God's Last Words

Good and Bad Tradition
Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Imagine having a mental image of Jesus sitting on God’s right hand like a ventriloquists’ dummy and you have an explanation of some church groups’ faith practices, as wrong biblically as can be but often how they expect Jesus to function. In seminary we were charged with thinking just such a thought as an exercise.

Our thoughts, ideas, expectations, and traditions are the result of our experiences, wants, hopes, and fears. Often we build our behavior on our personal perceptions of reality or superstitions. We continue to do things because it’s easier to “always” do it that way than it is to change. The danger: they overshadow truth.

Pretty soon traditions become habits, and habits become foundational reasons to do things only one way. Habits and tradition can be dangerous in church, and especially in worship practices because they become superstitious behavior.

Superstitions are defined as an irrational belief or collection of beliefs in or the occurrence of events brought about by a thing, object, or action that may establish a systematic and mysterious cause-effect link. The origin of superstitious behavior may be shrouded in long-lost mythology. Most of us laugh at superstitious behavior:

“knocking on wood,” “entering/leaving a house or building by the same door,” “throwing salt over your shoulder after a spill,” “carrying a lucky coin, bean, or some other talisman,” “putting a pinch more in a recipe for good measure,” “not walking under a ladder,” “not wanting a black cat walk in front of us,” “Friday the 13^th,” “walking on cracks,” “finding a 4 leaf clover,” “having an itchy palm,” and the thousands of others I could tell you about.  Yet they become habitual.

It is said something becomes a habit if you do it 37 times.

Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda describes his battle with bad habits: "I took a pack of cigarettes from my pocket, stared at it and said, "Who's stronger, you or me?" The answer was me. I stopped smoking. Then I took a vodka martini and said to it, "Who's stronger, you or me?" Again the answer was me. I quit drinking.

Then I went on a diet. I looked at a big plate of linguine with clam sauce and said, "Who's stronger, you or me?" And a little clam looked up at me and answered, "I am." I can't beat linguine.

 

Indeed, many of us have trouble, myself included, in pushing aaway from that dinner table. 

Some of these habits and superstitions seem practical (stepladder), but others are shrouded deep in our folklore (4 leaf clovers/knocking on wood) and passed to us in conversation and culture as we grow up. We create these stories the way we want them with habits, traditions, expectations. We do it with religious ideology at our own peril.

Matthew Henry once said, "Consider: when God hates all the same people you hate, you can be sure that you've created Him in your own image."

 Martin Luther once called the pope "that fountain and source of all superstitions.”

Consider today your habit of church and God; listen to our scriptures from Mark:

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 traditions 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 traditions 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.

In John’s gospel we learn of Jesus’ divinity and His revealed nature and purpose of sacrifice. In Mark we’re going to find out why sacrifice is necessary. Jesus reveals that man’s problems come from inside man.

As part philosopher and part theologian I feel qualified to say that humanity is in sad shape, and the 2,000 years since Jesus walked the earth confirm that diagnosis.

Each of us, and speaking for/about myself, struggle everyday to overcome a sinful nature that would rather keep us away from Godly things then to underscore the sinfulness of humanity that Jesus pointed out:

We will never be able to earn God’s salvation by the work of our hands or the treatment of those less fortunate than ourselves. Those things can be done, and frequently are, by those who have no need of faith and trust in God. Atheists serve at soup kitchens and give to charity. Good deeds can be done by those who hold malice and hate in their hearts and perform to receive some social benefit.

Our salvation must come from our acceptance of the atoning sacrifice and grace of Jesus Christ which creates a new person with new fruits and habits created by the perfection of God’s amazing love.

Good deeds and actions become normal as the human being is fundamentally transformed by the sanctification of the Holy Spirit and regeneration of the heart.

How do we know this is what Jesus means as he deals with the questions of the Pharisees and the scribes? Jesus’ disciples were accused of not following religious ritual and tradition before they eat which doesn’t sound like a big deal.

The term used here in Mark’s gospel relates both to a required amount of water and an expected proper manner of washing that is used. The hand was cupped, fist-like, to make the most efficient use of available water.

The practice was not derived directly from the Torah, that is the scriptures, but from the "oral law" -- the tradition of the elders, which the Pharisees regarded as having equal authority with the written law. To not observe the proper procedure was to be considered “unclean,”

Why this behavior was important tells us a little about Judaism and the Pharisees, just as a tour around our church with its vestments, stained glass windows, candle lit altar, and church bulletin with order of service does about what we hold too.

The Pharisaic ideal was to live such that their whole life would become sanctified, or Holy by their own actions. Their view of the tradition of the elders was not an attempt to make the commands of God trivial, but to apply it to everyday life.

We try to uphold the same ideals as well in our worship and church traditions and practices; some biblical, some passed down because that’s the way its always been.

 

Yet there is not a single altar cloth, lit candle, or organ that saves our soul. Only Jesus Christ does that.

Jesus' behavior and teachings convey - at least to the Pharisees and Scribes - disrespect for the law, threatening the whole Pharisaic system and (in their view) the Jewish way of life. It was a big deal. But it was wrong headed.

Changes to our own tradition and practices are often viewed the same way with the fear, superstitiously, of somehow losing God’s approval if you change.

The Talmud (kind of a users guide to Judaism) reports the following about hand washing: "The duty of washing before meat is not written in the law, but only in the tradition of the scribes. Yet so rigidly did the Jews observe it, that Rabbi Akiba, being imprisoned, and having water scarcely sufficient to sustain life given him, preferred dying of thirst to eating without washing his hands."

To Jesus, the Pharisees are holding up religious ritual and tradition to the level of superstitious behavior because humanity, being sinful, can never sanctify itself. So

Jesus, in a straightforward manner, explains where evil comes from.

In fact, Jesus further suggests that the more important superstitions are, the more impossible they become in gaining God's favor. God considers human deeds sinful: and will never be pleasing in His eyes.

We need to look around and find those types of superstitions we hold to, as well.

This is why we must accept Jesus into our hearts and minds to replace and blot out our sins. It is why we need a savior. It is why Jesus died for each and every one of us. Amen.