"When Rules Become Religion"

“When Rules Become Religion”
Mark 7:1-8; 14-15 & 21-23
Todd Buegler
August 29-31, 2009
Lord of Life


Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, and from Jesus, the Son of God, who washes our sins away! Amen.

A father opens the door to greet his daughter’s date. There stands a young man, cap on sideways, hair dyed black and greasy, jeans that sag practically to his knees, tattoos up and down the arms, body piercings in the face, the nose, the lip, the ears, and wearing a set of ipod earphones. “Hello”, says Dad. “You must be here to pick up Chelsea?” The young man grunts hello and walks in past Dad, giving off the unmistakable vibe of “bored.”

The father is more than a little taken back. He goes upstairs where his daughter is finishing getting ready. “I don’t think you should go out with this boy,” says Dad. “He doesn’t look like a nice person.” The daughter is shocked. “Daddy,” she says, “That’s a terrible thing to say! If he wasn’t such a nice person, why would he be doing five hundred hours of community service?”

With apologies to my tattooed and body pierced friends, let’s be honest: While often you can’t judge a book by its cover, sometimes you can!

And humans are great at judging. I think it’s a part of our human nature. Even though we know we shouldn’t, we do. And it is easiest for us to judge based on the things that we can see; on the external.

Our Gospel lesson for today is all about judgment, and about righteousness. On what basis can a person be judged, and how does a person become righteous? In our story, the Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law had come from Jerusalem. As they gathered around Jesus, before they even spoke to him, they saw something that shocked and alarmed them: they saw his disciples eating food with hands that were “unclean,” that is, unwashed. To put it into complicated theological terms, they freaked out. They rushed right over to Jesus, who was, as we know, a Jewish rabbi, and asked “Why don’t your disciples live according to the traditions and the laws?”

At this point, it would be easy to start ripping on the Pharisee’s for being narrow minded and judgmental. But I do think we need to cut them just a bit of slack. In the Jewish cultural and political system, they were the ones whose job was to preserve the religious law. And clearly in this situation, the law was being broken.

You see, Jewish law, going all the way back to the time of Moses, required that devoted Jews did not eat unless they gave their hands a ceremonial washing. These laws were common, and well known. Psalm 24:3-4a asks the question: “Who shall ascent the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place?” The answer: “Those who have clean hands and pure hearts…” Of course the Pharisee’s, who were a bit obsessed with following the law, were going to make a point of highlighting when others aren’t following the law. These people, they believed, the ones with dirty hands, they would never be able to stand in the presence of God.

So this story is not really a story about hand washing. The Pharisee’s who stormed over to Jesus were asking a really serious question. They were asking Jesus “why don’t your disciples (and by default, you) have to follow the law?”

This was an indignant, “just who do you think you are?” question. But Jesus doesn’t rise to the bait. Instead, he annoys them by ignoring their question and answering a different question…one that the Pharisee’s didn’t ask, but which is really at the heart of their concern. It was a theological question. It was a question about what Christ’s church was to become. The real question at hand was “Who is worthy to come into the presence of the Lord?”

Understanding the context in this story is everything, and we have to remember that in the time of Jesus, God was perceived as being separate from the people. God was distant. And humans were not even worthy of being in the presence of God. Even the temple, their cultural, social and spiritual center for the Jewish people reinforced this separation. It was set up as a series of concentric squares. How far you could go into the temple depended on how “righteous” you were in the eyes of the law. Anyone could be in the courtyard. In the next area, the great court, the Jewish people could come to worship. In the next area, the “inner court”, only the religious leaders could enter. Inside that was the “Holy Place”, where only the priests could enter. And beyond that was the inner chamber, called the “Most Holy Place”, where the high priest would enter only once a year, to actually be in the presence of God…after going through a complicated cleansing ritual to ‘make himself right…to make himself worthy’. The Most Holy Place was separated from the other rooms by a large, heavy curtain. For all practical purposes, the Jews believed that it was in this place, behind this curtain, where God lived…separated from God’s chosen people.

Please understand that God had originally given the law as a tool to help people live righteous lives, to become worthy to be in God’s presence. But over time, this was were flipped over and the law was used as a tool to judge who was not living righteous lives.

Jesus saw what was in the hearts and minds of the Pharisees, and he wasn’t afraid to call it like it was. In response to the Pharisee’s challenge, He quoted verses from the prophet Isaiah…verses that the Pharisee’s would be very familiar with. Only here, Jesus was aiming these verses squarely at the Pharisees. He said: “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules. You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the human traditions.” In other words, you are all missing the point. Whether the disciples have performed the ritual hand washing has nothing to do with whether they are or are not worthy of the presence of God, and the scriptures you use to justify your position, you use as a club to hurt others.

