Every time I read this passage it reminds of one of the funniest children’s sermon slip-ups I ever saw. This was several years ago, the pastor of my parents’ church brought all the kids up. She brought out a carrot and a handful of M&Ms and asked the kids, “which of these is good for you?” The kids of course dutifully responded, “the carrot.” “And which one do you want to eat?” To which the kids much more excitedly replied, “the M&Ms!” Pastor Marj went on, “when you eat food, where does it go?” The kids thought about it, “into your stomach.” “And then where?” she prompted. A few of the older kids saw where this was going and squirmed. “You poop it out, right?” All the kids eyes got super wide, Pastor Marj just said “Poop!” In church! They stared at her in amazement, fixated, and you could see their brains were working super hard to process what had just happened. Seeing their rapt attention, Pastor Marj went on, talking about how in the Gospel story the Pharisees were really concerned about what people ate. But Jesus said that because food goes in our stomachs and not our hearts, what we eat doesn’t affect who we are. All that matters is what’s in our hearts, how we show love to each other.
“So,” she said, wrapping up her explanation, “what do you guys think of this?” One little boy very cautiously raised his hand. “What you’re saying is when mom tells me I have to eat carrots, I can say that Jesus said I don’t really have to eat carrots, I can just eat M&Ms instead, because it all ends up as poop anyway.” Marj desperately tried to backpedal from this point, but by then it was way past too late, and thus the children’s sermon that will live in infamy where the takeaway was, “It doesn’t matter what your mom says, Jesus says you don’t have to eat your carrots because it all ends up poop in the end.”
While missing the point entirely for the kids, I think Marj’s childrens’ sermon was a brilliant example for the adults about what exactly is going on in this text. Because like the kids missed the whole part about how what really matters is what’s in our heart in favor of getting to eat M&Ms all the time, the Pharisees missed the purpose of their ritual purity laws in favor of enforcing a system that privileged them above others.
But before we get in, let’s talk a little bit about the religious purity laws, where they came from and what purpose they held. The obvious one is of course we know that hand-washing is the absolute best thing you can do to cut down the spread of disease. And in a pre-modern culture with no understanding of germ theory, that the Jews have been doing this for centuries is pretty remarkable. But religious purity laws were about more than just hygiene. These regulations were also a way for the small Jewish minority to set themselves apart from their neighbors, to remember who they were and, more importantly, whose they were. Ancient Israel, remember, was a little, tiny nation sandwiched between the two most powerful empires of the time. They got conquered a lot. And at the time of Jesus, it was a subject of the Roman Empire. These ritual purity laws were ways for the Jews to remember that they were Jews, that they were different from Rome. In Orthodox Jewish communities to this day, ritual hand-washing before a meal includes a prayer of thanksgiving to God for the blessings God has provided. Every time our Orthodox sisters and brothers sit down for a meal, they first remind themselves that everything they have is a gift from God. Far from the legalism we Christians often ascribe to it, the core of the Pharisees argument against Jesus was about whether Jesus’ neglect of religious customs was moving people away from God.
But of course these particular Pharisees concerns were not rooted in concern for the faith of the community, but in their own concern for control. There is no law that can be applied exactly as written to every situation, the world is too complex for that, and the ancient Jewish legal system had space for such complexity. Even within the requirements for ritual washing there was written in different levels of expectation for clergy, who would be at the Temple and thus have easy access to clean water, and the laity who would be out in the world and may not have a water source near them. There were even exceptions for times in which a person may eat without any ritual washing, the law recognizing that food is an essential part of life. The Pharisees complaints about Jesus and his disciples were about trying to impose a one-size-fits-all system on a multitude of people so that anyone who did not fit could be labeled “out,” thus raising the status of those who where “in.” And Jesus just has no patience for that sort of exclusionary behavior.
But before we pat ourselves on the back here about how great we are, with our freedom from these laws and exclusive behavior that so hamstrung the Pharisees, Jesus is throwing down a challenge here. Because let’s face it, the list of evil intentions that come from the heart, “fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly,” was pretty extensive! And in the section the lectionary left out, Jesus even used an example in which two equally good laws, the requirement to give of our belongings to God and the requirement to care for aging parents, were in conflict with each other. What do we do when the laws themselves contradict? It would be way easier to simply make sure I wash my hands before every meal then to guard against every single evil intention and contradiction.
As we try to make sense of this text, there are two dangerous pitfalls to avoid. The first is of course that of the Pharisees, that because we are living “good Christian lives,” then everything we do is great. Because if we have any self-awareness at all then we know everything we do is not. Sometimes because we are sinful. We get impatient, or are greedy, or we lie, or whatever number of large and small sins we commit during the course of a lifetime. And other times because the world is super complicated and like the example Jesus himself used with the Pharisees, we have to choose between the better of two bad choices. Being a Christian means we’re saved by grace and we’re free from judgment, but that freedom is not cart blanche to do whatever we want, and to even hint that Jesus setting us free means that is itself folly. I get kind of annoyed with the old pre-Reformation argument that there must be something we have to do to earn forgiveness, because if it was really free then people would just go around murdering and pillaging and it is only the fear of eternal damnation that keeps people in line. I mean, come on now. There’s a name for that logical fallacy that I learned in Philosophy 101, and its called Reductio ad Absurdum, or reduce to absurdity. It would be like me saying that since some bats carry rabies and I cannot guarantee there will never ever be another bat in the church, then we should condemn the whole building. It’s ridiculous.
Which really leads us to the second dangerous pitfall. Which is that we are horrible, corrupt human beings who can never be anything other then sinful and broken. Because if that’s true, again, why try? What Jesus is pushing here is the middle road. A life that says yes, I sin and am broken and make mistakes again and again, and yes, Jesus sets me free from the bondage of sin and death and invites me into new life and relationship with him, and because of both of those things, because I am sinful and because I am made sinless, then I am free to be transformed. That’s the good news. Not that we are set free to be the same, but that we are set free to be changed. Think about all the people who came to Jesus in scripture. With Judas as the one glaring exception, every single person who came to Jesus was transformed, was made better, by the encounter. Not instantaneously. Nicodemus took the whole Gospel of John to figure it out. Peter confessed Jesus as Messiah, then rebuked him and was called Satan, then promised to never leave, then denied him in the courtyard, and then became the head apostle of the entire burgeoning Christian movement, and was regularly put in his place by Paul. This is a process, friends. But it’s a process we get to do not in order to earn God’s love but precisely because we already have it. What is our sacred scripture but a thousands of years account of how committed God is to God's people? It is basically the story of God’s people wandering away, and God bringing them back into the fold again. Over and over again. How no matter what happens, God is with us. Jesus died so there is literally no where we can go, even to death, where God is not with us.
So in conclusion, I’m pretty sure Jesus does think you should eat your carrots. Not because they'll make him love you more but because carrots are good for you. They have lots of vitamins and other good things. And, I also think Jesus is pro hand washing. It’s the best way to prevent the spread of disease. And I’m sure Jesus is also fine if you eat M&Ms occasionally, there's nothing wrong with them. Just maybe not exclusively and in place of carrots. But no matter what you eat, no matter anything, Jesus loves you. And that love will transform you, in fact already has and still is in the process of. Like Nicodemos it can be a slow process. But Jesus is in this with you. Forever, to death and beyond. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment