“Beg to Differ”

A Sermon Based Upon Mark 7:  1-23  NRSV

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin.  

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Second Sunday After Epiphany,  January 17, 2016

So 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?" (Mk. 7:5 NRS)

As a child I recall the first time I ever heard about concept of ‘globalization’.  It didn’t come as an economic term, but it came as a religious fear, called “one-world-government”. 

The so-called ‘preacher’ who was spreading this fear was an evangelist by the name of Darrell Dunn.  While I never heard him speak, I heard a lot about him from others who did.   I learned that this evangelist claimed that the establishment of the UN by then president J.F. Kennedy signaled the beginning of a one-world-government that served as the foundation for the coming of the Anti-Christ.  This “anti-Christ” would soon rule the whole world with a single ‘one-world-government’  just before the second-coming of Jesus.  By that evangelist’s fear-mongering calculations, this ‘one-world-government’ should already be in place.  The end should have already come, but we are still here.

While those very ridiculous predictions did not come true, the so-called evangelist did reflect a true reality we now experience.  We do seem to be on the way to being one global culture, where the people of the world have much more in common, than we are different.   This reality is being observed already in the rise of the “Cyber Society” that has come with a bang.   But the truth is it was happening long before this.  Right after the fall of the “Berlin Wall”,  I personally saw the rapid change overtaking eastern Europe, where you could quickly see advertisements about Coca-Cola, cars, cosmetics, clothes, and coffee being displayed in the all the cities and towns of eastern Europe, which were being transformed by their hunger for ‘western’ goods. 

This worldwide ‘globalization’ even has implications for us.  If you stroll into the Starbucks in Clemmons, Winston-Salem or Statesville, you can find yourself part of a cultural experiment on a scale never seen before on this planet. In less than half a century, this coffee chain has grown from a single outlet in Seattle to nearly 20,000 shops in around 60 countries.  Each year, its near identical stores serve cups of near identical coffee in near identical cups to hundreds of thousands of people. For the first time in history, your “morning cup of joe” can be the same no matter whether you are sipping it in Winston, in New York, Berlin, Bangkok or Buenos Aires (http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120522-one-world-order).

Of course, it is not just Starbucks. Select any global brand from Coca Cola to Facebook and the chances are you will see or feel their presence in most countries around the world. It is easy to see how this homogenization is already at work among most of the world’s cultures.  Perhaps it is exactly this blending of cultures that is the primary growing threat to self- identity, to cultural diversity, and to ethnic and religious distinction that is very much part of the reason that a large part of the Arab world feels threatened by the west.  Has this rapid pace of acculturalization overwhelmed a people unable to absorb and accommodate the changes now taking place?  “Change”, especially when it means ‘cultural’ or ‘religious’ change, can be a scary word, can’t it?   Do we have the spiritual, emotional, and cultural resources to withstand the changes that are also coming to us?   As humans who constantly live in a tossing sea of change, we need something that remains constant.  Normally we have turned to our ‘religion’ to be that ‘anchor’ for us.  

But what happens when ‘religion’ itself is the source of challenge for change?  That is exactly what this text from Mark is about.   Here, it is Jesus and his disciples who are threatening the status quo.  Jesus is not trying to bring everyone together, but he is intentionally trying to undo some of the traditions his religious ‘elders’ are holding.   Jesus and his disciples will no longer observe the rituals that have become the ‘norms’.  By ‘begging to differ’ on purpose, Jesus and his disciples are accused of going up against the ‘traditions of the elders.”  Publically, intentionally, and also brazenly, Jesus chooses not to do things ‘the way they have always been done’. 

How do we know when and how comply and conform, or when we and how we should differ?  Especially as we think about all the powers working to bring us all together under one large, economic, political and global roof, what differences should we retain and which ones should we surrender?    Are there still any good reasons to on ‘beg to differ’ to the culture, to a religious viewpoint, or to the established norms of human order or tradition?   Is there any way we should still say, “Vive la différence!”   

THE TROUBLE WITH BEING DIFFERENT

Since this is a sermon, and not a sociological study, we can’t consider every possible answer about what it means to conserve or to conform or what it means to challenge the status quo.  As human beings who live in living systems that must constantly adapt and change to remain alive, we know that every must constantly evaluate when to be conservative and when to be liberal.  

What I do want us to consider, especially in this upcoming year of presidential politics, is to see why Jesus is sometimes viewed as a liberal and other times, he might be called very conservative?   It would be hard to peg or pin Jesus down to any particular political persuasion, yet I do believe, we can uncover the most basic moral, spiritual, and social value that ‘made Jesus tick’.  I think we can also learn what should both motivate and guide us as followers of Jesus Christ.

