Mark 7:1-15 NRSV

Well, I have made it as your pastor now through 13 months without anyone coming into my office suggesting that the pastor search team had made a horrible mistake. Which is pretty good, considering that I was told that in my first month serving one congregation!

I believe there are several reasons that you and I seem to be getting along so far. One reason is that we just are a pretty good fit. You are my kind of people. And what I mostly mean by that is that we value the same traditions.

I served one church that accused me of trying to convert them to Catholicism when I added a responsive reading for the Call to Worship in the worship bulletin for the first time. This church also had some serious issues with my clergy robe. After wearing my robe during an Advent service, one parishioner commented on my “dress” and asked me if he could kiss my ring. Oh, and I also got into big trouble in that same church for using the word “parishioner” instead of “congregant” to refer church members.

I greatly disturbed members of several congregations when I proposed that we allow people who were baptized as infants in other denominations to be members of the church without being rebaptized.

I got into big trouble after hosting a dinner for food-insecure people as a furious church member, whose small group used the church kitchen once a month, approached me on Sunday morning saying, “Pastor, those people you fed last week used our Sweet-n-Low!”

After hosting a bi-lingual worship service for Hispanics in the community, a member of one church came up to me, his face red with anger, almost shouting: “They need to learn English or move back to where they came from!”

And I caused all kinds of waves when I would make statements like: “Well, of course we should be an “open and affirming” congregation, because no group of people who seek to follow the inclusive and gracious way of love Jesus taught and embodied has any business being “closed and condemning!”

At a wedding reception, I really upset one church leader as he looked at the delicious beverage I was enjoying in my clear plastic cup, and said, “Preacher, that does not look like iced-tea!”

So, traditionally speaking, you and I are a pretty good match. And another reason that you and I are seem to be getting along is that I am now seasoned enough to know about the importance of traditions, and I am wise enough to know not to mess with them, at least during my first year. Thus, you may notice that our Order of Worship looks exactly like it did before you even heard of me.

Perhaps you have heard the joke: “How many people in the church does it take to change a light bulb?”

“Change! Whatcha talkin’ ‘bout ‘change?’ My grandfather donated that light bulb!”

Over the years, I have learned the art of making subtle changes, if any changes, when it comes to a church’s traditions. Over the years, I have also learned of the value and the importance of traditions.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with rituals and traditions. They can good for those who practice the tradition and good for the larger community.

For example: Those of us who are sitting in a sanctuary with a bottle of hand sanitizer on each pew have no qualms with the tradition or ritual of hand-washing, especially when COVID is still in the air.

Those who have ever enjoyed a spicy shrimp or crawfish boil can appreciate the signs were posted in 2020 in public restrooms in New Orleans which read: “Wash your hands like you ate crawfish and you need to take your contacts out.”

The purity laws of Leviticus encoded simple common-sense traditions for the common good, some that we still follow today, like good hygiene and sanitation. Ultimately, though, the purity traditions ritualized an exhortation from God: “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy” (Leviticus 19:2). When the Psalmist asks in our Call to Worship: “Lord, who may dwell in your tent?” the traditional understanding was that only people who were ritually clean and holy may approach a holy God (Psalm 15:1).

Scholars debate how much ordinary first-century Jews followed the ritual purity traditions in Leviticus, but the Pharisees about whom we read so much in the gospels certainly did. Throughout the gospels Jesus is continually criticized by the Pharisees for his flagrant disregard of such traditions. We read where Jesus is ridiculed for touching a leper in Mark 1, for not fasting with his disciples and ignoring sabbath laws in Mark 2, for touching a woman with a menstrual issue and for handling a corpse in Mark 5, and for healing two Gentiles in Mark 7. And here in our gospel lesson this morning we read that he is criticized because his disciples ate with “unclean hands.”

The Pharisees accused Jesus and his followers for being ritually unclean, unorthodox heretics who flaunted the time-honored traditions of faith. And, in a sense, they were right.

Because Jesus understood that although traditions are not inherently bad, because humans are flawed creatures, we have traditionally made them bad with our terrible tendency to justify ourselves while scapegoating others. And since purity traditions symbolized Israel’s unique identity differentiating its people from other nations, these traditions were easily used to exclude, otherize, and even demonize others.

Folks who are ritually clean are considered to be close to God, whereas those who are not are abominations to God. Instead of demonstrating the holiness of God, ritual purity traditions become a means of excluding people that we really don’t want to deal with.

