Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
A young couple moves into a new neighborhood. The next morning while they are eating breakfast, the young woman sees her neighbor hanging the wash outside. "That laundry is not very clean", she said. "She doesn't know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap." Her husband looked on, but remained silent. Every time her neighbor would hang her wash to dry, the young woman would make the same comments. About one month later, the woman was surprised to see a Nice clean wash on the line and said to her husband: "Look, she has learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her this." The husband said, "I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows."
This lesson from Mark is one of those multi-layered teachings of Jesus. On the surface it is a scathing condemnation of pious religiosity. Jesus really lets those Pharisees who are so intent on adherence to the rules of religious law have it when they question the faithfulness of the disciples on the basis of their hand cleaning regimen. Jesus tells them that it is not the lack of a superficial faith that corrupts but rather it is the evil that is contrived in the heart – the hatefulness, greediness, vengefulness, and self-absorbed indulgence that degrade us and make us contemptible. All of that is well and good and for sure we can all use a little reminding of what it means to truly follow Christ. We have but to look to our baptismal covenant to remember them, - turn from evil and sin and have faith in God - respect and honor all life – care for those who are marginalized – be attentive to prayer and scripture study – proclaim the Good News of hope.
But I think there is another layer of truth that Jesus is offering here and that is the one that asks us about that window of ours through which we are watching our neighbor hang out the wash. Jesus is reminding us that what we see when watching others - Depends on the purity of the window through which we look. The Pharisees in this story might very well have looked at their own record of compassion and care for others before they criticized the disciples. Instead like the woman with the dirty windows there is a disconnect between the moral standard that the Pharisees portrayed on the surface and the reality of how they treated the weak and the poor. Our lectionary leaves out the example that Jesus offers, but even without an example the fact is that none of us is perfect and for the Pharisees to criticize the disciples it is the pot calling the kettle black. It is hypocrisy no matter how you cut it.
These past couples of days I have been caught up as I suspect you have been in the passing of Edward Kennedy. As a teenager I remember how loathed the Kennedy name was in my part of the country. Any fact or rumor that tainted the reputation of the person was jumped on as one more piece of evidence that proved how evil they were. Now I don’t want to make John or Robert or Teddy out to be saints because clearly they were not, but what is pretty clear to me is that those who would find fault with others sometimes do so without having clarified what it is in their own life that creates a barrier to God. The sins named in this text somehow find their way into each of our lives at one time or another. No one is immune to sin. James sees the hypocrite as one who looks in the mirror, but on going away forgets what she saw and so fails to act on what she saw - fails to hear God’s call to service.
How we live our lives, the choices we make, the work of discernment that we do in our community and as individuals, the looking inside to the center of our being - of our heart – these are the spiritual practices that bring us irrevocably back to God. President Obama said of Senator Kennedy: “The greatest expectations were placed upon Ted Kennedy's shoulders because of who he was, but he surpassed them all because of who he became.” Who he became was a man who endured life’s most tragic and excruciating pain and yet he kept coming back to his faith in God and his belief – his hope – in a compassionate, loving Creator who leads us to places of compassion and care for others. Ted Kennedy knew one really big and important truth – it is not the grandeur of the gifts we are given or the lack of those we are not – what is important is what we do with what we are given – how we use the gifts we have and the opportunities we encounter to love and care for each other, because when we do these things for the least of these we do them for Jesus, we do them for God.
What kind of paradigm do we build for ourselves by our day to day living? Do we through our morning prayer, our acts of confession and contrition, our willingness to reach out to help others, our attentiveness to where God is calling us – do these acts of piety clean the windows through which we see the world so that we can become better disciples of Christ? Jesus is pretty clear in this passage – “what really makes a person unclean is not what goes in, but rather what comes out. How Ted Kennedy lived his life, the vision and the hope he had for not just Americans but for all people was a reflection of who he was at the center. It was the stuff that came out of his heart. There is a challenge here for us. What’s important for us? Is it our liturgy or our music? Is it our stained glass or our prayer-books? Perhaps it is instead our hospitality, our generosity, our love and compassion for which we should be known. Perhaps instead of being the People of the Prayer-book - we should be the People of the Do-book. I don’t know. Is that a word? I sure hope so. Amen.
|