Whether we consider ourselves conservative or liberal, or anything else beyond or in between, we don’t have to know much about sociology, politics or religion, in order to understand why Jesus was making a lot of people mad with his ministry.   In this text, Jesus chooses NOT to observe or to do what was most expected by the established political and religious leaders of his time.  Jesus’ decision to differ threatened some well-established public ceremonies and religious traditions, which in turn endangered the positions of those upholding them.  Why was Jesus doing this?  Why did he cause so much trouble?

We can understand something of what is going on here, because we’ve also experienced it in our own lives.  My first time experiencing the ‘trouble’ of social or religious change came when I was in the seventh grade, as the ‘all white’ Harmony School was integrated with the ‘all black’ Houstonville school.  Suddenly, one day, Harmony school built a new building so that it would be able to open its doors to a large group of black students, and new black teacher too.   At the same time, I recall hearing on television some of the heated discussions about ‘segregation’ and ‘integration’.   There were all kinds of fear and frustration.  But what I experienced in the classroom at Harmony was all-together different.  I had a new math teacher who was friendly and funny.   I gained some new ‘friends’ who were black.  I just couldn’t understand what all the adult arguing was about.  It wasn’t until I reached High School that the ‘bomb-threats’ that some troubles started to surface.   But all of those threats weren’t real.  What was real was that there was a new integration and incorporation of black into our ‘white’ southern lives. 

Most of us remember something about ‘integration’ and have our own stories to tell.   But what did this ‘change’ and ‘challenge’ to the status quo finally mean?  Have we discovered that we are all more alike than we are different, or have we learned that we are still as different as ever?   Last year, our culture learned that our culture, both south and north, still struggles with our differences and with ‘racism’ on many fronts.  We still see the ‘trouble’ that change brings, even when it is needed and necessary. 

It is now, just as it was then, that Jesus was also inviting social and religious ‘change’ to his own culture, and some of the ‘gatekeepers’ of the culture were very upset about it.  They looked at Jesus’ actions with great suspicion, fear, and mistrust: “Why don’t your disciples follow the tradition of the elders” (vs. 5)?  Why would they ‘eat with dirty, defiled hands’ and dare to do things differently?

BEING DIFFERENT ON PURPOSE

There is little doubt, that Jesus was very much a religious revolutionary of his time as he challenged the status quo of his world.   Even today, those who dare to take Jesus seriously and follow his lead, can still be viewed as a threat.   But it was also the ‘purposes’ behind Jesus’ religious, political and social ‘challenges’ that made and still makes Jesus so special, so enduring, and so important for us, as both a religious savior and also as a religious revolutionary.   Let me explain.

Just the other day, several pastors and I were bemoaning the fact that many have little time to consider the method and ministry of Jesus as important to our times.  This came up as we were reading about the remarkable life Billy Graham as it has been critically analyzed by Duke University professor, Grant Wacker, in his book, “America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation”.   We spoke of how there probably will never be an evangelist like him who went around the country preaching with a certain amount of authority saying,  “The Bible says… which caused folks to perk up their ears and listen.  Most people today, don’t care that much about what the Bible says, or at least, even if they still believe it, they see its views as archaic, unimportant or irrelevant to most of their everyday lives.

As we continued talking, someone asked me directly, how can we help to make Jesus relevant to those who already think Jesus or the Bible is irrelevant?  I answered that I thought there was only one place where we could go: The Prophets.    If there is anything in the Bible can still awaken us out of our spiritual slumber, it is the sight of those thundering, God-inspired activists, who dared to name the truth and would even call out kings, priests, and people in some very direct, challenging, and counter-cultural ways.  Maybe, just maybe, I said, if people could see just how radical and revolutionary these prophets were, they might see that the Bible still speaks, even to a people who have become hard of hearing or unwilling to heed the truth being told.

When Jesus refused to make his disciples wash their hands, he was being ‘prophetic’.  He was not only trying to speak the truth, but he wanted to display the truth, and make room for the truth in both religion and for life.   This was the ‘purpose’ behind his challenge.  Jesus wasn’t just being different for the sake of being different, but he was being different for a reason.  But what was it?  What was behind all this trouble he was causing by going against the way things were?  And what is it in Jesus that should still inform and motivate us to know where we should draw our own lines of faith and responsibility?

