As for me and my househould, we will serve the Lord

Trinity 14


Perhaps the very worst insult which you can make of a Christian is to call them a hypocrite. Jesus was at his most critical with the Pharisees, who he regarded as hypocrites. Yet when they criticised Jesus for healing on the Sabbath, they truly believed that they were upholding the laws of God. This is a terrifying thought, could we also sometimes be mistaken? Is it possible that things we have held to be sacred and true and not Gods ways, but just our own? Could we be hypocrites like the Pharisees, and not even know about it?

Each one of us must listen to the word of God and put God's ways into practice. Some of the most fervent Christians can be the most aggressively critical and unsympathetic towards others. Sometimes the Christians who are most dedicated to their own churches can be the most critical of others. We must not be hypocritical, we must look to our failings, not those of others. We must learn to be tolerant of people, and try to see things from their point of view. When we view faults in others, each time we must by remember that there are few sins which we are not capable of ourselves. Our caution against hypocrisy is always to say  'there but for the grace of God go I.' 


Opening Verse of Scripture  James 1:22

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.


Collect Prayer for the Day—Before we read we pray

Almighty God, whose only Son has opened for us a new and living way into your presence: give us pure hearts and steadfast wills to worship you in spirit and in truth; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.


Merciful God, your Son came to save us and bore our sins on the cross: may we trust in your mercy and know your love, rejoicing in the righteousness that is ours through Jesus Christ our Lord.


First Bible Reading Deuteronomy 4.1–2, 6–9

So now, Israel, give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe, so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you. You must neither add anything to what I command you nor take away anything from it, but keep the commandments of the Lord your God with which I am charging you. You must observe them diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!’ For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to him? And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today?

But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children—


Second Reading James 1.17–27

Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.In fulfilment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.

But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing. If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.


Gospel Reading Mark 7.1–8, 14, 15, 21–23

Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (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.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?’ He said to them, ‘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.’

Then he called the crowd again and said to them, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.’ 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. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.’


Post Communion Prayer

Lord God, the source of truth and love, keep us faithful to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, united in prayer and the breaking of bread, and one in joy and simplicity of heart, in Jesus Christ our Lord.


Commentary

Over the past few weeks in our reading in church we’ve had a brief interlude from the gospel of the year, Mark, as we’ve been taking our gospel readings from John.  In these reading from John we saw Jesus presenting Himself as not just the Bread of Life, but as life itself.  In the beginning of John’s gospel, we read that ‘…the work became flesh…’ and last week we heard Jesus invite His followers to eat his flesh and drink His blood if they are to have eternal life.  Words that would this be abhorrent and hugely challenging for the listeners to comprehend as they confronted their very understanding of what religious observance was all about and seemed to be hitting at the very core of Jewish life.  The Jews knew that they should not eat meat with blood in it: the Torah makes this very clear, e.g. Lev. 17 v 10 - 14.  Moreover, it’s the only dietary law that has its rationale made explicit.  The blood is drained out of the flesh to be eaten so that blood is not consumed because the life (literally the soul of the animal) is contained in the blood.  So for Jesus, a Jew, speaking in a synagogue, He would know this law part of the Jewish Dietary law, known as Kashrut, just as well as the hearers.  But using their understanding is exactly what Jesus is doing.  It precisely the point He wants to make.  He says explicitly in Jn 6 v 56 that ‘…whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me, and I live in that person…’   There is that inner presence which stays with us forever.  In that sense, whoever accepts Jesus into their life has the very lifeblood and soul of Jesus within them, there can be no turning back.  He invites us to take that lifeblood within us.


In today’s reading from Mark, it’s as if we’ve just picked up on last week’s readings.  The Pharisees seem to be picking up on elements of food hygiene law as they challenge Jesus.  And we should see Jesus’ response as just as forthright and shocking as last week when He invites people to eat of His flesh and drink of His blood.  It might be the Romans who are ruling over Judah and Jerusalem now but its only 70 years or so since the Hasmonean dynasty came to an end.  This came about as a result of the Maccabean revolt which reasserted Judaism and the Jewish religion against the Seleucid Empire after Antiochus Epiphanes IV had expressly forbidden Jewish religious practice.  During this revolt, people had perished for what they believed, died to re-establish the Jewish religion, martyrs who had given their all for their faith.  These were Jews who had fiercely maintained their loyalty to God and the Torah. 


