Jesus reorients us so we can see just how far we are from where we’re supposed to be headed. And that means changing our focus.
Turning around so we can see where to go
Proper 17B | Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Can I just say that this is a hilarious gospel to read during the pandemic? Imagine if we had gotten this last March?
Hey, Jesus! Your followers aren’t washing their hands! They aren’t even washing their produce before they eat it! Are you trying to kill them?
Of course the religious leaders were talking about dietary laws. They aren’t critiquing Jesus’s response to an extremely contagious virus. And yet there is something about this, isn’t there?
Something that sticks.
One way this story sticks is that we know the Pharisees aren’t “the bad guys”. If anything they are the ones standing up for the moral character and conviction of the people. And in this case, just like in our pandemic, they are speaking on the side of law. And on the opposite side of them is Jesus, who is breaking the law. That sticks in a way that feels weird.
Another way it sticks is that we know Jesus is getting at something deeper. Something with big implications for the law.
I think we can all sense something happening. To really dig into it requires a lot of background information that I totally want to talk about (and could talk about for a long time). But we can’t do that today and in a moment, I (hope) you’ll understand why. But we are going to dig into all of this on Tuesday night in a Zoom Bible Study. I hope you join me for that.
This deeper thing that Jesus is inviting us to explore is not so much about the law, but about our relationship to the law and how that distracts us from God’s work.
Here’s how he does it.
He makes us think about the way we normally think about the law as personal sin management. That it is really about the things you and I do to ourselves.
What happens when we define sin as an individual committing a personal act we call a sin? First, it becomes measurable. Second, it becomes observable. Third, it becomes judgeable.
We can start condemning others for their sin. And we can judge their character as the source of their sin. That’s how we get to the uncharitable suggestion that the poor deserve their poverty, that they must have a moral failing.
Jesus turns this whole idea on its head, saying that the problem of sin is not that it is personal. True sin isn’t personal. Sin is abuse. Exploitation. Evil isn’t expressed in moral failing but in the direct harm we inflict on other people. So sin is actually relational. The poor aren’t bearing sin and therefore are poor. Sin is the corporate executive who steals wages from employees.
We have it all mixed up.
What Jesus describes in this gospel is a very real sense of missing the forest for the trees. Because we are constantly compelled to look at individual trees. And not only for ideas or signs of health or blight. Like we examine our ash trees for an invasive species. But how we fix our attention on the singular, the individual. We atomize our community and obliterate its function.
A forest, a whole ecosystem bearing life and diversity is whittled down to a collection of individual trees. Trees that we claim as a resource. To whittle them down, like in that old Animaniacs cartoon, into toothpicks.
Jesus reveals another way.
He shows how far we stray from God by focusing on the individual.
And this is the danger of focusing so much attention on how Jesus defines the Law. We will find ourselves slipping into legalism. This is just another way of fixating on particulars to the detriment of the whole. This very mindset, of focusing on who is in and who is out, draws us into the minutiae and away from the purpose.
Jesus is not so much saying legalism is wrong, but that it casts our eyes in the wrong direction.
Imagine we’re in a big field. And every time somebody screws up, we all turn around and make a big deal about it. And we keep doing this for hours and hours. At some point, we start to notice the grass disappearing and we are somehow under the shade of big trees.
Then Jesus comes near and we all turn around. He points out that somehow we’ve drifted to the edge of the field, far from our destination. This isn’t where we were supposed to go. And nobody was leading us away. We just took ourselves there.
But here we are. In the wilderness.
What Jesus does is orient us to where we are and where we are going.
We easily get that we’re off course. What we want to know is what we actually should do. And in this, Jesus is far less directive.
This is why I like this image of the big open field. Because Jesus is telling us to worry far less about next steps. Because we all have plenty of them ahead of us. He’s getting us to turn our heads in the right direction and saying go there!
Do we see?
Jesus can’t tell us what to do like it’s a shopping list because that’s how we got ourselves so turned around. He can name how turned around we are and then point us in the right direction.
This presents a different kind of challenge for us, doesn’t it? One that isn’t about fitting within narrow, prescribed lines. But one of exploring our vast imagination.
And yet, Jesus gives us some direction by telling us what not to do.
Don’t exploit each other. No stealing or lying or hurting others. Because it isn’t about me or you. It is about us. Our lives. Our neighbor’s lives. And our neighborhood.
It’s about the whole of creation and making all things whole.
And we don’t get to make all things whole by thinking about ourselves; by condemning our neighbors; or by exploiting those around us.
Just like we don’t get out of a pandemic by ourselves.
We don’t eradicate poverty by shaming the poor.
And we don’t protect our planet if I reduced my carbon footprint by myself.
We live together in this global neighborhood, sharing the same air, water, and land. No matter how much money I accumulate on the backs of others, I can’t leave this planet in a rocket to colonize Mars alone.
And if I could? Guess what. That’s not the gospel.
The Kin-dom is about us. All of us.
And our work, like our lives, our very being, is shared. We are all dependent on others. All of it. And everything.
By the grace of God. To offer the grace of God.
This week’s reflection