Wash Your Hands For Supper - A Sermon for Sunday September 1st 2024

GOSPEL: Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

The holy gospel according to Mark.

Glory to you, O Lord.

Mark’s gospel depicts Jesus as challenging traditional ways in which religious people determine what is pure or impure. For Jesus, the observance of religious practices cannot become a substitute for godly words or deeds that spring from a faithful heart.

1Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around [Jesus], 2they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. 3(For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; 4and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) 5So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” 6He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,

 ‘This people honors me with their lips,

  but their hearts are far from me;

 7in vain do they worship me,

  teaching human precepts as doctrines.’

8You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”

 14Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “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. “Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, 19 since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?" (Thus Jesus declared all foods clean.)

 21“For 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.”

The gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, O Christ.

SERMON 

We tend to be hard on the Pharisees.

Jesus was hard on them.

The Pharisees were instrumental in preserving

the Jewish faith,

especially in a long drought of

prophecy.

We should be careful that

our reading of Jesus’ critique

does not become Pharisees bad &

Christians good.

That misses the point.

The Pharisees were the keepers of the law,

they took the law very seriously,

and made sure to live their lives by the law.

They were lay religious officials,

who, although regularly missing the mark,

devoted their lives to God’s Word,

to God’s law.

When we hear law,

we might think of the Torah,

the first 5 books of the bible,

and perhaps the 613 Old Testament

laws or commands.

Today’s reading is referring to the oral law:

the ways in which the written law

as found in our bible,

was further explored and defined

through the Jewish rabbinic tradition.

The Pharisees took issue with

the disciples’ lack of hand washing,

which is part of the oral law,

not the written law.

You and I might think it is pretty gross

to eat food without washing your hands first,

but not for religious reasons.

Most of us grew up hearing these words:

“Wash your hands for supper!”

We understand that our hands are covered with

germs and bacteria

and dead skin and dirt

and whatever traces of whatever we’ve touched

throughout the day.

We don’t want to eat that stuff.

The Pharisees, however,

were concerned for religious reasons.

They were concerned because of

uncleanness and impurity.

Clean vs. unclean,

pure vs. impure.

holy vs. profane.

These distinctions matter.

For example,

if one touches blood

or a deceased person,

or a pig,

they would be considered ritually unclean.

If unclean,

you are not welcome in the temple or synagogue

until you become ritually clean.

The unclean would be quarantined

from the religious population,

like someone who caught COVID

or like an unwanted visitor

kept in a holding cell

until determined whether they get

deported or included.

So, washing hands and cups and kettles

would make practical and religious sense:

wash the hands,

wash the cups,

and there is no risk of becoming

religiously unclean,

and no possibility of needing decontamination.

This is a big deal for Pharisees,

because they were held to a higher standard.

You may recall the parable of the Good Samaritan.

The Jewish religious leaders

would have left the man on the road,

bleeding and dying,

because touching him

would have made them unclean

and unable to preside over worship.

Today, the surgeon will scrub their hands

thoroughly before surgery,

while onlookers might use some hand sanitizer,

or not wash at all.

We hold the surgeons to a higher standard

of cleanliness,

not unlike the Pharisees.

But this is for practical reasons,

Health care workers among us know that

not washing your hands

lead to a different kind of uncleanness

that can lead to illness,

for you and for others.

Uncleanness,

Religiously and practically,

spreads like disease and illness;

like contagion.

Uncleanness affects you,

and it affect others.

But Jesus,

as Jesus often does,

reframes the problem,

reframes what it means to be unclean.

Jesus’ argument, in a nut shell; is this:

the Pharisees regularly confuse

the interpretation of the Law

with the Law itself.

The disciples - and you -

do not need to wash your hands before eating

to avoid becoming unclean spiritually.

Jesus says that things like;

blood

and death

and pigs

and bats

and lobsters

do not defile,

it is what comes from within that defiles,

that desecrates, that profanes.

All God’s creation is good.

All that God has made is loveable

and worthy of love.

Yet we are simultaneously saint and sinner:

we are good,

beautiful,

capable of goodness and love

while also filled with evil intentions,

with sin,

capable of defilement and harm.

But we humans prefer to place blame outside of us

for the evil in the world,

rather than to deal with the evil

that lies within each of us.

You’ve heard the saying

“The Devil made me do it”

and that statement can be such a copout.

If we are in a bad mood,

we might blame the other drivers on the road

or our coworkers who annoy us

rather than look in our hearts for the reason.

There is nothing outside a person

that by going in can defile,

but the things that come out

are what defile.

Another angle here:

the Jewish laws were based in justice

and in preservation of the people.

For example, circumcision,

which is the primary law of identity for Jews

would have been important for health reasons.

In ancient times, circumcision would aid in

keeping men alive and healthy.

Same with hand washing,

which would be common sense,

came to have religious significance

and necessity.

Here is a contemporary example:

the vestments I’m wearing:

these were inherited by tradition.

These are good.

They remind us of our baptisms,

of the call to word and sacrament ministry.

They would also have been practical garments

prior to central heating.

The moment these vestments

become a worship prerequisite,

we are in danger of doing exactly 

what Jesus warned the Pharisees of:

making human tradition supersede the Gospel.

Another example,

we tend to commune in three kinds:

bread, wine

and hand sanitizer.

This is practical:

wash your hands, kill the germs.

But the moment that squirt of alcohol

becomes a prerequisite

to receiving the real presence

and forgiveness of Jesus Christ

is the moment that we commit the same sin

as the Pharisees.

The Bread and Wine carry the Gospel,

not the hand sanitizer.

Here’s where I think the real danger is:

human traditions can easily exclude people

from the worshipping community.

Human traditions can easily create barriers

that keep people away from the altar.

Some barriers are physical,

like the steps that lead up here,

and we can work with that barrier,

we can bring communion to the pew.

Most barriers put up by religious folks like us

are barriers of the heart and mind.

I believe we are called to discern

what other barriers need to be broken down,

for that is God’s work:

breaking down any barrier

that get in the way of us and our God.

That’s Christmas:

God destroyed the divide between us and God

God tore open the heavens

for Emmanuel: for God is with us.

That’s the cross:

destroying the barrier of sin.

That’s the resurrection:

destroying the barrier of death.

This is why I am so passionate about

keeping an open Communion table.

How dare I place a barrier

in front of anyone who wants to receive

the living God?

The real barriers aren’t steps and long aisles,

the real barriers are created by our sin.

So here is my simple suggestion for

God’s faithful people today:

Your heavenly Parent is calling you

just like your earthly parents called out:

“Come. Wash your hands for supper.”

Eat Jesus’ food,

Receive the bread from heaven,

life giving bread.

Come to the Lord’s table,

Run to Jesus,

trust in what God is doing here,

you need not hunger any more,

you need not thirst any more.

The infection of sin and evil is real,

and we are called to take sin seriously.

Purity and impurity,

clean and unclean do matter.

The sins that are within

are what are contagious.

Like COVID or the measles or Monkey Pox

sin and evil spreads so easily.

Even the intention to sin spreads,

and separates us from God.

What defiles is from within each and every one of us,

from the human heart evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice,

wickedness, deceit, licentiousness,

envy, slander, pride, folly.

All these evil things come from within,

and they defile a person.

and they spread like disease.

So wash your hands for supper.

Come to the table,

take in Jesus.

This is a meal of forgiveness,

where you are filled by Christ’s presence,

which cleanses impurity.

The bread and wine with God’s Word

is like spiritual detox for the impurities.

Trust that as you ingest the bread and wine,

along with God’s Word of promise,

the contagion of sin

is engulfed in the arms of Christ’s love.

Evil cannot stand amidst the love of God.

Trust that you are nourished at this table

so that rather than spreading

the infection of sin,

you might spread the Gospel of salvation

and join God’s work of removing barriers

that get between us and God

between us and our neighbours.

Jesus shows us that there is no reason

to be afraid of the unholiness of others.

We need not be afraid of that which may seem

anything but holy,

for all God’s ground is holy ground.

In the words of Angela Deinhart Hancock,

“The world Jesus invites us to see

has no quarantines,

no holding cells,

no decontamination chambers.

So (Jesus) eats with sinners and tax collectors,

touches lepers,

handles dead bodies,

preaches to pig farmers,

and, (…) has a deep conversation

with a pagan woman.

Nothing can keep Jesus away from them,

or from the Pharisees

who clearly drive him a little bit crazy,

or from the disciples who

persist in incomprehension,

or—hear this—from us.

Nothing will keep Jesus away from you.

You are forgiven.

you are at one with our God,

you are God’s child,

washed clean in baptism

You have a place at God’s supper table,

So hear your Heavenly Parent’s call:

“Wash your hands,

and come for supper!”

Thanks be to God. Amen.