And here was Jesus now seeming saying the law and the Torah didn’t matter anymore?  He says, it’s not what we eat that is important, ‘there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile them’.  It’s unthinkable that a Jew could be saying this.  What is going on?  In the Old Testament Reading Moses talks about following the simple rules that God had given the Israelites through Moses.   He says that they should follow the law and not add or subtract from it.  That way they will inherit the land and not end up in a mess.  In the Gospel reading Jesus is also talking about following rules and regulations – and how not to do it!  He says that the Pharisees have done exactly what Moses told them not to do.   Instead of helping people find God, they’ve made it more difficult.  Their own additions to the law have ended up detracting from it and making it difficult for people to follow.  But what seems to make Jesus really cross was that they had missed the point of the law/rules in the first place: which was precisely that through them they could enable people to have true freedom and a relationship with God.


So Jesus isn’t saying that the rules and the law didn’t matter, we do need rules and laws in our society, then and now.  But Jesus is saying that rules and the law are not an end in themselves and that they shouldn’t take the place of a relationship with God.  The law was there for a purpose but was not the ultimate end point.  Even more importantly, Jesus was stressing that the law was part of God’s preparation for the New World order that would come when the Messiah came, when the Word became flesh.  That time was now, and the things that had played a key part in the preparation, such as the law, were no longer needed in the same way.  Jesus did not abolish the law, He fulfilled it.  God longed for His people to be holy, through and through.  With Jesus this now was possible as the new age dawned.  Jesus was enabling all people to have a new and fresh relationship with God.  That’s what Jesus is speaking about.  About being a transformed and redeemed people, new birth and new life.  The way of Jesus characterised by love compassion, acceptance, inclusion, authenticity and consistency and perhaps above all a desire that others should come to be transformed through Him and through Him come to know the Father too.  Sometimes it’s as if we too fall into the trap of being moribund by rules and regulations of our own making, in our churches and in our everyday lives, rather than focus on our relationship with God and enabling others to know that transformational love in their lives. 

Sam Cappleman


Additional Material


In our readings from the Gospel of John over the past 3 weeks we saw Jesus teaching in the synagogue using the structure which would have been familiar to the Jews from the Midrash. This was their equivalent to our standard three point sermon. The Midrash tradition started with a verse of scripture, in our recent readings it was Jn 6 v 31, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat’ and then goes on to explain it in 2 sections. In the first part, Jn 6 v 32 – 48, He explained ‘bread from heaven’ and in the second part, Jn 49 – 58, He explained ‘to eat’. In the Aggadah tradition of Midrash often one word is taken and changed slightly in the vowel structure, easily done as there are no explicit vowels in the Torah, and a different word created which then explains the meaning of the phrase of scripture. In this example, Jesus was perhaps playing on the word manna to change it to give a word with a different meaning which explained the difference between the bread which leads to life and the bread which led to death. It’s a model we can use to give insight into today’s readings too.

Ex 32 v 16 reads, ‘The tablets were the work of God; the writing was the writing of God, engraved [graven] on the tablets’. The Jewish sages comment on this (Tractate Avot 6:2), “Do not read the word [graven] as ‘harut’, but as ‘herut’”. Herut means freedom. Thus as the Midrash explains the verse, when the Israelites received the 10 commandments in the desert they received freedom. ‘The tablets were the work of God; the writing was the writing of God, freedom on the tablets’. True observance of the commandments is therefore understood to make someone free rather than to enslave them. It could also be implied that it was when the Jews received the 10 commandments that they were finally physically freed as a nation from the Egyptians.

In our reading from Deuteronomy, Moses exhorts the Israelites not to add or subtract anything from the law they have been given. In so doing they will be free and go in and take possession of the land they have been promised. In the reading from Mark, Jesus accuses the Jewish teachers of doing exactly what Moses, who embodies Jewish law, had commanded them not to do. They have made significant and extraneous additions to the original precepts of the law. As a result they are now far from free. The Pharisees claimed that the traditions of their elders safeguarded the law, but in fact it these traditions have resulted in people following a law that in some cases has little to do with the law as it was given to Moses. Isaiah said that their Jewish ‘merchants mix water with the wine’, implying that the elders had mixed their watery tradition with God's strict commandment and in so doing adulterated the law. Jesus clearly agrees. But before we cheer too loudly in condemning the failings of the Jewish tradition, we need to ask ourselves how many times down the years could Jesus’ charge of ‘You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men’ be levied at the Christian church? Rather than being a church which is free we can become a people who are governed by the strictures we have engraved for ourselves in our personal and community life.

