Grace Presbyterian Church
August 30, 2015, Ordinary 22B
Deuteronomy 4:5-9; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Rule-bound
The book of
Deuteronomy is an odd fit in this first portion of our scriptures, in that its
content is largely a recapitulation of laws (or, as this book typically labels
them, “statutes and ordinances”) that are already included in Exodus or
Leviticus or maybe Numbers. Why it was deemed necessary to do so isn’t always
understood; some scholars suggest that it was actually conceived later as a reassertion of
those statutes and ordinances to a people who had already strayed from them.
Whatever its function, it is framed as Moses’s last great sermon to the Hebrew
people – those soon-to-be Israelites – before his own death and their
crossing (under Joshua) into the Promised Land.
There are,
explicitly stated or implied, several different reasons Moses gives for
commanding the obedience of the people. Perhaps most interesting is the idea
that the current inhabitants of the land would be so impressed by a people who
observed such an impressive corpus of law. One wonders how that works: wow, guys, that’s some really great law
y’all have brought with you… (it's hard not to wonder if Native Americans had that reactions to the laws that various European groups brought with them to North America). On the other hand, verses three and four
(which were not read here) offer a different reason to keep these statutes: the
memory of a group among the Hebrew people who had not kept those laws in a previous incident, and their untimely end.
Not so explicitly
stated, but implied in the text, is the idea that these “statutes and
ordinances” distilled from the experience of the Hebrew people simply
represented the way to live that was going to be most fulfilling, most
enriching, most satisfying for the people. This is, frankly, a long way from
how we think of law today. For the most part we tend to think of it as
restriction of freedom, limitation rather than liberation.
Steed Graham of
McCormick Theological Seminary points out the ways in which people are more
likely to respond to the promulgation of law, not just but particularly in
scripture. Some are cowed by what they hear as a call to be perfect. Others are
convinced they are doomed to failure before they even start. Still others
consider it an imposition on a relationship that was (they understood) meant to
be liberating rather than restrictive.
Now the Pharisees
who show up in the gospel reading are a different sort altogether. They might
fall into Davidson’s first category – seeing the “statutes and ordinances” as a
call to perfection – but rather than being cowed or intimidated by it, they
whip through the statutes and ordinances and adjust their collars and
straighten up and say “we got this.” Then they set about applying the law, and
its interpretation. While they were not rabbis themselves, the Pharisees placed
a great deal of emphasis on keeping these “ordinances and statutes” and their
extensions as interpreted by numerous rabbis over the centuries.
To take this story
for example, there is no specific provision forbidding plucking kernels of
grain without washing your hands. Not in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, or
Deuteronomy. There were, though, laws concerning ritual purity in everything
from liturgical practice to more mundane aspects of life, and later rabbinical
traditions held that eating with unwashed hands could be interpreted as a
violation of the spirit of such laws. Your grandmother would probably approve
of their great concern with washing hands, food from the markets, pots, cups,
and so forth.
In this case,
though, Jesus isn’t at all interested in the finer points of purity laws.
Actually, it almost seems in reading this that Jesus was ready to let these Pharisees (who had apparently come up from Jerusalem just to hound him) have
it, and was just waiting for the slightest provocation. Picking on the
disciples (fishermen and other rough guys) for their hand-washing habits was more
than enough for Jesus to light into the Pharisees for their coldness of heart
and their elevation of human traditions over divine commandments. In verses
9-13, which were not read, he offers up a particularly egregious example, by
which a person could designate resources that might otherwise have been devoted
to the care of his parents as “corban,” or “designated for God,” and therefore
escape the command to “honor thy father
and mother,” which you will remember is one of the Big Ten of laws.
In their zeal to
be perfect (and to be blunt, to compel others to their particular brand of
perfection), these Pharisees displayed (to Jesus) a particular kind of corruption
and coldness of heart that flew in the face of their obsessively kept
traditions. All their purity of ritual couldn’t compensate for the corruption
of their hearts, as Jesus saw it.
Certainly I don’t
have to point out too many examples of this today, do I? I mean, I could
mention, say, an individual with a great interest in projecting a public image
of purity – even a member of a large family dedicated to fostering such an image,
let’s say, with a television show – whose name turns out to be on the customer list of a website
devoted to facilitating extramarital affairs. But rather then get hung up on
name-calling, let’s get to the point here; laws, or statutes and ordinances, or
purity codes don’t change hearts.
The Apostle Paul
will consume much ink on this subject, particularly in the book of Romans. The
law is pretty good, he will observe, at showing us our sinfulness; it isn’t
much help in overcoming it, though, as Paul lamented in his own life. Eating or
not eating certain foods isn’t going to bring about purity of heart; after all, as Jesus points out, it comes in and goes out and doesn’t necessarily stick around long, while the
hardness and pride of our hearts lingers on and on. Our hearts are as likely to
turn such dietary purity into an object of sinful pride.
The things that
defile a person come from within, and only within will they be changed. Only
genuine encounter with the Spirit, real experience and practice of the “kingdom
of God come near,” is going to do that. Adherence to those statutes and
ordinances may well make an impression on those around us as Moses suggested,
but correcting of the heart is another matter.
The law has its place.
We don’t want to live wantonly or disreputably. But to confuse varieties of
ritual purity, ancient or modern, with a genuine and caring heart for Christ, a
heart that extends itself in care for and service to others, a heart that sings
with unmistakable and unquenchable joy, is to make the mistake the Pharisees
made. To the degree our laws or our statutes and ordinances or our human
traditions are not only unhelpful, but become an active obstacle to the working
of the Spirit and the advancing of the kingdom of God, we are setting ourselves
in direct opposition to Christ’s work in God’s world.
May it never be so
with us.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Hymns
(from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Humnal)
#13 The
Mighty God With Power Speaks
Hymn
Mini-Festival:
#669 Let’s
Sing Unto the Lord
#383 Dream
On, Dream On
#324 For
All the Faithful Women
#726 Will
You Come and Follow Me
#63 The
Lord Is God
#852 When
the Lord Redeems the Very Least
No comments:
Post a Comment