BEING DIFFERENT INSIDE OUT

Jesus drew a line when it came to ‘hand washing’?  But what in the world did such a religious ritual like this have to do with helping, redeeming or saving people?   We all know that Jesus was not a revolutionary for the sake of starting a revolution, but Jesus was a revolutionary for the sake of being a ‘savior’---for not only aiming to save the soul of a nation but for saving the souls of people too.  Jesus begged to differ to confront his culture, which was a ‘cause’ that eventually put him on the cross. 

What Jesus confronts, both in this text and in the whole of his ministry, was the fact that his culture had come to care much more about the keeping the traditions of the past and protecting their own coffers for the future than for caring for the real needs of the hurting, the suffering, and the struggling people trying to survive in the present.  The religion and the politics of Jesus’ day was losing its ‘soul’ because it had become so self-serving, so hypocritical, and so careless, that it had forgotten how to be compassionate enough to care.  This is why Jesus drew a line to challenge his world to change.  Jesus begged to differ so that he could initiate a change of ‘heart’.

Do you see that in this text, it is the trouble within the human heart that points to Jesus’ purpose and reason for his challenge?   What Jesus found so troubling was what God also sees as most troubling,  when humans laws, traditions, and human forms of religion do more to cause problems than to solve them.   This is why Jesus challenges the ‘traditions’ of ‘outward’ hand wishing, with what wasn’t coming ‘from their hearts’, Nothing in the culture was going to change through the rituals unless real compassion and care for others and for God was coming from within their own hearts.

This whole issue of ‘hand washing’ might at first seem quite silly to our own modern eyes, but the challenge of Jesus still needs to challenge us.   We too should not accept everything just because it’s always been done, just like we shouldn’t challenge something that is established just because we don’t like it.   In his ministry and message, Jesus gives us a much needed directive for challenge, change and also for establishing what might be called a ‘true’ religion or worthy human tradition.  Can you see what it is?   Can you name it?  Can you follow it?  Would you dare?

Writing about the core of Jesus’ mission and ministry the late Marcus Borg, wrote that right at the center of the conflict with Jesus, was a conflict between two very different ways of looking at life.  One way of life, looked at the established, outward, norms of religion, life, and politic---claiming that people are made good, holy, and righteous by what they do, the rituals they follow, and the responsibilities they obey.  While there this is all true, it is not all the truth.  

The other way of thinking was that it is not enough to be holy, because we can come to misunderstand what being good, holy, or righteous means---either in life, religion, or politics.  What is most important is not the law you follow, but the inward compassion you show, the care you give, and the neighbor you are helping and the good you are doing in this very moment.  This, says Jesus, is the kind of holiness that God desires, This is not the kind of holiness that you only reason out in your head, but it’s the kind of holiness only found in the depth of your soul or heart.  Only when you ‘are merciful’ or you ‘are compassionate’ as God is compassionate, is when you can be are rightly holy as God is holy.   In Jesus’ ministry, message, and even in his death for sinners on the cross, Jesus was begging to differ with the wrong-headed ways of the world and wrong-hearted religion of his own people, who were missing the ‘heart’ of God. 

“It is what comes out of a person that defiles (or pollutes) his life” (v. 20), says Jesus.   He means that if you are going to have a life worth living, a tradition worth holding, or even a faith worth believing, it must have a heart, and always have a real concern and compassion for people.  If it doesn’t, then your politic, your tradition or your faith is nothing more than dead traditions that like junk food, ends up in the septic tank having done nothing to nourish your heart or to save your soul from destruction.

“You had better get to the ‘heart’ of the matter,” Jesus is saying.  And isn’t he also saying not just to them, but also to us?   You had better side with the good ‘habits of the heart’ or you will find yourselves and your nation, washed down the sewer with the all your empty, self-justifying deeds.  But instead of having everything end like this, make your life count for something.  Be different for the right reasons.  And make the right reasons the constant, continual care and compassion of the most vulnerable people, not just the protection of what is holy in you or me.  You let me take care of what is holy.  I’m God.  Don’t you believe I can take care of that?

Your job is to take care of what is most holy in you, your heart.  To do this you must have change of heart so you will have a heart for me, which means to have a heart for those who need your own care and your compassion.  This is the only kind of religion really matters.  Only a religion that cares, is a religion that remains ‘pure’ and  ‘undefiled’  before God’.  (James 1.27).   For as James also says, “Judgment will be without mercy to anyone who hasn’t shown mercy (or compassion); mercy triumphs over judgment. (Jas. 2:13 NRS).  In the end, everything will be ‘judged’ based having a heart that both feels and acts.  If this is true, isn’t it time for us to ‘beg to differ’ with coldness of our culture and popular religion.  Is it time for you to cleanse your heart, and not just your hands?  Amen.