Crossroads

Scriptures:  Isaiah 50:4-9a

James 3:1-18    Mark 8:27-38

As most of you know, in addition to being pastor here at Emanuel, I have a day job, of the paper-shuffling type.  As some of you know, I try to ride the train to work as often as possible.  The stop where I get off for work is the 22^nd and Allegheny stop on the Norristown line, in Philadelphia’s Swampoodle neighborhood, a very low income neighborhood. The area near the train stop is particularly desolate. Waiting at the stop for my train home, I sometimes see a young man named Matt.   Matt’s hard to miss – he’s missing an arm, and has an artificial leg. How he gets to the top of the train platform – there are more steps to the 22^nd/Allegheny train platform than there are to our sanctuary – I can’t even begin to imagine. In warm weather, he wears a tank top, and so it’s easy to see the place where his missing arm had been ripped from his body, and it’s not a pretty sight.  We had been sitting together waiting for the train, and he told me his story – he had been in Iraq, and a suicide bomber set himself or herself off near where he was standing.  He related that he had been in a coma for months, from which he eventually emerged, alive but damaged.  He struggles with speech, and he cries easily, as his emotions are very close to the surface.  I gave him my card for church, with a vague “hope you can visit; if I can help you in some way please call me….” Of course, his physical, mental, and emotional needs are far beyond anything I could begin to handle, but at least I was able to buy him some cheap fast food once…..

I’ll be coming back to Matt a bit later.  All three of our texts this morning have to do with the speech, with the tongue.  In our Old Testament reading, the writer describes a teacher whose words can sustain the weary, and who teaches despite opposition and physical attack – and in these words the early church saw a connection to Jesus.  Our reading from James is all about the hazards of the tongue, of sinful speech, saying that the tongue is set on fire by hell.  And in our Gospel reading, Jesus asks his disciples, “What’s the buzz?”  Who do people say that I am?”  Today he might ask the disciples to check out what’s going around on the internet about him, what kind of stuff’s being posted on Facebook….or maybe he’d have just googled himself… But then Jesus goes on to ask his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”…..and, when Peter calls him the Messiah, goes on to tell them what being the Messiah, and following the Messiah, will entail.

The words of James about the tongue may seem a little over the top, and let me read some of his letter again:  “How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell. For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue — a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.”

I think when we read James’ words, we think primarily in individual terms, or in terms of relationships between family members and such, and that’s certainly part of what James was thinking about.  We all know how much words such as “Thank you” and “I love you” can do to build relationships, and how much words such as “Go away” and “I hate you” can do to destroy relationships. And we know from experience how easily loving words and hateful words can come out of the same mouth.  How often have we said, or had said to us, when harsh or obscene words are spoken, “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” But James was leader of the early church at Jerusalem, and I think he was primarily speaking about relations within the church.  In a larger group such as a church, there’s much more room for misunderstanding, much more room for gossip and slander to spread dissention among the believers, to poison the quality of their community.  And to this day, the speech, the tongues of church members can create or destroy the sense of trust and mutual caring within a church.  Now, I doubt any church exists where the sense of community is perfect.  I don’t know a lot of churches where everybody holds hands and sings “Kumbaya” every Sunday without exception, week in and week out.  But there are some churches where, for example, every few years or even every few months, like clockwork, a disagreement erupts between pastor and congregation, and the pastor is chewed up and spit out, and then the church calls a new pastor who will in turn get chewed up and spit out a few months or years later. Pastors have a term for such churches – “clergy-killers”. Emanuel’s not like that, thanks to God and thanks to you; Pastor Grau, my predecessor, was here for almost 15 years, and I’m coming up on completing my 8^th year here.  Clergy-killer churches, where the sinful power of the tongue runs wild, destroying community, could easily have gone through five or six pastors just in the short time I’ve been here.

For James, his primary sense of community was the church.  For us, community exists on many levels – within a family, a circle of friends, a work group, a church, a city, a state, a nation, and globally.  Likewise, because of the development of technology, the power of the tongue that James warned against has become exponentially stronger, for good and for ill.  Consider that in James’ day, the primary means of communication were speech and writing – and, of course, writing is really just an extension of speaking; the pen is really just an extension of the tongue.  Writing could circulate to a wider number of people – it’s how our Biblical texts were handed down.  But writing by hand is time consuming, and in that society only a few people could either write texts or read them. Oral communication – speech – use of the tongue – was the primary means of communication.

