they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ You abandon the
commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”
Then he called the crowd again and said to
them, “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.”
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.”
The evangelist shares a marvelous story with the gospel readers today. It
is one about human traditions. It is one that was shared to help the
reader learn the difference between human traditions and
God’s way. It is a story to challenge the
reader to move forward in his or her spiritual life.
I can understand the response to the disciples when they started eating
their food. I am not sure how old I was when I realized that the two
sayings “come to dinner” and then “go wash your hands” were not in the
same sentence as my Mom spoke them to me. How many times have we heard it
said: “cleanliness is next to Godliness.” Our
lives are greatly influenced by being clean. How many different types of
soap commercials are there on the television, on the radio or in the
newspaper? Is one laundry detergent really better than the other one? When
one read the makeup of the detergent or of the soap, it appears that they
all have the same basic ingredients. Yet, those that put the commercials
together know that we really do want everything to be clean so they
emphasize how well their product will clean a person or the person’s
clothes. We want them to be “sparkling clean.”
We had a church member in Roxboro who raised strawberries and blue
berries. The girls and I would go pick the strawberries and blue berries
when they were ripe and we would also eat our fill while we were picking
them. We might have taken enough time to blow a little of the dirt off of
the strawberries. To be honest, we did not spend a lot of time doing that.
We just enjoyed those delicious strawberries in the field. What happened
to those strawberries when we got them home? We washed them and cleaned
them up before we ate them.
It is human nature to want to have things clean. It is our nature to make
sure our hands are washed, the plates are clean, and our clothes are
clean. We do believe that cleanliness is next to Godliness
and that is ok. The problem arises when we become so consumed by a human
belief or tradition that we forget about others and we forget about
God the creator.
We do not know why the disciples were eating with dirty hands. My best
guess is that they were extremely hungry and they did not take the time to
wash their hands before they started consuming the food. The response by
the religious crowd is what the evangelist would have us look at in this
text. They did not give the disciples or Jesus
a chance to explain what they were doing or why they were doing it. They
just jumped on them with great aggression about their traditions.
Listen one more time to the
conversation between the Pharisees, the scribes and
Jesus. “So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your
disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with
defiled hands?” 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; in vain do
they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ You abandon the
commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”
Jesus did not back off from their accusing
words. He immediately responded to them with words from the scriptures. He
quoted Isaiah in his response to them. He immediately was showing them
that he was about God the creator’s business
and not the business of humanity. Jesus at
that point challenged them to be more focused upon the will of
God than upon the traditions made by
God’s created children.
Jesus took the discussion to a higher level. He revealed to all
that were around him that it is not what goes into a person that is bad.
It is what comes out of that person through his or her actions or words
that can be offensive and evil.
He even listed those
things that cause a person to stumble and fall out of an eternal
relationship with Jesus
Christ. Jesus said:
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.”
One of the best descriptions that I have ever read about pride came from
Abraham Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln said: “We have been the recipients of the
choicest bounties of heaven. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power,
as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten
God. We have forgotten the gracious hand
which preserved us in peace and which multiplied, and enriched, and
strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our
hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and
virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too
self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace,
too proud to pray to the God that made us.”
Pride keeps us from entering into that eternal relationship with
God because we are solely focused upon
ourselves. Our concerns are about self and no other person. Pride has a
way of leading us down that pathway where we believe that we are the only
important people in the world. Gayle Sayers wrote a marvelous book many
years ago. It was titled: I am Third.
On the inside cover, he wrote these words to explain the title. Mr. Sayers
wrote. “God is first, my family is second and
I am third.” Jesus warned the religious
leaders and the people of his day to not put their human traditions above
God. He urged them to remove that pride that
had cemented itself into their hearts and souls so that they could be open
to the will of God.
Peter Marshall understood the pitfalls of pride when he prayed: "Lord,
when we are wrong, make us willing to change. And when we are right, make
us easy to live with.” Jesus listed some
obvious pitfalls that day. Most likely the leaders and the people could
and would have said “We have never murdered anyone, we have never
committed adultery, and we have never stolen from another person.” They
knew their laws. They knew the Ten Commandments. They knew what they had
done and not done. Jesus wanted them to
understand that it was what came from them that could and would be evil if
they did not first surrender their lives to God.
There is a Hebrew proverb that states: “Slander slays three persons: the
speaker, the spoken to, and the spoken of.” Once again, what comes out of
the person is what harms himself or herself as well as others.
Jesus wanted those who were fussing so much
about the hands that were dirty to understand that it is not human
traditions that brings one into a relationship with the
God of all creation. He wanted the people to
know that it is what comes from within a person that could be destructive
and that would separate that person from the love of
God.
Dr. A.B. Simpson put it this way: ”I would rather play with forked
lightning, or take in my hands living wires with their fiery currents,
than speak a reckless word against any servant of Christ,
or idly repeat the slanderous darts which thousands of Christians are
hurling on others, to the hurt of their own souls and bodies.”
I do not remember which teacher it was that taught us a valuable lesson in
grammar school. My best guess is that all of them probably shared this
wisdom with us as we made our way through Bassett Elementary School. I
just remember being told time after time: “One can not judge a book by its
cover.”
On the day of this theological debate, some folks who wore the entire
religious garb approached Jesus and his
disciples and started attacking them with words because the disciples were
eating their meal with unclean hands. They were furious that those at the
table were breaking their traditions. Words of anger and hostility came
from their inner being and flowed out of their mouths and attacked those
who were trying to enjoy their meal.
Jesus responded to their attack by pointing
out that it is what comes from within a person that causes destruction to
others as well as to their own spiritual and physical beings.
Jesus reminded them that day that there
inward being needed to be as pure as they were demanding that the
disciple’s hands be while they ate their meal. His words still ring true
today. As followers of Jesus
Christ, we can learn from
Christ daily. The way we treat others and the
way we speak to and about others reveals the true cover of our spiritual
lives. If we participate in gossip, slander, murder, fornication, pride
and any of those that he listed that day then we are not walking with
Christ. We are walking against Him.
Jesus calls us to strive to live our lives as
pure as that first fallen snow. He calls us to a live a life that is
focused upon the ways of God and not upon
human traditions.
In the name of the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit.
Amen