As a New Testament people we are no longer under the law but under the freedom of grace. Jesus was, and continues to be, the fulfilment of the law. He also gave us in His teaching, the guiding principles for our salvation and our lives as a people of God, they very way of life. Just like the Jewish teachers before us it is easy for us to dilute these guiding principles to make our faith easier and more palatable to ourselves and those around us. Similarly we can add our own interpretations and strictures so that our faith becomes more legalistic and programmed. True liberation in our faith comes from an ever closer walk with Christ and a living and love of His precepts. In the model of the Midrash, it is only by having His name engraved ‘harut’ in our lives we can find true freedom ‘herut’ in our lives. Jesus doesn’t ask us to follow a set of laws, but invites us to follow His precepts, precepts which become increasingly embodied in our lives as we grow closer to Him. As we grow in our faith, so our lives become increasingly and inextricably linked with His through His redeeming sacrifice.
Sam Cappleman 


Meditation

As a New Testament people, we are no longer under the law but under the freedom of grace.  Jesus was, and continues to be, the fulfilment of the law.  He also gave us in His teaching, the guiding principles for our salvation and our lives as a people of God, they very way of life.  Just like the Jewish teachers before us, it is easy for us to dilute these guiding principles to make our faith easier and more palatable to ourselves and those around us.  Similarly, we can add our own interpretations and strictures so that our faith becomes more legalistic and programmed.  True liberation in our faith comes from an ever-closer walk with Christ and a living and love of His precepts.  Jesus doesn’t ask us to follow a set of laws, but invites us to follow His precepts, precepts which become increasingly embodied in our lives as we grow closer to Him.  As we grow in our faith, so our lives become increasingly and inextricably linked with His through His redeeming sacrifice.


"The codes of Israel reflect the norms of the covenant: reciprocal responsibility, mercy, and truthfulness. They embody a life in freedom from oppression: worship of the One God, rejection of idolatry, mutual respect among people, care and protection for every member of the social body. Being free and being a co-responsible community are God’s intentions for us." US Bishops, Economic Justice for All (1986)


Hymns

  • All people that on earth do dwell
  • Make Way
  • Come down O love divine
  • Thanks be to God (on notices– tune Lobe Den Herren)
  • Come let us worship Christ
  • Will you come and follow me if I but call your name', (it fits well with the Joshua reading!)
  • O Christ, the Healer, we have come (Tune Song 34)
  • Be still, for the presence of the Lord, the Holy One is here;
  • We cannot measure how you heal (Tune: Ye banks and braes)
  • Through all our days we'll sing the praise (Tune: Greensleeves)
  • Praise and thanksgiving
  • Sing of the Lord’s goodness


Prayers for Sunday and the week ahead

God our heavenly judge declares you innocent, not by your own righteousness, but by that of Jesus Christ, who came to earth to save us from our sins. Amen


God does not wish us to walk in darkness; in His mercy seat He has revealed to us the way of life. His word is a lantern to our feet and a light to our paths. Amen

Lord Jesus Christ, Wisdom of God, we praise you. Word everlasting, we bless you. Light undying, we glorify you. Fountain of mercy, we adore you. Joy of the saints, we worship you, world without end. Amen. Clement of Alexandria (c.150-c.215)

Set our hearts on fire with love for you, O Christ our God, that in its flame we may love you with all out heart, with all our mind, with all out soul, and with all our strength, and our neighbours as ourselves, so that in keeping your commandments, we may glorify you, the giver of all good gifts. Amen   A Manual of Eastern Orthodox Prayers

May the almighty and eternal God sanctify and govern your hearts and bodies in the ways of His laws and the works of His commandments; that under God’s protection, now and ever, you may be preserved in body and soul; and the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit be among you and remain with you always. Amen



Commentary

Our passage today records one of the episodes in which Jesus has dispute with the religious leaders. Mark has already told us that the scribes have determined that Jesus is demonic (3:22), and the Pharisees have begun a conspiracy to kill him (3:6). This is why they have left Jerusalem, to follow Jesus and try to stop him, if necessary by murder. It is important to try and understand the Pharisees. They were not actually bad people, they were dedicated to obeying and pleasing God.

Ritual cleansing: Exod. 30:18-21; 40:31 requires the cleansing of hands, but only for priests ("Aaron and his sons") -- and only when they go into the tent of meeting or come near the altar -- in other words, when they are attending to sacred duties within sacred space. For the Sadducees the written law of the Torah alone was authoritative. However the Pharisees, out of a desire to obey God, established rules to clarify the law, and they accepted this evolving oral law as authoritative. By Jesus' day, adherence to the unwritten oral tradition was as important for the Pharisees as adherence to the Torah itself, by the third century it was codified as the Mishnah. So it was that the Pharisees gradually adopted this practice of ritual handwashing for ordinary people and ordinary meals as a way of showing devotion to God -- and as a "boundary marker," a way for Jews to proclaim their identity as distinct from their pagan neighbours.

Food laws: The Maccabean martyrs were famous at the time for having died rather than defile themselves, they were Jewish people who had been tortured and killed for refusing to eat unclean food, particularly pork. The Pharisees wanted to maintain their loyalty to God and his laws, to remain distinct from the pagans around. The Pharisees were misguided, but let us not forget that they were deeply religious men trying to be obedient to God's law and for Jesus to break God’s food laws like this was scandalous.

Jesus response: Jesus criticises the ritual laws of washing of hands before food, and of cooking vessels. Jesus attacks this ritual cleansing which was human tradition. However, he went much further, he gives Mark, the Gospel writer, a reason to say that all foods are clean! When he overrules the food laws he is not attacking mere human tradition, but the scriptures themselves. No wonder the Pharisees were angry and quite understandably, any good Jew would have been. The Pharisees attack Jesus and show that he is outside the cherished tradition which has been passed on to define the true people of God. Jesus has a completely different agenda, showing that these laws pointed towards him and now that he has arrived they are redundant! God’s people had historically been defined within the racial boundaries of the Jewish people, Jesus was now calling all people and this included the very Gentiles whom the Jews had sought to be so distinct from. This meant that not only were all the distinctive Jewish practices redundant, they were a hindrance and Jesus had to show that they no longer had to be obeyed.

The response of Jesus is to draw upon the words of the prophet Isaiah. Jesus quotes scripture, adding force to his accusations. The quotation is from Isaiah 29:13, and is in keeping with other prophetic pronouncements (see Isaiah 1:10-17; Amos 5:21-24; and Micah 6:6-8). What God wants is conversion of the heart, not mere words and traditions.


So in what way is the new religion of Jesus different from the old?

"Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile" (vv. 14-15).

Jesus shows that in his religion it is not the foods that we eat or ritual defilement that makes us unclean, but the thoughts and feelings of our hearts. Jesus is unconcerned with the old categories of clean and unclean, he touched a leper (1:41), ate with sinners (2:15-17), and was not troubled that an unclean woman touched him (5:30-34). Jesus replaces God's old commandments with his own teaching, in effect, doing the same thing that he accuses the Pharisees of doing. The difference was that Jesus is entrusted by God to declare his new commandments directly. Jesus is not worried about eating pork, but he is angered by sins which come from within us, from the human heart. This is what really defiles a person.  Fornication, Theft, Murder Adultery, Avarice, Wickedness, Deceit, Licentiousness, Envy, Slander, Pride, Folly
 

Jesus changes the emphasis away from religious duties towards ethical behaviour. He teaches us to be especially mindful of thoughts and feelings that give rise to unethical behaviour in our relationships with family, friends and neighbours. It is those thoughts and feelings, conceived and nurtured in our hearts, that give rise to truly serious sins. What Jesus is saying is that he is offering a cure for the problems of sin in the human heart, not just Jewish hearts. Charles Royden   
 

Commentary
Are you a traditionalist or are you one of those modern people who like to shake everything up and change things? When you come to church, do you like things that are "traditional" or prefer what is "modern", or do you enjoy both? To take the question a stage further, if we are generally traditional types, is it very likely that when we come to church that we will suddenly change and become more flexible and open to different ways of doing things? I would suggest that the answer is, no. The way we are as people affects fairly drastically our picture not just of ourselves and the world around us, but also of the church and of God. O dear! If we are not careful then God will become just as stuffy as we are. If we are honest most of us will admit that we tend to like the familiar and that which we have grown accustomed to. To justify our position and give our position as much weight as possible we pretend that this is what God wants. Sadly I fear that much of what we consider to be God, is nothing more than human tradition and this is what Jesus confronts in the reading today from Mark. Just like the Pharisees we have beloved liturgies and holy practices, our hymns and biblical translations, these are our precious traditions. They are wonderful whilst they help us to draw closer to God, however they are tools of wickedness when we elevate them to such an extent that they divide Christians from each other and split churches from the unity of Christ.
 

