Jesus’ remarks in our gospel reading that, “For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come,” reminds me of the story the head chaplain at the University of Tennessee Medical Center told while I was working as a chaplain there. He said that one day he was working from his home office. He had two daughters and the younger of the two came to his office and asked, “Can I have a bowl of ice cream?” This was an unusual request but he decided there was no harm in it, so he said yes.
Some time later when he stepped out of the office he found his two daughters in the living room watching TV. The youngest, who had asked for a bowl of ice cream did not have any. But the older, who did not ask, was sitting there eating ice cream. He said to her, “What are you doing? I never said you could have ice cream!”
“No, you didn’t,” was her calm reply.
“So why do I see you here eating ice cream?”
“Well, I knew you’d never say yes if I asked to have ice cream. But I knew you’d say yes to her. So I had her ask for me. And she did. And you said yes. But you never said she couldn’t give the ice cream to me.”
I don’t know what his daughters do in adulthood, but there’s the making of a good lawyer there! He could have punished both his daughters for their deceptive shenanigans, but he decided they had outmaneuvered him fair and square. He also knew to be on his guard in the future, for both parents and children know how to play that game!
And that’s just it. From the time we are little we learn how to,…perhaps not be outright deceptive, but to be strategic. You know how to get what you need, and what you want. You learn how to do quick calculations in your head about how you will act. Quite likely there’s at least one person in your life that you consider to be a friend, but he or she says things that you disagree with, or even find offensive. You decide not to confront them because you’d rather have the friendship than have it be broken.
Hopefully there’s nothing in our hearts that rises to the level of evil intentions that Jesus talks about: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, and folly. Although some of those things may seem less destructive than others. I certainly don’t put folly and murder on the same moral level. Yet, they do both speak to a depravity of the heart that is destructive. And certainly each and every one of us is caught by at least one thing on that list.
We’ll come back to that in a few minutes. Before that we want to look more at the specifics of what Jesus is being challenged over.
Our gospel reading starts with Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathering around Jesus and noticing his disciples are eating with defiled hands. We should note that the fact that scribes have come from Jerusalem shows that the ministry Jesus is doing is becoming known in high places. He’s had disagreements with religious leaders before this but they were on a more local level. As we enter Mark 7 we realize the ministry of Jesus has been expanding greatly. It started in Capernaum. Then it spread throughout the region of Galilee. Then it continued on into some non-Jewish areas. Last week we read the end of chapter six where we learned, “And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.” (6:56)
So Jesus has come to the attention of the religious bigwigs. They’ve sent out some scribes to see what is going on. They challenge Jesus about food and purity laws. Although note that they do not say Jesus is breaking any of the codes. It is that he is not teaching his disciples to follow them. That difference is subtle, but significant. All of the gospels note that Jesus himself obeyed the Jewish religious laws. However he did not impose them on his followers.
That teaches us that the laws themselves are not bad. Jesus doesn’t reject them. Not at all. But he does question the reason why people follow them; or more specifically the way following the religious laws was used judgmentally and to cause divisions.
Judaism was not united in its following of the religious laws. Other historical accounts of the times show there were variations among Jews. Many practiced different things. When the religious leaders challenge Jesus about them they are trying to put he and his disciples into a category. Perhaps think about it like the hot button issues of today. People talk about pro-life or pro-choice. We have divisions about race, and gender, and capital punishment, and policies about poverty, and policies about wealth, and policies about guns, and policies about immigration, and policies about how to handle Israel, and Palestinians, and Ukraine, and Sudan, and Afghanistan… and I could make this list go on and on.
Any of these things are used to create labels for people, and then to either see them as being like oneself, or being an opponent. Few, if any, discussions that I’m a part of with all of this stuff are actually constructive.
Where does Jesus land in the debate over food and food purity laws? Jesus refuses to be categorized. He refuses to let other people define issues in a way that he then has to take sides. Jesus does here what he always does. He roots things in God’s original intentions, not in technicalities of the law. For just like one girl asking on behalf of her sister for a bowl of ice cream, and not being explicitly told by her father that the ice cream cannot be given to her sister, so too will people find loopholes that allow them to do what their heart desires.
Before the scribes and Pharisees Jesus refuses to be defined. And then he goes on the offensive. The debate about things being an offering to God, or “Corban,” appears to have been another hot issue of the time. Though the exact nature of this is no longer clear, it appears it had something to do with making a vow attached to goods, which meant they could be no longer use for any purpose other than the temple.
This is an oversimplification, but maybe think of it this way. Let’s say we have a major campaign to pay off the mortgage of the church. You make a sizable pledge of money to the effort. But then something happens with a family member’s finances and they are in need. You can’t afford to both help them and maintain your financial pledge to the church, so what should you do? Which is more important, help of family or support of church? Under what circumstances could you break your pledge to the church? What would God think of you for it?
It seems that in Jesus’ day things were leaning pretty severely on the side of keeping your pledge to the temple. Your family would just have to suffer. There were few if any ways of backing out.
But Jesus roots the argument back into the old law given through Moses about honoring family members. That is a connection of the heart, and not a connection based upon technicalities. So we conclude with a return to idea of a depravity of the heart.
I don’t think it’s possible for any of us to ever have absolutely pure motives on anything we do. There’s always going to be some hope or desire connected to what we do that will benefit us, even if it is a very selfless seeming act. But Jesus is not trying to beat us up for those technicalities. We want to look at the bigger picture of our hearts.
Are we driven by greed and desires? Is who we present ourselves as in public basically true to who we are on the inside? Do embellish things, or leave things out, in our conversations and in our dealings such that we look artificially good and other people unfairly bad? Do we do things to make our lives easier for ourselves when we really need to shoulder greater responsibility for our actions? Would we rather point the finger at other people rather than work harder ourselves?
Jesus invites us to have our lives rooted, not in human dynamics of definitions and justice, but in God’s saving and enduring love. That puts our hearts in the purest place. It removes us from all the distinctions and judgments humans create. And it frees us to most fully be our true selves.
No comments:
Post a Comment