Genesis 1:20-2:4a
Psalm 8
Mark 7:1-13
In the beginning God made all things very good. We began our Scriptural journey today with the fifth and sixth days of Creation, as well as the very first Sabbath on which God rested from creating all things! Next, we recited together a poetic recapitulation of God’s creative works with Psalm 8. Cattle, birds, fish, wild beasts, and even infants crying out to praise God who made heaven and earth; sun, moon, and stars. Finally, we came to today’s Gospel lesson from Mark, which at first glance seems to run in juxtaposition with the first two Scriptural accounts chosen for today; however, if we look closer at this interaction be-tween Jesus and some scribes and Pharisees we will find the wiser logic of God. This logic runs through all of Scripture and it shows that God creates, redeems, and sustains all things!
As Jesus’ ministry began to gain some significance with a substantial following, some religious folk from Jerusalem came to see what was happening in Galilee. A modern analogy might be like if members of the Presiding Bishop’s staff came to see a new liturgy we were trying out or if officials from the Vatican were sent to inspect a ministry within the Catholic Church. I imagine the scribes and Pharisees carrying around clipboards like health inspectors making sure Jesus’ ministry was up to snuff. From their perspective it was not.
These Pharisees had a problem with Jesus’ disciples’ sanitary practices. Certainly this would have been of hygienic concern and at some time in the history of the people of Israel making sure their hands were clean would have saved lives. However, over the course of time it had shifted from something that was a beneficial health practice into a rigid religious tradition. Jesus spotted in the Pharisees a stark contradiction: they were focused on the motions of religion instead of seeing their religion as a vehicle to move them closer to God. In essence, the Pharisees worried about getting religion right instead of whether those practices awakened their hearts, enlivened their souls, and transformed their lives! Summarizing Isaiah Jesus said, “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”
Before going any further we must lay aside our current worldview to ensure that we can see from the perspective of the original audience. Unlike today there were no safety nets for those who would grow old: no 401ks, no Social Security, no Roth IRAs, no Mutual Funds, nor anything else of the like. Instead as family members would grow older they would be cared for within the younger generation’s home. Sometimes as many as four or five generations would all live together under one roof! This is not all that dissimilar to other cultures in different parts of the world today. The Pharisees though saw this as a way that they were losing money.
Jesus looked deeper than the surface practice of Corban to reveal the deception within the religious practice. When Jesus claimed, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition!” what he was referring to was taking the crops, goods, and other funds that were to honor father and mother, and instead having those assessed as Temple taxes. In this way the Pharisees were robbing the elderly, so that they might have more vestments, bigger banquets, and a larger status within Jerusalem. God’s way though is always good, always creating, redeeming, and sustaining! God yearns to take care of those who are most vulnerable whether they are orphans, widows or widowers, the sick, the hungry, the homeless, the elderly, or whoever is being persecuted.
The act that God began in Creation continued in the redeeming work of Christ in Jesus’ life, death, and Resurrection, and it persists to this day in the all-encompassing presence of the Spirit! We are charged to perpetually examine the practices we maintain. Are they in line with the inherit goodness with which God made us? Do we need to shift how we practice our Tradition so that we might better follow God’s commandments, and in particular loving God and neighbor as ourselves? Are we neglecting the needy to maintain our own traditions? Religion is the vehicle that helps us to grow closer to God, but it is not what we worship, who we follow, or how we are sustained. We worship the Triune God, follow Jesus, and are nourished by the Spirit. If necessary reject the tradition, so that you may keep the commandments of God to love our neighbors and ourselves and through that we love God!
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