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Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
In his world, Jesus was supposed to hate people in the other room. Turns out hate just wasn't in his nature. And this woman and this man confirmed their right to wholeness through him. And Jeremy opened the series Mark part two, and he pushed us to boldly walk with these gospel stories. And when we looked at the story of Jesus feeding a large Jewish crowd, we considered a more natural perspective.
Speaker 1:Like, maybe Jesus didn't pull thousands of loaves of bread out of a hat, but inspired the crowd to dig into their pockets and to produce enough to go around. And then we saw Jesus walk on water, and sometimes we bring simple Sunday school explanations to these stories like, oh, obviously, Jesus can do anything. Jesus is God. The answer is Jesus. But what we explored last week was an expanded imagination.
Speaker 1:Past Sunday school answers to the challenge of seeing God in everyday places. Jeremy said it like this, if you can learn to see God in lunch with a stranger, you won't need to see God walking on water. And I just love that. Today, we step out of the realm of the phenomena, and we settle into the realm of conflict and new perspectives and what it means to defile one's heart. But before we get there, let us pray.
Speaker 1:Loving God, who is both beyond our comprehension and available to us to be comprehended. We take a moment to center our hearts, our bodies, our minds on just something we are grateful for. As we are present to this moment, we pay attention to our inhale and our exhale. Could be the wisest thing we do all day. For the sorrow we hold in the season of Lent, for the violence of the world, for the heartbreak of loss, for the pain in minds and bodies, we trust that you wholly one accompany it all.
Speaker 1:We also open our hearts to the joy that we move toward at Easter for the space to try again, for the creativity of spring's new life, for the conversations where we feel heard. We trust that you divine presence accompany it all. So may the peace and the confidence of Christ be with us. Amen. Today, we are in Mark chapter seven, and you can think of this chapter as a doorway.
Speaker 1:Up until this doorway in Mark, you've mostly been in a room with Jewish converts to the Jesus way. But after this doorway, you'll move into a room of Gentile believers. Chapter seven is a doorway between these two rooms. It is the site of transition. And I don't know about you, but I have had really important conversations in my life around doorways.
Speaker 1:There's something about these transition sites that evoke truth telling. Like, I would not have literally married Jonathan if it wouldn't have been a doorway conversation I had with my friend, Maggie. That is a story for another day, but it is real. It happened. The point is, I am telling you, doorway conversations, they are a thing.
Speaker 1:Pay attention to them. Literal and metaphorical. Put a pin in that. First, let's make our way through Mark chapter seven. Today, we're gonna talk about food rules, a one to punch, a parable to fight with, and sacred disruption.
Speaker 1:The story starts like this. The pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled, that is unwashed. The pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. When they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash, and they observe many other traditions such as washing of cups, pitchers, and kettles. It's the details, you know?
Speaker 1:So the pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands. Okay. We've got a showdown. Religious wonks from the city come and corner Jesus about what's wrong with his disciples. Now right away, we need to be clear about handwashing.
Speaker 1:What's being challenged is not hygiene as in Jesus' disciples are these dirty germ spreaders. I mean, they probably are. They're human, but that's not the point. What's being challenged is ritual purity. This is about identity, identity, identity.
Speaker 1:Do Jesus' disciples follow the Jewish rules? Do their bodies practice a worshipful art form that keeps them pure? And the answer is no. Not exactly. The rules about Sabbath and circumcision and diet pulled communities into enclaves, and Jesus' disciples were too far down a road outside of what was acceptable to the authorities to turn back.
Speaker 1:Now here's the thing about Jewish law. It means more than one thing to more than one group of people, and interpret chain interpretations change. Of course, there's the written Torah, the Pentateuch, the first five books of the bible referred to as the books of Moses. But the law also includes the oral Torah. This is the interpretation of the five books of Moses, later recorded as the Mishnah.
