Sunday 2nd September 2018
Song of Songs 2:8-13
John 7:1-8, 14-23
The Rev’d Jenny Wilson
In the name of God, creating, redeeming, sanctifying, … Amen.
This morning, we return to the Gospel of Mark. After our journey through Lent, Holy Week, Easter and our remembering of the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, we have spent the last five Sunday mornings exploring the theme of bread in John’s Gospel. But now, and until the end of this liturgical year, we return to the Gospel of this year, Mark. We will read portions taken from chapter 7 through to chapter 13, looking through windows onto Jesus’ teaching and healing, Jesus’ wrestling with the ways of God and the ways of human beings, Jesus facing the challenges of those who wish to discredit him, those who are so confronted by his presence and his behaviour that they believe that bringing him down seems the only response.
We read of one such challenge this morning. But before we dig into Jesus’ encounter with the scribes and the Pharisees and their pronouncements on what it is that defiles a person, we will spend a moment or two with the Old Testament reading from the Song of Songs. For Jesus lived and breathed and prayed and healed out of the deep love of God and this reading gives some insight into that love.
The voice of my beloved!
Look, he comes,
leaping upon the mountains,
bounding over the hills.
My beloved is like a gazelle
or a young stag.
Look, there he stands
behind our wall,
gazing in at the windows,
looking through the lattice.
My beloved speaks and says to me:
‘Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away;
for now the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone. (Song of Songs 2:8-11)
This is poetry and poetry helps us glimpse something that argument or teaching does not. This poetry is the voice of a lover to their beloved but the gentleness and the passion and the beauty of these words shine a light into the gentleness and passion and beauty of God. God who longs for us, searches for us, bids us follow and speaks of the passing of the winter, the passing of darkness and struggle, the longing of God to gather us into God’s presence in love and hope, hope seen in the coming of spring.
The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtle-dove
is heard in our land.
The fig tree puts forth its figs,
and the vines are in blossom;
they give forth fragrance.
Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away. (2:12-13)
The voice of God calls. We are made and redeemed by the one who speaks this voice. Jesus came that we might know this voice. Jesus walked this earth and prayed and healed and faced many a confrontation challenging his authority as the one who spoke the truth about God.
‘Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?’ The Pharisees ask Jesus, when they see that his disciples are eating without washing their hands. (Mark 7:5) The issue is defilement – what it is that makes a person clean and so able to belong, to be welcome in the community. What it is that defiles a person, makes them unclean and so unable to belong. Oh the Pharisees had their rules about inclusion and exclusion, for sure. And the writer of Mark’s Gospel makes clear his contempt about those rules by giving them in such exquisite detail.
For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles. (7:3-4)
Even bronze kettles … My goodness me! The tradition of the elders, such prescriptive instructions, seem a little like a prison. Remember the poetry, the God voice, “Arise my fair one, come away” ….Remember the signs of spring …flowers and singing and the voice of the turtle dove … Wash those cups and pots and bronze kettles won’t you, wash those hands, that’s what the tradition of the elders would have us do. And don’t you dare eat with us, otherwise.
Jesus responds to these leaders with words from Isaiah:
Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,
“This people honours me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.”
You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.’ He says. (Mark 7:6-8)
Jesus contrasts the tradition of the elders with the commandments of God. He contrasts the law of the heart with the law known only in the head. He points out the difference between the tradition of the elders which can been checked upon – clean hands, washed bronze kettles – and the commandments of God to love – the love of God and neighbour – love which dwells within, seen only by God. The religious leaders focus on defilement through external things, foodstuffs and pots and kettles – which Jesus rightly points out cannot really defile. They cannot tell the difference between the law of God and human customs. Jesus minds about the heart, has his mind focussed on the heart.
But if we think he is abandoning the law, let us look at his list.
‘It is what comes out of a person that defiles.’ Jesus says. ‘For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.’ (Mark 7:20-22)
Five of the Ten Commandments are about loving God and five about loving neighbour. And those latter five are all mentioned in Jesus’ list of the things that come from within us and defile. Thou shalt not steal, commit murder, commit adultery, bear false witness; thou shalt not covet. Theft, murder, adultery, deceit and envy, in other words. The final five commandments. With a whole list of other sins that defile our hearts thrown in.
Jesus understands the human heart so well. One scholar, reflecting on this passage, put it this way.
“Jesus, as all spiritual teachers, is concerned about moral defilement, how evil comes into the world. This happens in the exact opposite way of ritual impurity. Defilement begins and develops in the human heart, in the cultivation of evil thoughts, intentions and imaginings … The Pharisees and scribes are obsessed with the ritual defilement and the external world. Jesus’ attention is on the internal world and moral havoc it unleashes.”
Which means I guess that either we all belong in the community of God or none of us do. For our hearts all have the same struggles. The Ten Commandments given to Moses on Mount Sinai are there written in their tablets of stone because we are all tempted in the same way. The religious leaders who are challenging Jesus keep watch over the behaviour of others and pronounce that behaviour wanting. And, more than that, they pronounce as outsiders those who fail to obey the laws of cleanliness. They believe their community to be defined by insiders and outsiders. Jesus’ community is about the radical inclusion for we are all flawed. And what this conversation shows us is that we need, I guess, to keep watch not over others but over our own hearts. It is our hearts that matter. Only if we are this flawed, how can we? How can such broken hearts know healing, have insight?
Only we’re not alone, are we? God keeps calling us.
The voice of my beloved!
Look, he comes,
leaping upon the mountains,
bounding over the hills.
My beloved is like a gazelle
or a young stag.
Look, there he stands
behind our wall,
gazing in at the windows,
looking through the lattice.
He is with us. This Jesus with his gentle calling presence, his fierce knowing, this Jesus. The best we can do is keep him company and allow him to look with us at our hearts. The best we can do is let him shine his light on our frailties, for we’ll find there too glimpses of goodness that we might not have realised were part of us. The best we can do is remember, also, that each one with whom we share this earth is known as we are known, loved as we are loved. And that all the dirty and damaged hands and all the unwashed pots and kettles mean nothing to him. For he made our hands. And he made our hearts. And he longs for nothing more than that we would hear his voice and allow him to gather us in, gather us into God’s presence in love and hope, hope seen in the coming of spring.