Marching to Zion

Sermon from March 1, 2020.

Mark 7:1-23

         Well, as we are now into the month of March, it is becoming more and more obvious that we are moving out of winter and into the season of spring. The days are definitely getting longer and this is why next Sunday we are supposed to spring ahead an hour. In the church we respond to the longer days by realizing that this is a sign that Easter, the day when we celebrate our Lord’s resurrection, will also soon be here.  So in order to prepare ourselves for this day and all that Jesus went through leading up to that day, his suffering and his death, the church in this time of when the days are getting longer sets aside forty days for us to once again prepare ourselves, to examine our lives and see just how we are doing following Jesus in carrying our cross, day by day. This term of forty days is a Biblical number first found in the time that Moses stayed up on Mount Sinai to receive the law and then later in the Bible story we read of how the great prophet Elijah also spent forty days up on the mountain after his battle with the priests of Baal. So it comes as no surprise that when the Spirit led Jesus out into the wilderness to be tested that Jesus, the fulfillment of the law and the prophets, he too would be tested there for forty days.So, following his example we like Jesus take this time called Lent, the time of increasing length of days, to allow ourselves to be tested. The testing of Jesus centered on the question “If you are the Son of God…” and likewise our test also centers on if we say we are children of God by faith then how do we live true to this confession.

         Now there are a lot of different ways to view this season of Lent but what came to mind to me this year is that we should see Lent as a pilgrimage, a journey we are on together. This is a journey that of course has a destination and like we read about often in the Bible, this pilgrimage will lead us to Zion. There is a beautiful image of the hope of our resurrection found in the twelfth chapter of the book of Hebrews where we we read this, “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.”  This is the hope of our resurrection, this great festival in the heavenly city, a great communion of heaven and earth, angels and the firstborn in Christ all worshipping together. We need this image of fellowship and joy because as we read earlier in this same chapter, this is the joy that was set before Jesus, the joy that was the reason he endured the cross, why he despised the shame, why he is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Lent is a time when the focus is on the cross, not just the cross of Jesus but the cross we must bear as well, yet what we must not forget is that we can endure the cross set before us because beyond the cross there is a joy, the joy of that great festival in the beautiful city of God. This is why as the writer of Hebrews goes on to teach us in the next chapter, we go to Jesus outside the camp, away from the comforts of this world and bear the reproach he endured doing so because we know that here we have no lasting city but instead we seek the city that is to come. This city is the destination of this pilgrimage, this journey of Lent.

         Each Sunday in Lent is a time for us as God’s people to stop on our journey and check and see if we are headed in the right direction. We need to see if Jesus is still ahead of us or have we instead wandered off from following him on the way to the cross? In our world, the thought of denying ourselves, the thought of willingly suffering, the idea of giving up our idea of life in order that we might receive life is pretty counter-culture and it is easy to get swept off course by a world that opposes us. Today as we begin our journey, we begin at the most appropriate place, the place of our hearts. In the Hebrew language, the word for heart is depicted by two images, the first is a birds-eye view of the tents they lived in and the second is the staff of the shepherd.So, to them the heart was a person’s inner shepherd, their inner guidance system. Once we understand that the heart is our inner guidance system then we can also understand the wisdom found in the saying from the fourth chapter of Proverbs which warns us to guard our hearts for out of our hearts flow the wellspring of our life. In other words, the inner principles that we consider to be important to us will be seen in the outer direction of our life. This is what the prophet Jeremiah wrote about in the seventeenth chapter of his book where we learn that those who trust in man and makes flesh his strength shall not see any good come and life for them will be like living in a dry parched wilderness. In contrast, the person who instead trusts in the Lord will be like a tree planted by water, a person who will not fear or be anxious when hard times come but their life will be a life that will never cease to bear fruit. So, the question of the heart is who or what am I trusting to guide me through this life?

         In our scripture for today it is not apparent at first that the real issue of the problem is the heart because the controversy between the Pharisees and Jesus is all about the washing of hands. The Pharisees saw that some of the disciples ate without first washing their hands and to them this meant that these disciples were considered to them to be defiled. Now, this term defiled is probably one most of us are not familiar with but the best way to understand it is to just keep in mind that all societies have codes of conduct, those things that are acceptable and those things that are not acceptable which determine if a person is in the group or out of the group. To say that the disciples were defiled or impure meant that the Pharisees according to their standards considered these disciples of Jesus to be on the outside looking in.

