Mark 7:1-13
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.In our reading from the Mark today we find Jesus being observed by a contingent of Pharisees from Jerusalem. As they had done with John the Baptist they came to observe the teaching to determine if He was a threat to their authority. As it turns out Jesus gave them a bit more than they bargained for. Jesus hits the Pharisees right between the eyes with their hypocrisy. In fact Jesus has effectively signed His own death warrant with His criticism of the oral traditions.
To understand how threatening Jesus is to the Pharisees we need to understand what He is attacking. The confrontation begins with the Pharisees critique of the disciples eating with unclean hands.
There were two sets of laws the Mosaic Laws God handed to Moses in Leviticus and the oral traditions or hedge laws that protected the Mosaic Law. In the Mosaic Law there were laws concerning cleanliness and others that concerned symbolic purity. As if God's Laws needed protection, the Pharisees added to them in their oral tradition. The oral traditions weren't recorded in writing until the Mishnah was written in the late second century. The Mishnah records in great detail how to wash during eating. What started as washing before a meal in the Mosaic Law was improved upon with washing after a meal, and then improved again to wash between each course of a meal. Even the manner in which the water was to run down the wrists was recorded in detail.
These intricate laws were an outward showing of righteousness that didn't necessarily reflect the same righteousness of the heart. This pious show of the oral traditions was a burden on the people. The oral traditions frustrated the common people because there were so many of them that it was nearly impossible not to break one of the laws at every turn. The people carried a heavy burden of guilt there was no hope of keeping all of the laws and thus no hope of going to heaven.
Jesus attacks the Pharisees for obscuring the commands of God with man-made laws in the oral traditions. At the end of the reading he uses the example of the Corban to make His point.
Corban is a transliteration of a Hebrew word meaning offering. Using the word Corban in a religious vow meant making a formal dedication of monetary or material wealth to God. However the money or material objects didn't have to be used for religious purposes. In effect it was a way to shelter wealth and avoid responsibility.
Although it was clear that God commanded to honor your father and mother any self-absorbed wealthy individual could institute Corban to avoid caring for his parents. By declaring this dedication of their worldly treasure they could with justification refuse to support their aging parents. After all the money was already dedicated to God it just wouldn't be right to divert it to the support of the parents.
So as Jesus attacks the credibility of the Pharisees and worse their means of maintaining wealth and control He has set the stage for His own death.
Wisely Jesus keeps His disciples separated from the tradition of the elders, which often enabled a man to transgress the commandment of God with a show of legality. Jesus led the disciples beyond this hypocrisy to worship in purity of heart not outward appearance. In fact from this point on Jesus stays in Galilee where they are more distant from Jerusalem and harder for the Pharisees to observe and disrupt His teaching.
We can all relate the oral traditions of the elders to things we see in all aspects of our lives. I believe we all are even guilty of similar acts.
This week I heard an interesting topic on a Christian radio station. The DJ was commenting on a survey he read that stated two-thirds of young adults believe in Jesus and that He rose from the dead; however the majority of these same people do not attend church on a regular basis. The DJ requested for people who fit that criteria to call in and share why they don't attend church. Unfortunately, I only had an opportunity to hear two callers however both had similar experiences. Both responses could be summarized by saying the churches they visited were self-serving and not reaching out to care for the community. That surely fits God's words in Isaiah, they honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.
Of course there are other reasons for not attending worship on a regular basis. Each of us can think of people we know or observe that have other priorities than weekly worship.
In the back of my mind I wonder if the respondents have a much more mature view of worship and the relationship God desires to have with us than the attendees of the congregations they visited. Then again God may have called them to those congregations to bring about change. If so they missed the call. Paul was clear that corporate worship was for the edification and building up of the believers. So these people may be remiss in their thinking. As we are well aware, in human terms we can rationalize just about any stance we want to take.
Isn't that the point Jesus was making. We create our own rules about how we want to worship our Heavenly Father. The fact is other than the Mosaic Law there are no ground rules. He really only asks that we glorify Him in our worship.
Even within our own Synod we have people so wrapped up in following the liturgy in the front of the hymnal that any diversion from the liturgy is heresy. I think those people would be shocked to find that the liturgy in our blue hymnals has parts that can be traced back to the 2nd century and parts introduced as late as 1970. It's fair to say personal preference sometimes gets in the way of worship that is pure of heart.
How do we glorify Him in our worship?
We repent, which means we change the way we live so that He is the most important priority. Repentance is not saying we are sorry and continuing to make the same errors. It's making a conscious effort to change our ways becoming obedient to His word.
We believe in His only Son Jesus who paid the ultimate price for all mankind. He traded His life for ours. If God was willing to go to that extent for us we can surely sacrifice for Him. Sacrifice may mean building up others at worship services. Sacrifice may mean spending a few hours helping someone in need. It may mean financially supporting ministries that care for people. It may mean speaking a kind word to someone in difficult times. Jesus surely gave us enough examples in His ministry that we have little excuse to do otherwise.
It might even mean answering a call to start a new ministry in a place where people are in need physically, emotionally, and spiritually. And worshipping in a multi-functional facility that doesn't fit our picture of what a church should look like.
God doesn't care about where we worship or in what kind of building we worship in. What he does care about is our relationship with Him and whether our outward appearances match our inward relationship with Him.
We need to step back occasionally and ask ourselves, am I a Pharisee or a Disciple.
In the name of our risen Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