Thus, Jesus disregarded and actively demolished these ritual purity distinctions as a measure of spiritual and social status.

The late American theologian Marcus Borg pointed out that Jesus turned the traditional purity system with its “sharp social boundaries” on its head. And in its place, he substituted a radically alternate social vision, a new community characterized “by love and compassion for everyone, not by compliance to a purity code [or tradition]”; “by egalitarian inclusivity rather than hierarchical exclusivity.” In place of the traditional call to “Be holy, for I am holy” (Leviticus 19:2), Jesus deliberately substituted the radical new call to “Be merciful, just as God is merciful” (Luke 6:36).

In his book What Jesus Meant, Garry Willis writes that “no outcasts were cast out far enough in Jesus’ world to make him shun them — not Roman collaborators, not lepers, not prostitutes, not the crazed, and not the possessed.”

Thus, some good and humbling questions for disciples who seek to follow the way of Jesus are: “Who do we sanctimoniously denigrate as impure, unclean, or ‘far from God’— People of other faiths? People with no faith? Christians who worship differently? What about Christian Nationalists or MAGA extremists?”

In what ways have we distorted the self-giving, egalitarian love of God into self-serving, exclusionary elitism? In what ways do we justify ourselves with faithful observance of traditions honoring Jesus and miss our call to faithfully follow Jesus?

And how can we together build what Borg calls a “community shaped not by the ethos and politics of purity, but by the ethos and politics of compassion?”[i]

In response to the Pharisees’ criticism about his disciples disregarding the tradition of handwashing, Jesus immediately points out their hypocrisy: “You want to talk about tradition, then let’s talk about tradition! Because you have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God to honor your parents in order to keep your tradition!”

“What about the obligation to take care of them in their old age when they are most vulnerable? You’ve created this terrible tradition you call ‘Corban’ where you can exempt part of your 401-K as an offering to God, so you can avoid supporting poor ol’ Mama and Daddy when they need you the most!”

Jesus quotes Isaiah accusing them of “honoring God with their lips with hearts that are far from God, abandoning the commandment of God to hold on to tradition.”

I believe Jesus is essentially saying to the Pharisees and to the Christians behaving terribly today who seemed to have forgotten that the faith is more than saying some words but a way of living, serving, governing and voting:

Your hands may be traditionally pure from all kinds of filth, but your hearts are terribly impure with all kinds of greed. Your hands may be traditionally healthy, but your souls are terribly sick.

Your hands are clean, because you never get them dirty lending a hand to help someone in need.

Your hands are sanitized, because you never use them to care for someone who has been wounded.

Your hands may be thoroughly washed. You even sang, “Happy Birthday” to ensure that you scrubbed for a full 20 seconds. But you never use your hands to reach out to the poor, protect the vulnerable, feed the hungry, lift up the lowly, or shake a hand in solidarity with another who is being oppressed.

Your hands may be germ-free, but they’re not guilt-free, as you have made them into a fist, closing them to the needs of strangers and threatening anyone who is different.

Your hands may be beautifully manicured, but they are as unsightly as they can be, as you won’t risk breaking a nail doing anything for anyone other than yourself.

You lift your hands to praise God in the sanctuary, but you won’t lift a finger to love your neighbor as yourself out in the world.

After serving as your Senior minister for 13 months now, experiencing all of the traditional liturgical seasons, I have learned what traditions are important to you. Like every Disciple congregation I have served, our most important tradition is what is getting ready to take place around this open table. And like many beautiful traditions, Christians have had a terrible tendency to misuse Communion to exclude or alienate others.

Growing up, I remember the minister excusing everyone who was not a member of the church before serving Communion. I have heard ministers stress that one’s heart must be pure, before one can partake. And I have even heard ministers in our own denomination say that this meal is only reserved for baptized Christians.

That is why I choose my words very carefully when I walk behind this table…

Invitation to the Communion 

…proclaiming the good news that the invitation to this table is wide open to all, and all always means all, Believing the only people who should be excluded from the invitation to this table are those that Jesus excluded and that is no one.

Here, in this place, this meal is our most important tradition. We believe it is good for us and for the world– as long as it will always remind us of the beloved community of egalitarian inclusivity and self-giving love that we are called build  outside of these walls, as long as it reminds us, not to “be holy as God is holy,” but “to be merciful as God is merciful.”

[i] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/3637-20090824JJ