         Now, not to defend the Pharisees but to help understand just here all this washing business was coming from, the reason as to why they thought that this washing of hands was so necessary is that they had observed that the priests in the Temple washed their hands and feet before their service in the Temple. So, what the Pharisees thought is that if washing was a practice of holiness as the Temple was considered holy then they would be holy if they washed just as the priests did. The only problem with this whole line of thinking though was that not only could they consider themselves holy by washing their hands just as the priests washed their hands but they also at the same time, could determine who was not holy just by observing who did not wash their hands. This judgmental attitude was an indicator that while they were putting on appearances of being holy what was in their hearts was something that was very far from being holy. This is why Jesus was so disgusted with them because they were the very same type of people Isaiah had spoken of some seven hundred years before when he wrote “This people honor me with their lips but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” You see in the Law handed down from Moses and written down in the first five books of the Bible there is nothing there about people being impure or defiled because they do not wash their hands like the priests in the Temple. This was an idea conjured up by the elders which had in turn become a tradition and in being a tradition seemed to carry the same weight as the Law itself. The reason that was on their lips as to why they washed their hands seemed to honor God as they were attempting to be holy as the priests in the Temple were holy but in their hearts they saw this practice as a way of being holier than everyone else. So at the very core of who they were what they sought was to be separated from everyone else desiring division instead of unity. This tells us then that since Jesus declared that what they did was not of God then to desire what is of God in one’s heart is to desire unity, to do those things which work for peace and reconciliation instead of division. This is why Jesus told them that what the Pharisees were doing was leaving behind the commandment of God and instead holding to the tradition of men. It is not hard to once again to hear the words of Jeremiah speaking out as to just what or who does the heart trust.Does the heart trust in man, making flesh his strength which turns the heart away from God or does the heart trust in God alone? The evidence of what we trust in our hearts is seen in our life especially in the way we treat those around us, whether we seek division through judgment or whether we seek unity through love.

         As further evidence of the problems within the hearts of the Pharisees, Jesus points out a practice that the Pharisees were doing that concerned the care of their parents. The Pharisees taught that it was better to take whatever monies that would have been used to care for their mothers and fathers and use those funds as a gift to support the Temple. The term that was used was “Corban” which was a word that meant to draw close to God. The idea was that whatever was sacrificed in the service of the Temple would be pleasing to God and therefore the gift would enable a person to draw close to God. So, consider the irony of what the Pharisees saw as their tradition; they would take what should have been used to care for their mothers and fathers, thus breaking the fifth commandment to honor your mother and father in order that they would then use these funds as a means to draw close to God.Do you begin to see the importance of thoroughly examining all that we do and the reasons why we do it? Of course, you have to wonder just why anyone thought this would be a good thing to do in the first place and the reason is that when they took these funds they should have used to help their parents and gave this as an offering for the Temple is that as Jesus taught in the sixth chapter of Matthew, when they gave they would make sure everyone saw them give the gift so that they might receive the praises of others.So, once again just like in the washing of hands, what appeared like a good motive for doing something, being holy or supporting the holy Temple was in fact a means to show oneself as being different or better than everyone else. At the heart of the matter again is judgment and division and it is this need that drove the Pharisees to break the fifth commandment and have no problem doing so. And again, when observing the lives of the Pharisees it is not hard to hear the words of Jeremiah from the seventeenth chapter tell us that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick.

         The Pharisees thought that what they did, the washing of their hands, the giving of gifts at the expense of others even if it was for a holy cause these things surely had to be a sign that they were the pure people, the clean people that sin had left no stain on them but in the light of Jesus they did not appear as unpolluted as they thought they were. What we are left wondering after this encounter between Jesus and the Pharisees is just what does make a person pure and what is it that makes a person polluted in the eyes of God? The first thing Jesus teaches us is that there is nothing that by going into a person can pollute them but rather it is the things that come out of a person, these are the things that pollute them. What Jesus was getting at is that washing ones hands did not change what happened to the food that a person ate. Whether a person washed their hands or they didn’t wash their hands, either way, the food they ate was going to be digested; washing ones hands does not change the food a person eats or what happens to it. If washing ones hands doesn’t change what happens to the food you eat then don’t worry about it unless you have a mother like mine then yes, you should probably wash your hands. The point that Jesus is making is that there is something far more important than this focus on outside rituals and that is the inward disposition of a persons heart. This is where a person can really be polluted just as Jesus had pointed out with the Pharisees. Jesus teaches us that what comes out of a heart is what causes them to not be pure, to be polluted in the eyes of God. Jesus then goes on to list just what those things are that are the pollution that spill out of a heart that is not pure such things as evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness. Now, what I believe Jesus is wanting us to do is to see a connection between  his thoughts on eating and his thoughts about our hearts.What we eat is taken in, digested and eventually sent back out. So when Jesus tells us that what is polluting is the evil in our hearts we should at least wonder just how that evil got there. Just like food, the only way stuff comes out is if somehow it was first allowed in. Again, we go back to the words found in Proverbs that we need to guard our hearts because out of our hearts comes the wellspring of our life either a wellspring of good or a wellspring of evil.

