Sermon for September 1, 2024

September 1, 2024

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott




Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23



There’s been a lot of talk in the news this week about the rules: who is flouting the rules, who is behaving in ways we approve of, what needs to happen in terms of rules to save our communities and our nation and indeed, all of civilization.

But when is there not all this talk of rules in the news? Our Gospel today shows that human preoccupation with how to behave is nothing new. The Pharisees ask why the disciples aren’t following the rules about hand washing. These rules weren’t new. The Pharisees make it clear that these are commands handed down by the ancestors.

We often think that the Pharisees in Jesus' time were rule-bound people who couldn't see that God walked among them, even as Jesus was right there before them. While that is true, it's also important to realize that the Pharisees thought that following the rules to the letter was the trait that would save the Jews. We must not forget that the Jews of Jesus' time were under threat from many sides. We forget that Rome was a brutal dictatorship in so many ways, and that the peace that the Jews had found could have been (and eventually was) easily overturned.

I might have expected Jesus to caution that even if we play by the rules of those in charge we might not be safe. But that’s not the approach that Jesus takes. Jesus urges us to think differently about defilement about what comes into the body and what leaves the body. The verses that are left out have Jesus talking in more detail than we might expect about the digestive process.

Notice that Jesus isn’t advocating anarchy. He’s not telling us to throw out all of our rules and customs. But Jesus understands that humans have a tendency to get too committed to our ideas of what behavior and attitudes are necessary. I thought of this on Friday when I was at a Lunch and Learn at Spartanburg Methodist College. A group of faculty members freshly returned from a national conference on teaching discussed different approaches we might try. Among them was the idea of “ungrading,” which could mean anything from having students determine standards or having students do a variety of work and decide which ones should be in a portfolio to be graded—or to have no grades at all. I watched faculty members try to stay open minded while at the same time struggling with resistance to these ideas of doing grading differently to the way that it has always been done, the fear that we might get it wrong, the fear that chaos might take over. In our Gospel reading today, I see a similar dynamic. There are rules that we follow, rules that are handed down from our ancestors from God who first issued the rules, and why isn’t Jesus instructing his followers better?

Throughout his ministry, Jesus shows us that he understands how humans get snarled in webs of our own making. Maybe it’s our inability to see past the way we’ve always done things, even if we’re doing things in ways that no longer make sense to us or that we particularly appreciate. I know many people who still spend a lot of time ironing, for example, even when we could buy clothes that don’t need that level of attention, even though many of us work in places where we don’t need to be perfectly pressed in our presentation. We see similar arguments in our churches. They might be the kinds of arguments that can tear churches apart, like sexuality statements or it might be arguments about the best music to have as part of worship. When we can’t articulate why we feel the way we do, the importance of a rule we want to keep, we often fall back on the kind of appeal that the Pharisees make: it’s the way our elders taught us.

This passage has often been used by those who advocate doing things differently, but Jesus isn’t saying that we should throw out our standards and customs just because they’re old. He’s telling us that we need to evaluate them. Are we acting out of love or some other emotion?

He might also be asking us to evaluate our response in terms of who or what we are loving. We see many municipalities at odds with the best way to govern. Should we let homeless people camp in public parks? If we take pity on humans who can’t access housing, and let them camp in public parks, it means that other people can’t enjoy the park. Whose rights do we value?

Jesus reminds us that so many of our rules come from humans, not from God. Humans make rules and enforce rules in a spirit of fear, not flourishing, a fear of chaos, not a hope of exuberant possibility. I think back to my fellow faculty members who wanted to believe that letting students take more control of their learning would lead to better learning, but also fearing that they might be seen as not upholding standards, standards set generations in the past long ago. If we start throwing out rules, how long before academic credentials have no value at all? I can picture the Pharisees thinking along the same lines, and I have sympathy for them, because I can be a rule follower myself.

We think that God ordained the rules that we embrace, rules which so often tell us what not to do, but Jesus reminds us that there's one essential rule: love each other. God will judge us on the quality of that love.

I periodically think back across the months and years of my life, and I have regrets, as most of us do, if we’re self-reflective at all. Sure, there’s the obvious kind of regret, like why didn’t I buy Apple stock when it was $7 a share or Starbucks when it was $14 a share. But most of my regrets circle back to how I treated others, how I let my fears control my behavior, how I failed to be kind and loving, how often I have forgotten that almost everyone is truly doing the best that they can do in a given moment, and if we extend grace and compassion, perhaps they can do better, but even if they can’t, we’ll all feel better.

Jesus understood how arguments over right and righteous behavior can tear a community to shreds. Jesus also showed us how to knit our communities together.

Jesus reminds us again and again that love is our highest nature and that the actions that move us towards being loving humans are the ones that we should take. We can operate from a place of love or we can act from a place of fear. As we act out of love, we will find ourselves in company with God.