In the best traditions of the Pharisee’s, people have misused scripture this way throughout time. As a history student in college, I studied the growth of the Ku Klux Klan in Watonwan County, Minnesota, where my extended family has lived and farmed. In the late 18 and early 1900’s, Watonwan County was a hotbed of KKK activity. There, they focused largely on anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism. In my research, I found an old history book of the county. Printed in the book was a copy of a flyer that the KKK distributed inviting people to a rally. In big type face on the top of the flyer was a verse from the Old Testament; a verse that the Ku Klux Klan used to justify their actions.

To do this is wrong. Scripture, both law and Gospel, are gifts. To use them as a club, as a way of justifying immoral and violent actions, or of judging others as not worthy, is dangerous and wrong.

In our Gospel, Jesus was telling the Pharisee’s that they were misusing scripture. He is telling them that their rules had become their religion, and what makes someone acceptable to God, what fulfills the law, isn’t the external and the visible…it’s not about washing hands…it’s about what affects someone internally…it’s about what’s in the heart.

Several years ago, I had a conversation with a high school kid. We were on a 10th grade retreat, and we had started talking. Suddenly, in the middle of a conversation about the high school basketball team she played on she just blurted out: “I don’t really come to the youth group.” There was an awkward silence, but I could tell that she wanted to say more. So I asked “why is that?” And she said “well, it just seems like all those kids are hypocrites. They come to youth group on Monday nights, but on Friday nights after that I’ll seem them out at parties and they’re doing the same stuff as everyone else. But on Sunday at worship, or on Monday at youth group, they’re right back at church praying, like nothing happened. They’re hypocrites.”

A long silence; then I said: “Absolutely. They are. But so are you; and so am I. We’re all trying. But we all still sin. We’re trying to be better, but as often as not, we mess up…” It wasn’t the answer she expected.

One of my theological heroes, Tony Campolo, wrote about this hypocrisy. He said that “for someone to be critical of the church for being full of hypocrites is like someone who says “hey, that’s a really beautiful new hospital, too bad it’s full of all those sick people!” Sick people are why a hospital exists! Likewise, sinful people are why a church exists. The church is like a spiritual hospital for sinners. It isn’t a place for people with perfect hearts…the church is a place for sinners…it’s a place for people who, like the disciples, have dirty hands and dirty hearts, it’s a place for hypocrites who worship on Sunday, and sin on Monday.

You see, unless we understand that we are broken…that we are sinful…that we aren’t even worthy of being in the presence of God, we will never stand a chance of knowing and understanding God. And Jesus is clear in our Gospel: The sin that separates us from God is not about the external. It’s not about whether we follow the law to the letter…it’s not about the kind of music we listen to…it’s not about how we dress or who we hang out with or our body piercings or our tattoos. What separates us from God is internal. It’s about what’s within our hearts.

Jesus says that it is “from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come.” We live in a state, or a condition of sin…our Lutheran confession says that we are “captive to sin and cannot free ourselves.” From the inside out…we are stuck in sin, and Jesus knows that no amount of our scrubbing your hands…no amount of anything that we try to do…no rules…no laws…no sense of legalism is going to get us unstuck from this. And we are here in this Sanctuary, this hospital for sinners, because we know that we need help.

And Jesus gives each of you this help. He is not a distant God. Do you remember what happened when Jesus was crucified and breathed his last? All the people heard the sound…the sound of the temple curtain, that curtain that separated God from God’s people being torn in two. There was no more separation…there was no more distance. This was an important sign: Jesus is in this with you. Jesus is present. Jesus comes to you…it’s not about you coming to Jesus and making sure that your mind, hearts and hands are clean. Jesus has torn the curtain, broken the separation, and accepts you as you are and then works in your heart to change you.

Jesus wants to transform you from the inside out, not from the outside in. In Galatians 5, Paul writes “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Whatever the condition of your heart…whatever dirt you carry…whatever guilt you feel, Jesus wants to free you from it, and to make you clean. Jesus wants to give you a new, clean heart; a heart of faith, a heart of hope, and a heart of love.

And so today we stand at the door, like the date meeting the Father for the first time. We are imperfect; we’ve all got history we’re not proud of…our hands may be dirty… we may have our tattoos, our scars, our piercings…but God looks at our hearts, which Jesus has made clean because of love, and God swings the door wide open and with joy in his voice says “You are mine, and my love and grace are for you. Welcome!”

Receive that gift. Have your heart cleaned and filled by Christ. Let go of your need to do things to qualify for God’s grace, and accept that you are welcomed not because of your attempts to follow the law, but because of the love and grace of Jesus.

Amen.