         When Jesus speaks of the evil that comes forth from our hearts it is not hard to make the leap back to the beginning, back to creation and the garden of Eden where grew the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There in the second chapter of Genesis we also hear that one of the works God had for Adam was that he should guard the garden just as we are to guard our hearts. Yet in spite of knowing that this was part of the work he was to do, we find in the third chapter of Genesis that the garden had not been guarded very well because a snake had slithered his way in. The snake spoke with the voice of Satan, the accuser, whose main attack is to question and the question the serpent asked is that if we are part of the animal kingdom shouldn’t we like the animals listen to the inner voice of our desires, our passions and longings instead of listening to the voice of God as God had commanded? The animals after all were created to listen to the voice inside of them, the voice that said eat when they were hungry, fight when they were afraid, store up food when winter was approaching and since we humans seemed to be one of the animals shouldn’t we do the same? Or were we as humans created to be more and the only way to be the more God created us to be would be by listening to the voice and word of God alone? Eve followed by Adam gave into the temptation to be something less than the good they were created to be and anything less than good is by definition, evil.When Eve looked at the tree with its forbidden fruit she saw that the fruit was good to eat, she saw the fruit was pleasant to the eye and she saw that the fruit was to be desired and treasured. This is how evil entered into the garden and this is how evil enters our hearts. Satan tempts us when we have not claimed the good God created us to be the good of bearing his image and likeness in the world and instead we decide that what is good is what we eat, to live satisfying our desires just like any other animal. And when we decide to live like the animals it shows up in the way we treat each other. Listen to what James teaches in the fourth chapter of his book. He tells us “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! And further James writes “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” Can you hear the echoes of the list of evil that pour from a person’s heart that Jesus spoke of in this passage from James? And in the end, there is a call to cleanse the hands yet in a totally different frame of mind than what was called for by the Pharisees. This washing is a gesture that we desire to be done with the polluting of the world around us, we are washing away our living as lesser people choosing instead to purify our hearts, to have hearts that listen only to the voice, the word of God.

         You see God’s plan to combat the evil that began in the garden was to call two people out of a world where the intentions of peoples hearts were only evil and from these two people, Abraham and Sarah, create a nation who would live out the good God had always created humanity to live. To combat the three fold temptation of Satan God gave his people a three fold command on which they were to build their lives. This command found in the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy is this: Hear, O, Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord and you shall love the Lord with all of your heart, with all of your soul or life and with all of your strength, the resources God has given to you. God gave these commands to people who had experienced the pain and suffering of the evil of this world when they were slaves down in Egypt. It is the experience of the pain and bitterness of our experience with the evil of this world that convinces us to cry out to God to be set free from this evil. This is when God in turn speaks to us his word, asking us to hear him and to love him. We are as it were, to taste and see that the Lord is good, and knowing the goodness of God trust his voice alone. It is the goodness of God that is what we are to desire, to hunger and thirst for his righteousness because as Jesus promises only in doing so will we find satisfaction. To love God with all of our heart is to attune our ears to his voice, to hear him and know that as our God is one, then we as his people must also be one. The great unity of the festival of Zion that we are headed to has its roots in the oneness of God.

         To listen to the voice of God, the word of God comes with a cost because listening to the word of God must result in a life that does the will of God. This is the source of the anguish of Jesus on the night he was betrayed as he prayed “Father, not my will but yours be done” It is the word of God that gives us life but this word of God also calls us to take this life and lay it down, to give it up in order that our life bear the image of the God who loves with a greater love. This is the greatness for which we have been created, a greatness marked by the love of one given up upon a cross to set us free from the evil of this world. This is the direction we must go this Lent; the way of the cross. Yet, what we hold on to is that the way we endure the bearing of our cross is the joy set before us, the joy of the hope of our eternal fellowship of love. May God lead us ever onward! Amen.