I was told the story of a farmer in rural Indiana who had a surveyor knock on his door. The surveyor needed to get in the farmer’s field to take some readings. The farmer did not reply very quickly and seemed to be hesitating, so the surveyor showed him papers saying that he was there on official U.S. government business. He didn’t require the farmer’s permission.
The farmer said “OK then” and then took the surveyor to the field and unlocked the gate. He let the surveyor in the field and closed the gate behind him. Once in the field, the surveyor noticed a fierce-looking bull who was sizing him up. He yelled for help and told the farmer to take control of his bull.
The farmer shouted back, “Show him your papers! Tell him that you don’t need his permission!”
In the Gospel reading today, we are told that the Pharisees are from Jerusalem. Jesus is from Galilee. Jerusalem was the home of the temple and it was the religious and cultural heart of Israel. People who were full of themselves were from Jerusalem. This is where the big markets and the politicians. It was not where the farms were though.
Galilee was like the Midwest with fields of grain and people who were famous for being “plain speaking” and direct in what they say. I talked to a candidate for a job at the Academies once who called Indiana “flyover” during a phone interview. He was a fancy pants guy who had lived all his life in progressive places, and that was famously the way the powerful people in Jerusalem were with Galilee. It was nice that people in Galilee were bringing food to the markets and all, but Galilee was the equivalent of first century “flyover.”
Jesus may not be the farmer in the story I told, but the Pharisees are the surveyor. Anyone in the early church would see the conflict coming and know the story would have a punchline. First you have Pharisees. Then they are from Jerusalem. It is just too good. Someone is about to “get schooled.”
Scribes and Pharisees came from Jerusalem to investigate reports that a young man, Jesus, was doing big things. It didn’t take long for them to find a problem. Jesus’ disciples were eating with defiled hands. They weren’t observing the proper hand washing ritual before eating their meals. Please note that their ritual had nothing to do with hygiene. They weren’t worried about germs. It would be many centuries before scientists discovered germs and their connection to disease. Their handwashing ritual was simply a religious ritual.
Note further that the Old Testament scriptures required hand washing only of priests, and THEY only had to do it when they were engaged in temple worship. The scribes and Pharisees decided that if it was good for the priests part of the time, it must be good for everyone all the time. So they changed the rule to require handwashing of everyone. They had established other rules too. These rules dealt with “the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles”
The Hebrew Scriptures famously contain 613 rules. The Pharisees have turned the 613 rules into a combination of the tax code and the policies and procedures for the Department of Motor Vehicles. Something reasonably simple has become insanely complicated.
In Galilee, they saw Jesus’ disciples “eating with defiled hands.” So the disciples weren’t following the handwashing rules put in place by the scribes and Pharisees. So they went to Jesus to ask, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”
Jesus responded by saying:
“Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,
‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.’
You abandon the commandment of God
and hold to human tradition”
This is the problem. People are teaching human rules as if they were God’s rules. We abandon God’s commandments and follow human traditions.
Then, in the scripture omitted by the lectionary reading, Jesus shows how these holy men had managed to sidestep one of the Ten Commandments. The commandment to honor your father and mother required, among other things, that people were responsible for helping their aging parents financially. This was a time when there was no Social Security or a state pension. Families took care of the elderly. Grown children provided for their parents. A challenge for the children is that sometimes caring for a parent would impact your standard of living. You might have to sell off some of your property, and then you would not get the income from it any more.
Now you are thinking we have a responsibility to care for our parents and people trying to weasel out of that were jerks. It turns out that for the Jews, they were sinners as well as jerks.
The scribes and Pharisees had figured out a way to get around this commandment and keep everything for themselves. They would declare part of their property dedicated to God. So you take gold or silver or livestock and dedicate it to God. It was like deferred giving. You get to continue using the property. You get the income off of it, but you can’t be expected to sell it to take care of your parents because it is dedicated to God.
Note that these men hadn’t really given anything to God. They continued to use it for themselves, but they did not want use it to help their parents. It is like a tax loophole to get out of paying taxes, except that it is your parents who are getting nothing instead of Uncle Sam.
So the scribes and Pharisees are evading God’s laws using a crafty dodge, but they are were criticizing Jesus for allowing his disciples to ignore human traditions. So you are thinking “OK – God’s law in one hand and human tradition in the other. Which one and I going to go with?” I know what I hope my answer is going to be.
Jesus calls them hypocrites. He quotes the prophet Isaiah.
That’s all well and good, but you might ask what that has to do with us. We, like Jesus’ disciples, don’t practice ritual handwashing. No one seems to care about this any more.
People today might dress differently than the people of Jesus’ day. We live differently too, but when all is said and done, we are much the same. We have the same needs – food, clothing, shelter, and love. We have the same temptations – sex, money, and power. We still sometimes honor God with our lips, but not with our hearts. We are tempted to abandon God’s commandments to be popular.
Albert Schweitzer – a Christian who lived his life in service to others – talked about Christians who failed to live according to Christian principles. He said:
For centuries (Christianity) treasured
the great commandment of love and mercy
as traditional truth
without recognizing it as a reason for opposing slavery,
witch-burning, torture,
and all the other ancient and medieval forms of inhumanity.
None of us in church today have kept slaves or burned a witch at the stake. We can feel good about that. The point though is that we are hypocrites, just not in the same way the Pharisees or the slave owners were.
Our culture teaches us all sorts of things that are wrong. This is one of those things culture does. The Pharisees were doing it in today’s Gospel.
Culture teaches us that things are more important than people. It teaches us that what “she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.” It teaches us that if we don’t get caught, it is ok. It teaches us to value appearance more than substance. It teaches us that we should take care of number one and care about others if it is convenient or has some benefit for us. It teaches us that we are self-made men and women. We are more successful than others because we are better people. It teaches us that there are lots of things more important than getting to church. You can make your own list.
Here are my questions for you.
In what ways are we hypocrites?
In what ways is God calling us to live authentic Christian lives despite what culture teaches us?
I have said these words in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Sermon preached by Fr. Tom at St. Thomas, Plymouth
August 30, 2015; Fourteenth Sunday of Pentecost
Song of Solomon 2:8-13
Psalm 45:1-2, 7-10
James 1:17-27
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23