Speaker 1:An oral Torah is important. It is so important that it's believed that the Pentateuch can't stand on its own. It requires interpretation. What's happening here is the teachers and the Pharisees who are Mark's favorite antagonists, they ask, why don't your disciples follow our rules? Why don't they live out the sacred path just like we do?
Speaker 1:And the rules are translated as tradition of the elders. It's a phrase meant to criticize their interpretation of the purity code. Like, just because that's how we used to do ritual, doesn't mean that's how we always should do ritual. And it helps to know what that in written Torah, handwashing was a practice meant for just the priests. But rules always get added to rules, sometimes for good reason.
Speaker 1:For a time, the pharisees wanted to make the practice of faith more accessible. So they said, hey, ritual handwashing, it can be good for everyone, and I actually do appreciate that. Only as far as Jesus' disciples were concerned, ritual handwashing kept their table so small. If they followed all the rules, when they sat down for dinner, they'd only share bread with people who were just like them. And isn't that a funny thing about rules and religion?
Speaker 1:They can be so double edged. They start off meaning well, but many rules about how to practice faith eventually, they kinda miss their mark. I'm thinking about all the rules about sex and rules about politics and rules about who can lead. I happen to read all the membership applications at Commons, and I know how common it is for us to be people who fought old rules and still kept our faith. That's you all, and I applaud that.
Speaker 1:Structures of obedience have unintended consequences. Instead of keeping us safe, some rules actually keep us from living. They deny us the hard work of forming an ethical rubric that's not just about easy answers, but one that we'd be really proud to live by. And Jesus challenges rules when they lose their way to love. So next, he steps towards conflict.
Speaker 1:After the pharisees ask the question about breaking their rules, that's the last we'll hear from them in this story. Their mouths are zipped. And Jesus replies, Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites. As it is written, these people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain.
Speaker 1:Their teachings are merely human rules. You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions. In the first answer that Jesus gives here, he reminds the religious leaders of Isaiah's take on why Jerusalem was captured violently by the Assyrians in July. Isaiah said, you know what? To God's people, you brought it upon yourself.
Speaker 1:And this is an important parallel for people reading Mark who had experienced Rome's intense persecution and later destruction of Jerusalem in seventy CE. So we can imagine these people are asking similar questions again and again. How are these horrible things still happening to us? And when the world feels so out of control, people hold tight to rules that they can control. And Mark's Jesus has this way of like actually acknowledging that.
Speaker 1:You think your rules can save you. Like cities fall though and rules they get broken and faith goes deeper than that. So Jesus gives a second answer. He says, you have a funny way of putting aside God's commands and preferring your own. Moses said, honor your parents and you manipulate temple offerings so that sons won't have to take care of their parents as they age.
Speaker 1:You nullify the word of God with these loopholes, and you do many things like this. By pulling apart this tradition of what was called the Korban or this special offering, Jesus aims to take their power just down a few notches. Like, check yourself. You're working against what the law intended all along. And then Jesus calls these guys hypocrites.
Speaker 1:And it's a Greek word sounding very much like our English word. It's hypokrites. And it's actually theatrical and means the actor plays a part other than their own authentic self. That's right. Etymologically, a hypocrite is just an actor.
Speaker 1:So as I see it, Jesus says to these religious leaders, you're acting. I don't think you really believe what you say you believe. What offends Jesus is how inauthentic these rule followers are on and on about hand washing as if they care about that. Jesus says to pharisees, this isn't who you are. You could care about so much more than staying in Rome's good books.
Speaker 1:You could liberate. You could join us around the table. You could make new friends. So as Jesus challenges the tradition of the elders in a very real way, he writes one of his own. It's not the letter of the law God cares so much about.
Speaker 1:Do you eat this or that? Do you baptize this way or that way? Do you follow your lent ritual with perfection? No. It's not the purity or perfection of the rules that matter to God.
