Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser
WHERE MOST RELIGIOUS GO WRONG
Sept 2, 2018 Pentecost 15-B Mark 7:1-8, 21-23
My mom was not shy, and loved to argue about things, or at least to pick at them. She taught 5th grade, and had a couple teachers that would exchange, uh, remarks about religion with her. There was a time mom and this other teacher were exchanging, ah, remarks, about salvation, and this other teacher took issue with mom’s Baptist view that a person could turn to Christ on their deathbed and still be in heaven. “You mean some prostitute could turn to God right before she died, after the life she’s lived and the things she’s done, and she’d be forgiven and go to heaven the same as me? When I’ve lived my whole life responsibly, gone to church, and obeyed God’s rules for my whole life?” Mom said, “Yep, that’s right. God will forgive her and save her just the same.” This other teacher didn’t think much of that concept, nor did she want to share heaven with people like that. It DOESN’T seem fair if you are only counting up your good deeds on earth; and you forget to have any place for grace, mercy and forgiveness, which are BIG words in Christian faith.
Its curious to me that this other teacher chose sexual behavior as her example - and only for the woman, to boot. And a traditional knee-jerk reaction to those in the trade for whatever reason, as opposed to those who are just hedonistic and promiscuous..., not to mention the aspect of who’s being abused. She wasn’t from my home church, but she could have been, with her judgement on sexual mores, skipping over things like murder, larceny, exploitation, lying, greed, pride and more. My home church certainly preached more sermons against sexual things than anything else - except maybe politicians.
It’s easy to fall into a kind of ‘holier-than-thou’ stance when we are looking at our faith as a list of things to do and rules to follow, and when we’ve become pretty good at following certain of those that our community has deemed important. Perhaps we began by following all the teachings we could because of loving & desiring to follow God’s teachings as best we could. Yet, feeling like the rich young ruler who came to Jesus by night, we say, ‘all these things have we kept from our youth,’ and we know that something is still lacking on the heart level. We may look at others who aren’t doing what we do - or we compare ourselves to others, and we come out favorably over them. Maybe the attitude is, “How can he/she do those things and still get the promotion instead of me? make more money than me? have a nicer house than me?” ...whatever it is that we’re envious of. Maybe the attitude is more like, “Hey, I wish my conscience would let me do that!” Maybe it’s more like, “Eeeewwww, don’t let those kinds of people in here with us!” or “Thank goodness at least I don’t do THAT!”
I’m not talking about the kind of evaluating we HAVE to do, like when we consider who would be good for a certain job or who would be a safe babysitter - of course we have to exercise discernment on many things. You wouldn’t want to knowingly hire someone with the wrong skills, or who wasn’t reliable, or who had a record of abuse.
We’re more talking about that spiritual hierarchy we sometimes fall into, where WE are the observant believers who attend church and live right, and therefore look down on those who don’t. Sometimes, unfortunately, it’s those of us who are the most devout and observant of our Christian living who can be the ones who draw the darkest lines of who’s in and who’s out.
Let’s talk for a moment about the scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees of the Jewish faith in Jesus’ time. These folks have often been maligned by Christian preachers as only believing in God’s Law and not in God’s grace..but that’s too simplistic an answer. Remember that the Jewish people of Jesus’ time had lived many generations as a minority group and a captive group. Their faith was not the dominant one, and often the ruling nation discriminated against those who held the Jewish faith, and punished them in various ways, like not letting kosher meats be sold - how could they then eat any meat? Those who became Scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees were dedicated to preserving the faith, not letting it get diluted or forgotten or blended into the dominant religion. They were diligent in their observance, and probably did ensure that the Jewish faith survived. They were the religiously observant folk of their day.
The text today focuses on the observance of hand-washing before eating. To our ears, we say “Duh!” That’s just good hygiene, which we learn from an early age. Well, it didn’t used to be so! It was 1846 before even doctors began to routinely wash their hands between patients. It was one of the Laws observed by Jewish priests, which the observant Pharisees interpreted to mean all Jews, as God called them as a priestly nation. They were assiduous about washing hands before eating, as they were about many practices of Judaism. Evidently Jesus and his followers didn’t do this all the time, and they were seen. To our observant religious friends, this meant that Jesus and his followers were throwing out and disregarding the whole Law of God; and were teaching others the same. If you don’t wash your hands before meals, you obviously don’t follow God. You negate our whole faith. That’s kinda harsh, but ….
Jesus’ critique wasn’t so much that they were only following laws; rather it was that in their intensity, they had lost the love of God; in their strictness and in their observance of the minutia, their passion had switched from God to just the details. And they now harshly judged those who did NOT “do it right.” So in their GOOD desire to preserve the faith and life of Judaism with God, they actually built walls that kept their own their people out, rather than drawing them in. (That may be too simplistic, too.)
This is not just a 1st century Jewish problem… its more a human thing, especially a stress thing, when we lose the focus and just center on the behaviors. Its a problem in Christianity, too. We religious folk can get so heated up about certain litmus tests of Christianity, that to not fall into line with them, makes you anathema, outcast. I have a friend named Letha who has been a significant voice for women in faith and church for most of her adult life (and she’s now 80). Like me, Letha was raised in the more fundamentalist wing of Christianity. I will criticize the fundamentalism that I knew as confusing a zeal for certain behaviors and opinions, with a zeal for God. Letha was an accepted and desired speaker for women’s place in marriage and church while she said the accepted beliefs about man as the head of the house, and so on. Back then, she was even sought out as she began to explore what she was hearing the Scripture say about women’s intrinsic worth and even being made in the image of God, promoting an equality before God of men and women, and advocating social change for women’s rights. (That was 25 +years ago when what we call evangelical christianity was less rigid than now.) Letha was a recognized teacher and interpreter of Scripture - until her faith exploration of Scripture and God began to force her to look at abortion justice and then gender justice -- at which point SHE was suddenly dropped from speaking engagements, and abandoned by the same community that had once so valued her scholarship. As long as she colored inside the lines, she was okay. But her whole life, knowledge and faith and quest for God’s truth were discounted as soon as she questioned sacred cows.
We can easily name some of those litmus test items of our current right wing of Christianity - literal interpretation of the Bible only; no to abortion for any reason; prayer in school; 10 commandments displayed; fear of sexuality (don’t eat alone with woman if you’re married to someone else - Okay, not all are this strict); homeschooling (check); wave the American flag (check); don’t take a knee during the national anthem (check); don’t be a liberal (check); no LGBTQ persons allowed; and others. Presbyterians value education and following the Book of Order.
Just so I’m not just critiquing others, I have my judgemental side - I have difficulty being tolerant of intolerant persons, and especially the right wing of our faith. I lived in Va Beach for many years, which is home to Pat Robertson and his college. I vowed to not set foot on that campus; and when groups started wanting to rent their facilities for events, I wouldn’t go. When someone wanted to take me to their restaurant, I said let’s meet elsewhere. I refused to give money to any of his endeavors. I laughed at jokes about “pat answers” to questions. THEN I took in Billy from Kinshasa, who didn’t comprehend the religious differences here too much, and who was delighted to get hired by Robertson’s film department to translate their films into French, his native language….and until he could afford a car, I had to drive him to work…..I hated it every time. Driving Billy to work made me break my vow to never set foot on Robertson’s land. I can get pretty angry about the way he and others portray our Christian faith - I feel like they’ve earned all of us believers that kind of holier-than-thou reputation as haters and irrational.
My chaplain supervisor flat out told me, “So you’re a bigot, too.” That was harsh. But it made me think about it and pray about it. I can’t say I love Pat Robertson, now, but I realize that I fall into the same temptation of playing ‘holier-than-thou.’ It’s easy to fall into without noticing. In my chaplain classes, I found ways to work with other pastors whose theology was on the other end of the spectrum, just as they found ways to work with me, learning to see each other as whole people who loved God - that became the common element.
Jesus’ problem with this is not that there’s anything wrong with hand washing, but that these folks are so devoted to the outward observances, and ones they’ve made applicable to everybody through their own interpretation, that they’ve drawn lines between people and judged them unworthy; and further, their obsession with these details have overtaken their heartfelt love of God and God’s grace to all people. If you think that’s too silly for us to ever fall into, remember that at one time we judged people by the length of their hair and if their sideburns came below the earlobe. Presbyterians often get bent out of shape if things aren’t done according to the Book of Order, while people with a vision for outreach get discouraged and slip out the door.
See, these things are not essentials of loving God; and often have nothing to do with a longing for the Divine, a seeking of our Source and our Creator, nothing to do with repentance and renewal of joy, and our freedom in Christ. We are Presbyterians, so we do tend to like order even about how we express our ardor, our feelings. I do hope and pray that we still have our ardor, our devotion, our enjoyment of God’s abundance and God’s freedom. Because what God really wants is the love of our hearts, the relationship with us of friend and lover even, and a deep commitment to continue seeking the kindom. The human value of love and marriage has often been an illustration of God’s relationship to us - the deep feelings, the commitment, the talking, the desire… when that’s lacking, God wants it back.
So let’s hear Jesus critique of the Scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees as an invitation to fall back in love, to work out what might be in the way, what might be taken for granted; and rekindle the fires of devotion instead of a nit-picking obedience. AMEN.
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