By contrast, consider all the means we have for communication:  speaking, writing, typing, printing, email, twitter, Facebook, to name just a few.  Each of these is again really just a way of augmenting, adding to, the power of the tongue to communicate. Americans have a First Amendment right to freedom of speech, and we know that this right encompasses not just actual speech, but also works of literature, works of theatre, public demonstrations, and so forth. So when James warns us about the power of the tongue, in our day we should read his warning as being not just about speech, but about email, social media.  “How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire.  And the tongue is a fire,” James writes…..and we all know that an internet post can go viral, as we say, reaching millions around the world, mobilizing people for causes that can be good, or can be bad.

Consider that the rise of Hitler, the descent of Germany into fascism, the oppression of Jews, socialists, gypsies, Jehovah’s witnesses, homosexuals, and others, and eventually the Holocaust, with the death of 6 million Jews and millions of other so-called undesirables, began, not with the tank, but with the tongue.  These horrors began with ideas…ideas that, following their defeat in World War I, Germany had been stabbed in the back by Jews, undermined by Jews and other disfavored groups…ideas that caused resentment against disfavored groups…..ideas that were communicated to the masses over and over and over again…ideas that convinced them that only Hitler could rid Germany of what were considered un-German and undesirable influences.  Hitler was able to rise to power only because he heard the resentments of the German people, told them that he shared their resentments, and proposed a final solution. And Hitler and his supporters made slick use of the media of the day, creating films such as “The Eternal Jew” to show the supposed evil influence of Jews on society – the film, for instance, flashed back and forth between images of rats running out of sewers and images of starving, ragged Jews in the ghettos to which they were confined by the Nazis - and “Triumph of the Will” to portray the supposed strength and inevitable victory of the German people.  This horrible history demonstrates the power of the tongue, assisted by technology, for evil.

In our day, our concepts of communication and of community are truly bizarre.  We may not know the names of our next-door neighbors – in the large, anonymous apartment complex where I live, I don’t know my neighbors, even though we share the same parking lot and laundry room – but we may have online relationships via Facebook with people around the globe. For some, these online relationships may mean more than face-to-face relationships. We can at the same time be connected online and disconnected offline.

In short, we live in a global village where we’re all connected via the internet, and yet we don’t know one another very well; we’re connected, yet isolated. There’s incredible potential for misunderstanding one another, and also incredible potential for being manipulated by the powers that be, or for manipulating others.  On a small scale, we’ve all heard stories about people forming passionate relationships with others on Facebook, only to meet the other in person and learn that they’re nothing like their Facebook profile.  But the same thing can happen on a much larger scale….

On Facebook, it is so easy to share graphics, share stories, share internet memes.  But with the ease of sharing comes great danger.  There’s a lot of bad information out there….some of it honestly mistaken, a lot of it created with malice aforethought by those in power or those seeking power, to create bad feelings about various disfavored groups – immigrants, Muslims, welfare recipients. Basically, it’s an updated version of the kind of propaganda pumped out by the Nazis in the 1930’s and 1940’s – different targets, perhaps, but same message promoting hate. Instead of sitting through an hour of “The Eternal Jew” all at once, you can look at a misleading internet meme and get a little micro-dose of resentment for your day….and another, and another….   It’s easy to just unthinkingly pass this stuff along, especially if we’re already feeling resentful or just plain cranky, but please understand that this adds to the general climate of resentment and fear and misunderstanding – and it can put the real lives of real people in real danger.  Teens have been driven to suicide by cyberstalking by classmates.  Mentally unstable people have been motivated by online propaganda to commit acts of violence against immigrants and Muslims and such…we remember that Dylann Roof, the young white man who shot and killed 9 people at a historic African American church, came to his white supremacist ideas by connecting with white supremacist websites online.  Most recently, two men in Boston who beat up a Hispanic man credited Donald Trump for inspiring their violence….and Donald Trump responded by saying his supporters are “passionate”.  (I’m not sure we need the kind of passion that inspires people to assault other people.)  Millions are routinely motivated to support or oppose policies, to vote for or against candidates, based on misinformation created by folks with agendas and mindlessly passed along by folks like you and me.  “How great a forest can be set blaze by a small fire. And the tongue is a fire.”  The tongue, augmented by today’s social media technology, is a blowtorch, is a napalm bomb.  The tongue, augmented by today’s technology, can be used to create wonderful consequences and terrible consequences.  The tongue, augmented by technology, can destroy lives and turn societies into rubble.

I’d like to go back to my friend Matt, whose life was shattered by a suicide bomber.  He’ll never be able to return to the person he had been before he enlisted; he can only work hard on his rehabilitation and make the best of his “new normal”.  But consider all the tongues that had a role in the maiming of his body and the mangling of his mind:  the tongues of those Muslim clerics whose sermons inspired the 9/11 hijackers, the tongues of our own leaders – most of them in the administration identifying as Christians or Jews - who claimed a link between the 9/11 attacks and Iraq, claims that have since been disproved, the tongues of the military recruiters who spoke to Matt – and I don’t know what combination of patriotism and economic necessity induced him to enlist,  the tongues of those in Iraq who inspired the suicide bomber whose actions left Matt maimed for life.  My encounters with Matt are distressing reminders of the power of the tongue to destroy lives. 

A key symptom of a dysfunctional system of relationships – be it a family, a church, or a society – is when people talk about each other instead of to each other.  We commonly describe this with the word “gossip”, but the clinical psychological term for certain forms of gossip is “triangulation”. So, for example, rather than talking directly to another person, you talk to a third person about the second person.  This happens with my sister and me around holidays.  My sister’s relationship with our mom is very strained, and so instead of talking to mom about holiday plans, she’ll often call me first – “Dave, have you talked to mom about what she wants to do for Thanksgiving”.  Family therapists say that to heal such broken relationships, it’s essential to break down the triangles, to structure communication so that distant relatives are forced to talk to one another rather than about one another.

Among other things, this is what Jesus demonstrates in our Gospel reading.  First he asks the disciples, “What’s the buzz?  What are they saying about me?”  And they tell him.  But then he says, “Who do you say I am?”  Jesus invites the disciples to talk to Jesus rather than about Jesus.

This is an approach I would strongly recommend, in our families, in church – talk to one another, not about one another.  I also recommend it strongly in our online communications.  Again, there’s an incredible amount of misleading information on the internet, on Facebook, in emails that get forwarded hither and yon.  For example – and I’m going to get down to cases here, or at least one case – from time to time I see Facebook posts stating that our government does nothing to help our own citizens, but lavishes all kind of aid on immigrants.  As it happens, here at Emanuel, we have an immigrant family.  Before you automatically share that post – talk with some actual immigrants!  Ask them how much aid our government lavishes on them.  Ask them how often the prize patrol from Washington DC drives up to their homes with wooden crates full of $100 bills.  Or check out actual government websites online and look at eligibility requirements for benefits.  What I think you’ll find is that, indeed, our government offers some limited benefits, but not at the level of those for US citizens, to legal immigrants, and God help undocumented immigrants, because our government won’t.  What I think you’ll find is that the post on Facebook about immigrants getting all kinds of benefits that citizens don’t get, is a great big lie from the pit of hell, a lie created by people seeking political power whose agenda for getting or keeping power involves stirring up resentment against immigrants…in the same way Hitler and his cronies used films such as “The Eternal Jew” to stir up resentment of Jews 70 years ago. So rather than automatically sharing that post, I’m asking us to talk to the people who are being denigrated. Rather than automatically sharing a post slandering immigrants, or Muslims, or African Americans….first take the time to talk to some immigrants or Muslims or African Americans so we actually know what we’re talking about. Or if we can’t talk to them face to face…let’s face it, most of us don’t actually know a lot of Muslims…do some research online, using reputable sources, and find out whether that Facebook post is grounded in reality, or in unfounded and unhinged resentment. (In your bulletin, you’ll see an internet meme urging folks to check Snopes to validate or disprove online rumors….remember, Pastor Dave says, “Snopes is your friend.”)  But more importantly, remember the 9^th commandment – Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. To share Facebook posts without checking our facts is bearing false witness against our neighbor. To forward emails slandering various individuals and groups without verifying them is bearing false witness against our neighbor. The bearing of false witness led to the maiming of my friend Matt.  The bearing of false witness against Jews and others in Germany led to the Holocaust.  So let’s not bear false witness: if we see an inflammatory post, even or especially if it seems to confirm our beliefs, fact check before we share. Lives may depend on it.

It’s not enough to refrain from speaking lies, but also necessary to speak the truth, in love. In our Gospel reading, Jesus and his disciples were at a crossroads moment.  He had done ministry, taught and healed, done miracles, dealt with some degree of opposition….but this encounter took place just before he began the journey to Jerusalem, where he knew perfectly well that a cross awaited him.  It was truly a crossroads moment; his disciples could have backed out, could have stayed in Galilee, could have gone back to what their lives had been, back to their fishing boats - or follow Jesus. To prepare the disciples for this crossroads moment, Jesus invited his disciples to talk to him rather than about him.  He also spoke the truth about the road ahead to them, even though it was hard to hear, but in love.  After Peter said to Jesus, “You are the Messiah,” Jesus went on to tell them what it meant for him to be Messiah.  He didn’t want them to think that, because they knew the Messiah, they were on board some kind of gravy train to earthly glory.  Instead, Mark’s gospel tells us, “Then [Jesus] began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”  Peter protested – and Jesus responded in very harsh, even brutal, terms, calling him Satan –Jesus knew that the ideas in Peter’s head about the Messiah as a great political leader who would liberate Israel from Rome were basically the very opposite of the mission to which God was calling Jesus. Jesus’ had to smack down Peter’s erroneous and misleading ideas immediately and harshly, and he did so. And then Jesus continues to press his point, saying that not only must Jesus himself suffer, but anyone desiring to follow Jesus must suffer also.  Jesus didn’t sugar-coat reality.  He knew what was in store for him and his followers, and he gave the information to them straight.  But as difficult as the conversation was, it was an act of love, to clue them into reality up front rather than give them a sales pitch or a recruitment speech that would later leave them feeling betrayed, as my friend Matt was betrayed.  Similarly, for us, sometimes life in our families, life in the church, life in our society requires us to speak unpleasant and unwelcome truth – remembering that the other person, regardless what we feel about them, is a human being made in God’s image, a beloved child of God.  Being a truth-teller is a thankless task.  We can expect to be opposed or even threatened, if our words oppose and threaten the long-held beliefs of others.  But being truth-tellers is the way of our savior, is part of the cross we as Christians are called to carry.

I don’t want this sermon to be a total downer, so I’d like to end on a note of grace.  We’ll be gathering at the table for communion in a moment or two.  Remember the words of institution which begin, “The Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed…..”  Some of Jesus’ followers committed sins of the tongue against Jesus.   Judas betrayed him. Peter denied having ever met him.  And yet after the resurrection, Peter was restored to relationship through the forgiveness of Jesus.  Likewise, if we repent, Jesus can forgive our betrayals of the gospel, our betrayals of neighbor, even our betrayals of one another and the best within ourselves.  Our sacrament of communion begins in betrayal, but affirms that not betrayal, but forgiveness; not death but resurrection, has the final word.  Amen.

Be Opened!

Scriptures: Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23   James 2:1-17    Mark 7:24-37

All the poor guy wanted was some “alone time”.  Within the past few days, Jesus had just experienced a major rejection at his hometown synagogue, commissioned his disciples for their first mission and welcomed them back on their return, learned of the death of John the Baptist, fed a crowd of 5,000 people, walked on water, healed the crowds at Genessaret, and dealt with a run-in with some of the Jewish religious establishment.  Can we blame Jesus for having a bit of a Greta Garbo moment, for wanting to say, “I vant to be alone.”

Anywhere he went in his home territory, the crowds would recognize him, and so it was time for a road trip.  Jesus headed north into Tyre, located in modern day Lebanon, a distance of over 30 miles, nearly two days’ walk on foot.  Mark tells us “he entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there.  Yet he could not escape notice”…..Jesus wanted to be alone, but ….curses, foiled again.  A Syrophoenician woman – that is to say, a Gentile, a non-Jew - came into the house and threw herself at Jesus’ feet, threw herself on Jesus’ feet, begging for Jesus to heal her daughter, who was possessed by a demon. We’re not told how the woman had heard about Jesus – though we do know that Jesus had healed a man in Gentile territory once before, a demon-possessed man who lived among the tombs.  Though it was a distance away, perhaps word of this healing had reached the Syrophoenician woman. And also, earlier in Mark’s gospel, we’re told that among the crowds witnessing Jesus’ healings by the Sea of Galilee were people from the region of Tyre, and perhaps their stories had spread.  In any case, this woman – this foreign woman was not only on Jesus’ doorstep, but throwing herself at – and on top of - Jesus’ feet.

Maybe it was because Jesus was tired and annoyed at the interruption, but Jesus’ initial response to the woman doesn’t sound very…..Jesusy.  “Let the children be fed first,” Jesus said, “for it’s not fair to take the children’s food and toss it to the dogs.”  Did Jesus just call the woman a dog?  Why, yes, Jesus did.  Actually, the word “dog” was not uncommon language for Jews to use in referring to Gentiles, non-Jews….but it’s jarring to us just the same.  And Jesus’ reasoning doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense….it’s as if there’s only so much healing power available, and if Jesus heals a Gentile – a dog – it means there will be less healing power available to  Jews – that is to say, to the children.  It’s an odd argument to make, especially since Jesus had not many days before fed five thousand people with a few loaves and fish.  With God, there’s enough bread to go around, but not enough healing power? Really?

As shocking as Jesus’ words are to us, the original hearers of this story would have been more shocked by the behavior of the woman….this woman who, in this culture, was three times an other – a woman, a non-Jew, and from a different country…separated from Jesus by boundaries of gender, religion, and nationality.  Other, other, and other.  Remember that, in that patriarchal culture, for a woman to approach a man she didn’t know, and then to touch him, to throw herself at his feet, just wasn’t done.  And for a Gentile to approach a Jew, speak to a Jew, let alone touch him, again just wasn’t done.  As much as Jesus words may put us off, for Mark’s original audience, the woman’s behavior would likely have freaked them out….in that culture, this foreign woman was just coming on to Jesus way too strong. 

So the woman violated a number of social boundaries by approaching Jesus as she did, and Jesus responded in a way that makes us uncomfortable, but in a way that was very characteristic of his culture.  The conversation could have ended there, but it didn’t, because the person who approached Jesus was not only a foreigner, not only a Gentile, not only a woman – but was also a mother.  And the mothers here today don’t need me to tell you that if your child is sick, you’re going to do anything – walk through fire even, if it comes to that – to get help for your child.   So the woman, who we already know is no shrinking violet,  comes back at Jesus hard – “Lord, even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the children’s table” – and it’s notable that, up to this point in Mark’s gospel, the only person who has addressed Jesus as Lord is this woman. Ok, Jesus, ya wanna call me a dog – fine, at least give me the consideration that a dog would get in being allowed to eat the crumbs.  At least throw some little scrap of healing at my sick daughter. And Jesus basically says, “For saying that, you win; your daughter is healed.”

We’re told that Jesus then took a roundabout route through Gentile regions – going by way of Sidon, which was another 15 miles further away from his home territory and then heading toward the Decapolis, ten predominantly Gentile towns along the sea of Galilee.  The people brought Jesus a deaf man with a speech impediment, and Jesus healed him, touching his ears and tongue and saying in Aramaic “Ephphatha” meaning “Be opened.”  And the crowd is amazed, saying, “He has done everything well, he even makes the deaf hear and the mute talk.”

“Be opened!”  These were the words of Jesus to the deaf man, but in a sense, these were also the words of the Syrophoenician woman to Jesus – “Be opened!  Don’t limit your healing powers only to those of your own people.  Open them up to others as well.”  As Christians, we affirm that Jesus was fully human as well as fully divine, and as one who was fully human, he had to deal with the cultural baggage of the people among whom he lived….and it was out of that cultural baggage that Jesus initially responded to the woman in calling her a dog.  I believe that the woman’s strong comeback startled Jesus into looking past the blinders of his culture, into being opened to a larger vision of who it was he was being called to heal.  What had initially been for Jesus a very unwelcome interruption became a moment for God’s grace to come into play, for the woman and for Jesus.

How about us?  Like Jesus before his encounter with the Syrophoenician woman, we all have our comfort zones and our cultural baggage.  We all have those groups of people with whom we are comfortable, other groups of people to whom we might not give the time of day, and still other groups of people that we might cross the street to avoid.  But, like Jesus, we in the church are called to mission.  In fact, we’re called to Jesus’ mission, to be Christ’s hands and feet in the world.  Might we, in our mission, sometimes be like the man whom Jesus’ healed, deaf to the cries of those outside our comfort zones, unable to speak the Gospel in a way understandable beyond our own in-group?  Might Jesus be saying to us, “Be opened!”

Our reading from the letter of James gives us a very specific example of what it looks like when we’re not opened.  James give us a vivid image, a sort of pictorial instruction manual of how not to do church:  Two people walk into a church.  One is dressed to the nines, with fine clothes and gold ring.  The other is wearing ragged, dirty clothing, may have a few flies buzzing around their head, and probably smells a little bit ripe if you get close enough, perhaps with the faintest hint of the scent of cheap whisky on their breath.  And the ushers are falling all over themselves helping out the well-dressed guy while those same ushers are trying to hide the raggedly dressed man in the corner.  A few years ago, the United Church of Christ national office put out an advertisement that looked very much like a modern day version of our reading from James – in succession, a black single mom with a crying baby, a gay couple, a middle-eastern man, a man on a walker, and an apparently homeless woman sat down on a pew inside this grand looking church, and as each sat down, a hand was shown behind the scenes pressing a big red button that ejected these undesirables out of their pews…they literally went flying up in the air and out of the church.  Of course, the advertisement was trying to make the point that the UCC isn’t like that….and of course, the Presbyterian Church isn’t either.  

We say our churches are welcoming, and I believe we sincerely want our churches to be welcoming.  But here’s an interesting exercise to try – to walk into our churches and ask “Who’s missing?”  Not just “who of our regular members isn’t here?”….on a holiday weekend like this one, lots of our regulars are away, but will be back next Sunday or the Sunday after.  But, “who’s missing?  What groups of people aren’t here?  Non-whites?  Recent immigrants? Gay folk?  People who have been through divorce? Single parents?  People in recovery from addiction?  People living on public assistance or disability? Who isn’t our church reaching?  Whose cries for help aren’t we hearing?  Who isn’t able to hear the good news of Jesus in our churches, in a way they can understand?

Here’s a poem, based on Matthew 25, that brings home the message of our readings from the letter of James and the Gospel of Mark.  The title is “Listen, Christian”

“I was hungry,
and you formed a humanities club and discussed my hunger.
Thank you.
I was imprisoned and you crept off quietly
to your chapel in the cellar and prayed for my release.
I was naked

and in your mind you debated the morality of my appearance.
I was sick and you knelt and thanked God for your health.
I was homeless
and you preached to me about the spiritual shelter of the love of God.
I was lonely
and you left me alone to pray for me.
Christian,
you seem so holy; so close to God.
But I am still very hungry,
and lonely,
and cold...”

A pushy, even overbearing foreign woman pushed Jesus to a new understanding of his mission, a new understanding that included this woman, and people like her.  James pushed his readers to understand that faith is an action word, that praying can be done with folded hands or with open arms or with marching feet.  May God likewise push our congregations out of our comfort zones, that in unplanned encounters with unexpected people, we too may be surprised by grace.  Amen.

Clean

Scripture:       Isaiah 1:1, 10-18  James 1:1-27     Mark 7:1-23

 Any Peanuts fans in the house?  You may remember the character Pig Pen, who walked around in his own self-generated cloud of dust.  I don’t think we actually ever found out what the guy’s real name was; he was just known as Pig Pen.  Occasionally he would try to clean up, usually to impress one of the female characters, but the dust would inevitably find its way back to him somehow….he referred to himself once as a dust magnet.  He would also occasionally say that the dust that covered him was the dust of ancient civilizations…who knows, the dust that covered him could have been the dust that King Solomon or Genghis Khan had walked on.   For the most part, Pig Pen himself didn’t seem unduly troubled by his dirty appearance….as we’d say nowadays, being covered in dust was just how he rolled.

In our reading from Mark’s Gospel, Jesus and his disciples are, in effect, accused of being PigPen’s crusty cousins.   Immediately before today’s reading, we’re told “When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. ⁵⁴When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, ⁵⁵and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. ⁵⁶And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the market-places, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.”

In our reading, we’re told that the Pharisees and some scribes from Jerusalem were in the crowd, and as Jesus is healing people, a cry of outrage is heard:  “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands.”    While everyone else was focused on healing, on miracles, on God’s activity in their midst, the scribes and Pharisees were focused on disciples with dirty hands.  Apparently in the midst of all the healing Jesus was doing, they saw some of his disciples having grabbed a quick bite of lunch without first washing their hands, and felt it was an appropriate time for a public service announcement on the life-or-death importance of handwashing.  They felt it was sufficiently important that they interrupted Jesus so that no further healings would take place until this urgent matter of dirty-handed disciples was resolved.

I should pause a moment to talk about the “tradition of the elders” that is mentioned by the scribes and Pharisees.  The Pharisees were passionate about obeying the law of God.  For many Christians, reading particularly what Paul has to say about the law, we think of law as a heavy burden, but for observant Jews even today, the law is not a burden, but an amazing, beautiful gift from God himself – in Jewish worship, when the scroll of the law is taken from the Ark, it is brought out, and the people dance around with it and even kiss it.   However, the law was given at a certain time and place in history.  Inevitably, over the years, situations came up in life which are not directly addressed by the law as found in those scrolls.  Over years and centuries, the rabbis made their own interpretations, based on the law, which were passed on by word of mouth.  What’s more, because the Pharisees were very zealous about keeping the law, they created their traditions in such as way as to put what they called “a hedge around the law” – that is, to prevent people even from getting close to breaking the law.  It’s as if we’re driving in a 55 mile an hour zone, and in order to avoid accidentally speeding up to 56 miles an hour, we drive 45 miles an hour instead just to be safe….and then, as religious leaders, feel entitled to forbid anyone else from driving over 45 miles an hour.  By Jewish tradition, not only the written law but also the interpretation of the law, or the tradition of the elders, were given by God to Moses; though the oral tradition was written down later.

Because of their zeal for this tradition of the elders, this oral tradition of interpretation, this hedge around the law, the unwashed hands of the disciples greatly upset the scribes and Pharisees, and they made their concerns known.  However, they are doing this – focusing on dirty hands – while Jesus is miraculously healing people and changing their lives for the better. So the scribes and Pharisees come off looking not only like spoilsports, but quite frankly like idiots, and Jesus lets them have it:  “⁶He said to them, ‘Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, “This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; ⁷ in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.” ⁸You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.’  And then Jesus lays into them some more about their tradition of interpretation, citing one tradition that allows believers to get out of helping their parents by declaring their property as dedicated to God – even though it stayed with them and they were still using it.  This human tradition allowed people to evade God’s clear commandment to honor father and mother by caring for them.

Jesus then turns away from the scribes and Pharisees to the crowd, and says, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand: ¹⁵there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.’  ^* When they’re away from the crowds, they ask Jesus to explain what he said, and Jesus does so:  food eaten, with or without clean hands, just goes into the stomach and out into the drain; it doesn’t touch the heart.  Mark adds a parenthetical note: “Thus Jesus declared all foods clean” – that is, Jesus set aside the kosher laws distinguishing between clean and unclean animals for food, etc.  Jesus goes on to say, ‘It is what comes out of a person that defiles. ²¹For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, ²²adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. ²³All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.’

Now, I want to be very clear, especially to any children present, that washing our hands is important.  Washing our hands is important in order to avoid getting sick, and to avoid passing our germs on to others.  And certainly, when we eat fruit, we want to wash it off, in order to remove any pesticides that may have been sprayed.  Washing our hands is important for our physical health, and the physical health of those around us.  Washing our hands has not the slightest thing to do, however, with our value as a human being, with God’s love toward us, with the quality of our Christian discipleship , with our eternal destiny.  Washing our hands won’t make us good people, and not washing our hands won’t make us bad people. God will not send us to hell because we forgot to wash our hands.  On the other hand, later on in the Gospel, we know that Pilate washed his hands, but it did not remove his guilt.

It may seem that this passage does not apply to us all that much.  After all, unless you work in a healthcare setting where regular handwashing is crucially important, none of us are likely to encounter the handwashing police in our daily lives.  But I think we’re all prone to make mental judgments of others based on their outward appearance, including whether they are well-scrubbed or not.  And these can have real consequences for ministry and our Christian witness to others, especially if their condition might impact us.  Do I want to give a ride to someone who doesn’t bathe regularly, either from lack of regular access to facilities or for other reasons, when in order to avoid nausea I may have to drive with the windows rolled all the way down even in a blizzard?   Do I want to visit someone’s home when they may have a problem with fleas or bedbugs, and by going in I may risk taking some home with me?  And God help me, there have been times when I’ve been invited in to sit down, and I’ve stood out on the porch saying, “that’s ok, no need for me to come in, I can pray for you from out here on the porch, I’m good.”  I can remember one time when such concerns really got in the way of ministry.  A number of years ago, one of our sister congregations at C and Indiana in Kensington had a homeless ministry; they were sheltering homeless people inside the church.  The neighbors were complaining about homeless people gathering there every night, and the city threatened to shut them down.  A bunch of UCC and other clergy organized to support our sister congregation, and we even held a press conference – we were on the news, though I strategically positioned myself behind one of the larger clergy so I wasn’t all that visible…what can I say, I’m camera shy.  But then part of the plan was for different clergy to lead worship and sleep at the church overnight – to show that the church was not only housing the homeless, but leading worship with them, supposedly 24/7, which was protected activity under the law…the plan was that if someone from the city were to come at 3 a.m. to shut the place down, the clergy were supposed to jump up and start leading worship, which would have protected against a shutdown – to do this on a rotation until the city backed off, which they eventually did.  I signed up for a shift.  And I really struggled with myself, because I knew the church had bedbugs, and other clergy who had stayed there had gotten bitten.  But I prayed and gritted my teeth, showed up, led worship, and spent a very uncomfortable night on the floor there – there were chairs and sofas there, but I knew they’d be infested, so I wasn’t going anywhere near them – and yes, I got bitten by bedbugs too.  But I went through my clothes very carefully and was fortunate not to take any home, my three bedbug bites healed fairly quickly, and life went on.

It is what comes out of a person, Jesus said, not what goes into a person, that defiles.  Being a PigPen does not make us a bad person – and in the Peanuts comic strips, PigPen was actually a fairly nice guy. However, if our heart is not right with God, no amount of handwashing will change that.  It’s a bit like the experience we all likely had at some time or another, to encounter someone who really looks good on the outside – great smile, great looks, great clothes, great gift of gab – but as we get to know them better, we find out they are bitter and selfish and hateful and vengeful – that is to say, they’re really ugly on the inside. It’s like watching someone with an impressive appearance open their mouth and seeing a toad hop out, or when they open their mouth, they projectile vomit sewage…it’s a shock, and it’s a real turnoff. ..and this is where the words in our reading from the letter of James about bridling the tongue come in.  And by contrast, I’m sure we’ve all met people who are nothing to look at, who may wear shabby clothes, who may not meet our standards of cleanliness, but have a caring, generous spirit, and we say they are beautiful on the inside.  Physical beauty will fade over time; it’s inner beauty that lasts.  It’s inner beauty that God sees.

The Pharisees used the word “clean” in one way – to refer to outward cleanliness, and Jesus used the word “clean” in another – to refer to one’s inward condition.  I’d invite us to think what the word “clean” means in our culture.  Of course, we use it, as the Pharisees did, around issues of washing and removing dirt.  It can also be used to describe a joke that doesn’t include sexual innuendo – a clean joke.  It’s also used in the context of drug addiction – if someone’s not using, we say they’re clean.  And on cop shows, if they search somebody and find no contraband, it’s said that “they’re clean”.  In the recent remake of the movie Poltergeist, a celebrity exorcist was famous, at the end of his successful exorcisms, for saying, “This house is clean.” All of these aspects – being free from addictions, being free from violent impulses, being free from being controlled by evil – these are all aspects of Jesus is talking about.  “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me,” the Psalmist wrote.  This is the sense in which Jesus used the word “clean”.  

  

Our reading from the letter of James, the brother of Jesus who became head of the church in Jerusalem, gives us a picture of persons with clean hearts and right spirits look like, and he takes Jesus’ words a bit further – as Jesus does himself elsewhere in the Gospels.  You see, in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus’ words on inner cleanliness are put in terms of avoiding evil intentions, in terms of not thinking and doing bad things.  But James’ letter tells us, not only about what we should not think and do, but about what we should think and especially what we should do.  When we think of religious observance, we think of going to church, or in other traditions about not eating meat on Friday or giving something up for Lent.  And during Jesus’ day, that’s how people thought of religion – in terms of attending worship and making sacrifices.  But James has a different take on religion, on what he would call pure religion or clean religion:  “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”  James also tells his readers, “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only” – doing and not just hearing is a theme that comes up often in his letter.  He compares the word of God to a mirror which we can use to look at ourselves.  Those who hear the word but don’t do it are like those who glance at themselves in the mirror and say, “I’m good”, and walk away…their understanding of the word makes them self-satisfied, even if in truth their lives give God very little satisfaction.  But if we truly look at ourselves carefully in the mirror provided by God’s word, we will be motivated to action.  But these words come with a promise:  “But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act —they will be blessed in their doing.”  May God cleanse our hearts and minds from all evil, and may we be blessed in all that we say and do, and may all we say and do be a blessing to others.  Amen.