Speaker 1:What matters is the way God loves us for trying to make every rule that we think we need more loving and meant to bring life to all. This is the dynamic nature of a tradition, of rules and laws inspired and made up. They serve us until they don't. And we are meant to outgrow the things that we hold to so tightly and to open ourselves up to what might come next. Jesus tells a parable that does that.
Speaker 1:Next, Jesus turns to the crowd and says, listen, everyone, nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, Jesus says, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them. And maybe you weren't expecting a poop joke, but Jesus does go there. Then Jesus leaves the crowd and enters a house, and the disciples ask what he meant. And Jesus calls the fellas dull and then restates the parable.
Speaker 1:Don't you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them for it doesn't go into their heart but into their stomach and then out of the body. In saying this Jesus declared all foods clean. He went on, what comes out of a person is what defiles them For it is from within, from a person's heart, that evil thoughts come. Sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly. All of these evils come from inside and defile a person.
Speaker 1:Now one of my favorite things about Mark is that he speaks to the Gentiles in the back. He's got this eye for the folks who could easily be pushed aside. And in explaining Jewish traditions to Gentiles, Mark uses phrases that really oversimplify, and he paints opponents as these caricatures. For example, it's not literally true that the handwashing was done by pharisees and quote all the Jews in verse three. Mark's just saying, yeah, those rules, they come from the Jewish tradition.
Speaker 1:And whether you grew up with it or not, grappling with the tradition is a part of who we are. In Mark's context, Jesus' followers struggle to form what Ched Myers calls an integrated community. And the circle, it was widening. And their differences were real. In the gospel, it has this way of stretching to include them.
Speaker 1:So when Mark has Jesus say a controversial thing like Jesus declared all foods clean, those are fighting words and Mark means them, only the words are meant to bring people together. This is confrontation that is meant to heal. So here, in 2024, when we slam into purity codes, we probably feel a little off. Like, out of our depths, I know I do. The strictest food rules I have in my life are about who cooks on what night of the week at my house.
Speaker 1:Jonathan cooks Monday and Friday dinners and Saturday brunch. I cook the rest because, let's face it, I'm way better at it. But what's important is that my husband pulls his domestic weight. That is a part of our bliss. It helps to think of purity laws as boundary markers, The actions that keep people close to their values.
Speaker 1:And what Jesus does here is shift a boundary. Jesus says the true sight of impurity is not your hands, it's your heart. And what he means by heart is that deep down place where our core commitments and our truest intentions and our sturdiest of will resides. And if you're hung up on the word purity, it can be helpful to think about what it isn't. We betray something pure when we deny our bonds of love, reverence for the divine, and our own inner wisdom.
Speaker 1:Purity is the clear alignment of love and action. Now, normally, I am not a big fan of a long list of sins. It's never really been that motivating for me. But I like what this list is doing. Rattled off, it's sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, slander, envy, arrogance, and folly.
Speaker 1:This is a list that speaks to both sides of the crowd. Greco Romans would recognize in this list a vice list. And the Jewish community would see in it the 10 commandments. And when that whooshes past you, you have to notice that every item on the list is about how we treat each other. Here's the lesson.
Speaker 1:Gospel is only gospel when it's good for all sides. The pharisees and rule followers and outsiders, the freaks and the geeks and the try hards and those who don't try hard enough, the powerful, the oppressed, and new followers of the Jesus way. So so far, Jesus disrupted the power of Jewish religious leaders, and that's the sacred gift that he gives them. But next, Jesus is disrupted by Gentiles in need, and here comes the sacred gift he actually has to receive. So Jesus ventures further into Gentile territory, and a woman rushes at him.
Speaker 1:And she's nameless, though we know her as the Syrophoenician woman. And the mention of this Gentile region marks her as a real adversary. Her people had killed and imprisoned Jesus' people in a time of war. So this woman, she begs Jesus to heal her deeply disturbed daughter, and he tells her he's actually meant to help people, his own people first. And she sasses back.