The teaching of Jesus is that true obedience to God is something which comes from the heart and not from a ritualistic adherence to practices, laws and regulations, no matter how much we like what we are used to. In the passage from Mark today we see this in practice as a debate ensues over what people should do before they eat a meal. Jesus wanted to move people away from just rituals to consider the commitment of mind and heart. Rituals can be very important tools which enable us to move into commitment and help us to worship. But they can also be restrictive, instead of moving us further in our spiritual understanding and worship, they can become the things of worship themselves, taking the place of God. Rituals are great if they move us from here to God, but they are not God.
 

Now whilst this is understandable, if a little uncomfortable, when it challenges our traditions. What do we make of the fact that Jesus himself actually took laws and regulations and traditions from the Old Testament and was unafraid to break these laws and practices? Well of course the whole point of the Jewish faith was to point to Christ, that is why the laws and prophets of the Old Testament existed. Jesus is recorded in Matthew 5:17 saying
‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them’
People like the Pharisees thought they were doing their best to serve God, but they were so blinkered that they did not realise that in Jesus, God was standing right next to them. The laws which were supposed to point to Jesus ended up being used as sticks to beat him with. In Jesus these old laws were brought to an end, not abolished but ‘fulfilled.’ many rules which had been important before Jesus were now changed and some lost their meaning. That is why we Christians no longer keep the Sabbath as one of the ten commandments. Of course the result of this is that we are supposed to be able to draw closer to God in heart and mind, do we? Finally have we introduced other laws and traditions ourselves which prevent us from a closer walk with God.

Prayers

Lord God, heavenly King, we bring to you our hearts, for you to make new. We want the righteousness that comes from you. We know that it costs. Help us to rid ourselves of the impurities we carry around inside us. Those impurities of jealousy and laziness, greed and deceit and pride and the foolishness that makes fun of your righteous laws as quaint inconveniences. Give us the courage and the strength, wisdom and discernment to be honest with ourselves and you. May the sacrifices we bring to you be those of a contrite heart and those that truly represent the pure religion of caring for widows and orphans in their distress. This we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.

At the beginning of time and at the end you are God and I bless you. At my birth and in my dying, in the opening of the day and at its close, in my waking and my sleeping, you are God and I bless you. You are the first and the last, the giver of every gift, the presence without whom there would be no present, the life without whom there is no life. Lead me to the heart of life’s treasure that I may be a bearer of the gift. Lead me to the heart of the present that I may be a sharer of your eternal presence.
J. Philip Newell

Lord Jesus Christ, by your thorn-crowned head, receive the devotion of my mind. Lord Jesus Christ, by your nail-pierced hands, accept my daily work. Lord Jesus Christ, by your wounded feet, bless my faltering journey. Lord Jesus Christ, by your riven side, accept the adoration of my heart; for your love and your mercy's sake. Amen 
After George Spencer, Father Ignatius, 1799-1864


Lord God, Jesus said that he came to that we might life and have it abundantly. We praise you and we thank you for his purpose in coming and we pray to you that we might indeed experience the fullness of the life that he has promised. Take from us, O Lord, all those things that get in the way of our relationship with you --- our pride and self-certainty, our doubt and our fear, and all those things that come from our human nature that blind us to the wonders of your presence and the glory of what you are doing in our midst. Lord, you know very well how our traditions and our understandings can become instruments of judgement rather than tools of your grace.
We pray today O God for all those who have been hurt by our insistence that our particular way is the only right way. Touch the hearts of those who have turned away from you because we have caused your light within us to grow dim and brighten, we pray, our souls. Lord, we thank you for the refreshing wind of your Spirit - for how you breathe into us new life and new hope and lead us to new understandings. In you we find wholeness for both body and soul.
We pray now, O God, that this wholeness may not only not only grow within us - but that it might enter into and transform the lives of those whom we name before you at this time. We lift them up, O Lord, and also we lift up those situations and those persons, in thanksgiving, and with prayers of intercession, that you have placed upon our hearts this day.
Father of lights, in whom there is no variation or shadow, hear the prayers we offer this day and inspire us to be doers of the word, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen