Upside down and outside in

“…Listen to me, all of you, and understand” (Mark 7:14)

Mark 7:1-23 (Year B: 14^th Sunday after Trinity, 2^nd September, 2018)

Why is that religion, like politics, generates so much controversy? In this week’s passage from the Gospel of Mark, Jesus does not mince his words on objections raised by his critics.  He takes on the traditions of the elders of his time. They had turned certain traditions, interpretations and rules into absolutes while disregarding the core of Godly commandments centered on justice, compassion and truth.

Even today, some folk attach a lot of importance to appearance, ritual and customs as the defining points of their religion.  These things offer comfort and come from the deep wells of ‘tradition’. More than that, adherence to particular customs helps distinguish ‘us’ from ‘them’. (Well, if the others drive on the right hand side of the road and use metric measures, we do it differently around here. Anyway, it is up to them to change……).

The habits of a lifetime and the traditions of the ancestors shape deep ravines in our minds and memories. ‘It was always like that here’ and ‘that’s the way it is done here’ seems to be the guiding principle.

We underestimate, at our peril, the extent of ‘unwritten rules’ in many organisations, families and situations. Let’s call it Culture. And culture is important. But, we do not need to be slaves to culture because culture evolves through the experience of human communities. But, we should be mindful of the important role of culture in shaping public discourse as well as our own faith tradition.

Culture shapes our interpretations of texts whether from the sacred scriptures or other sources.  And these texts reflect cultural norms at the time they were written – even under divine inspiration. The decision about which texts are ‘canonical’ (definitely included in the Bible) reflects debates, controversies and competing points of view in the Church decades and centuries after the time of Jesus.  The Bible – as we know it – evolved out of stories and many books and texts and letters and poems. A 21^st century Christian in Europe will not read and receive the sacred scriptures in quite the same way as a 16^th century Christian in Europe never mind one in Africa now or 1,500 years ago. Let’s not confuse what is cultural and temporary from what is eternal and unchangeable. God, alone, is unchangeable and certain and sure. We must be open to God’s Holy Spirit in scripture, tradition and shared experience and right reasoning.

Notions of what is right and what is pure continue to influence religious debate in our day. The notion of religious purity may concern notions of what are appropriate and what are not appropriate expressions of sexuality, for example. It may also concern various practices and ways of behaviour quite apart from sexual behaviour which continue to preoccupy religious people even in today’s world.

In Old Testament times, the notion of purity was very often tied up with not worshiping idols or not partaking in the sacrifices or rituals of others as well as abstaining from various foods as well as keeping away from impure things like persons afflicted with leprosy or not touching dead bodies, etc.

In the gospels we hear about the Pharisees, the scribes and the doctors of the law snooping around and watching to observe and catch out the disciples of Jesus in some infringement of their religious codes. Their focus was on purity, exclusion and censor.  Religion, for them, was about staying on the right side of God by adhering to the traditions, regulations and understandings of the elders. Jesus, in one salvo, dispels their claims and criticisms by invoking the solid tradition of the prophets and Isaiah, in particular, who abhorred a religion of formalism and external compliance but lacked the core of compassion, decency and honesty.

It would be all too easy to read this passage of Mark and, indeed, the entire gospels as a confrontation between Jesus, the Messiah, and the old Jewish religion complete with legalism and particularism.  The actual situation is more complex as Christianity emerged from within the Jewish faith. The problem today, as when these gospels were written, is not in the detail of the laws as much as in the order of importance beginning with the simple but overwhelming truth that God is love and on this very same love which requires us to love our neighbour hangs ‘all the law and the prophets’ (Matthew 22:40).

It is worth recalling what the passage of Isaiah quoted by Jesus says:

The Lord said: Because these people draw near with their mouths and honour me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote. Isaiah 29:13

Pretty damning then; pretty damning now? What do you think?

In the upside-down and outside-in world of false religion, God is placed at the service of human ideology and notions. This ideology becomes god in a way that mocks the very idea of the living God-who-is-love.  Outer compliance becomes the test of faith and fidelity while the inner heart is ‘full of dead men’s bones’. Later in the gospel of Matthew Jesus tells us (Matt 23:27):

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth.

The things that defile us come from within and Jesus gives a non-exhaustive list of examples (v21-22):

…..fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly…..

Take slander.  How often are people slandered in conversations – even ordinary every-day conversations? How often we join in especially when it comes to public figures whom we don’t even know or have never met face to face. To refer to someone as a ‘traitor’ or having betrayed a cause or a relationship carries a huge burden of responsibility on our part because we put ourselves in the seat of God. Thankfully God is not anywhere near the merciless judges that we can sometimes be – confident in our own correctness and convinced about others on the basis of the most partial of evidence and oblivious to what it might be like to really ‘walk in the shoes of another’.

Down through the ages, the very mindset criticised by Jesus has been widespread in the various Christian churches. Under guise of correctness and doctrinal purity, some were hounded, persecuted, excluded, ridiculed, judged and put outside the camp of the saved. Much cruelty was, and is, practiced in the name of religion and, sadly, in the name of Christ.

Were there intelligent life on Mars and were a Martian to arrive on earth in 2018, ‘it’ might be forgiven for thinking that the main concern of religious persons – many Christians certainly being no exception – is sex.  In the recent decades more controversies, splits, expulsions, silencings, dissenting publications, resolutions, instructions and more besides have been generated by sex and things to do with sex.  At least, nowadays, Christians no longer kill each other over doctrines to do with the role of faith and good works. Rather, instead, we squabble over sex.

Now, the areas of sexuality, intimacy, commitment, marriage and family are vital parts of human living and it would be altogether astonishing if the bible had nothing to say about these matters and how lives can and should be formed to bring glory to God and well-being to his people (the two being entirely mutually reinforcing). It has much to say about these matters and we should hear, pray and study what it is that is said, across the Bible, about sex, marriage and inter-personal relationships.  Indeed, stable, loving and committed relationships – of which marriage is the ideal – are a key foundation of personal, familial and societal well-being and cohesion.

However, there is more to living, and right living at that, than just the mechanics of sex – important and vital as that is to live in accordance with God’s will in every area of life. 

If one thing is astonishing about religious controversy in the early 21^st Century it is how much attention is given sex compared to other matters such as the great social injustices of our day – environmental destruction, poverty, racism, wars, oppression as well as a denial of all sorts of human rights.  Of course, churches and Christians are often to the fore in speaking about these wider social and ecological matters and seeking change as well as being to the fore in directly tackling these problems. However, I suggest that there is still an imbalance when it comes to public discourse.

For too many people, fear is the guiding force of their religious observance. It is a question of fear of punishment, fear of disgrace, fear of the road not taken and the risk not embraced.

We would do well to listen again and understand (verse 14).