Speaker 1:Even the dogs under the table get the crumbs, and that is it. That does it. Jesus heals the daughter right from where he's standing, right there on her turf. And next, Jesus goes to Sidon. And the point of these name places is to signal to Mark's listeners that Jesus is very much in Gentile territory now.
Speaker 1:And inside on, some people bring a man to Jesus who may want healed. This man can't hear and he can't speak. And Jesus takes him to a private place, gets strangely close. He puts his fingers in the man's ears. He spits on his hands, touches the man's tongue, and looks up to heaven and says, be opened.
Speaker 1:And the man is healed. This reference to opened eyes and unstopped ears is a vision of Yahweh doing the same in Isaiah 35. Between these two, a desperate mother and a man in need, Jesus is forced to actually practice what he preaches. Like even as he pushes aside extra purity rules, more rules of defilement need to fall. And finally, because I think three stories are better than two, here's a final disruption, but this one is personal.
Speaker 1:In my early twenties, I lived and worked in California for a few years. I did ministry at a church in the San Francisco Bay Area. It wasn't a liberal church, just a bunch of really lovely Presbyterians. And as I was getting ready to leave California and move back to Canada, I was with a friend who came out to me one afternoon in the doorway of our youth ministry office. And this was a long time ago, I'm sad to say, I wasn't quite affirming yet.
Speaker 1:Like, I think I wanted to be, but I didn't know how. And I remember that as my friend spoke and cried a little and told me what he hoped for, there was this almost physical shift in my heart. I thought, what else would I hope for but what he hopes for himself? What, at that time, I hoped for myself, which is just love that gets us, love that makes us feel safe, and love that wraps its strong and tender arms around us and says, you're pretty great just the way you are. I went from one room into another in that 10 conversation.
Speaker 1:So remember the image of a doorway between two rooms. In Mark, Jesus' doorway conversations happen with this mother in need and this man who couldn't see and couldn't hear. Even Jesus, before looking them in the face and hearing their stories, didn't think he was for them. And in my story, my friend came to me before I felt ready to give him the answers that he needed. But in his face, I tell you, whatever I thought I knew about human coupling, seriously people, basically nothing because I was terrible at dating, none of it mattered.
Speaker 1:My friend caught me in a doorway. He told me his truth and it changed my life. It is the change of our hearts that makes us pure. In his world, Jesus was supposed to hate people in the other room. Turns out hate just wasn't in his nature.
Speaker 1:And this woman and this man confirmed their right to wholeness through him. I don't think Jesus could go through the doorway and onto what was next without these two people and their real need. Rules don't heal you or make you good. Relationships do. And look, I know relationships can be hard.
Speaker 1:If there's anything I trust, it's that Jesus knew that too. But what Jesus shows us in Mark seven is that every single person whom God flings across our path has something new to teach us. So blessed be the ways you are changed by your rebel child and your flawed partner and your strange colleague, your imperfect best friend, your fussing baby, your difficult enemy, your heartbroken ex, your unrequited crush, your nosy little neighbor. Whether they are with you for a short time or a long time, They are your sacred disruption, a little bit of holy chaos, what you never knew you needed to be made more whole. Let us pray.
Speaker 1:We just take this little moment, a gift in our day to pay attention to our minds, to stay open to the spirit, maybe to even consider rules we've followed, rules we've challenged, doorway conversations, places of transformation we've been so blessed to be a part of. God, I hope for more of those for all of us. For all the ways that the story of scripture still befriends us, we are grateful for the ways Jesus both speaks to his time and amazingly to ours, we are grateful. For the creativity before us to address the needs of the world, we are determined and we are grateful. So spirit of the living God present with us now, enter the places of our changing paradigms, our everyday worry, even our desperation, and heal us of all that harms us.
Speaker 1:Amen.
Speaker 2:Hey, Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at Commons, you can head to our website, commons.church, for more information. You can find us on all of the socials commonschurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel, where we are posting content regularly for the community. You can also join our Discord server.
Speaker 2:Head to commons.church/discord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon.