Mark 1:21-28

They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.

A friend of mine from college had an interesting way of filling his free time: he would climb up the exteriors of various buildings on campus. This all happened at Valparaiso University, so one of his climbing adventures took place on this building: the 60’-high Chapel of the Resurrection (see image below).

His attitude towards life was engaging, fresh, and often quite different from mine. I rode a bike, always with a helmet firmly attached; he had a skateboard. I played cards and video games; he came up with crazy pranks to pull off on campus. I was concerned about following the rules; he pushed boundaries. I kept my feet firmly on the ground; he...did not. Well, I kept my feet firmly on the ground until the day I finally went with him to climb a building on campus. I didn’t attempt it until our senior year. In all reality, it was little more than an attempt to impress the girl I had recently started dating. We all made it up to the roof and back down without falling and breaking any bones. And she must have been impressed because we kept dating and eventually married.

I asked my friend if he was ok with me talking about him and his campus climbing adventures for my sermon illustration. He joked that he wasn’t aware of the story of Jesus climbing the temple. However, I reminded him there is a story about Jesus climbing the temple. It’s found in Luke 4:9, which reads: “The devil...placed [Jesus] on the pinnacle of the temple.” It all makes sense now...the devil made him do it!

I’m not advocating for anyone to go scale the facades of buildings. That’s not exactly what inspires me about him. I am inspired by his impulse to push against rules, norms, and expectations in order to serve others. This same friend graduated and went down to Guatemala to work with people who lived in landfills. That takes a serious boundary-pushing impulse.

I hope you are blessed with a friend like this; someone who helps you see new possibilities. A friend like this keeps you on your toes. A friend like this helps you understand that some rules are made to be broken.

In this way, my friend modeled an aspect of Jesus’ life that is often overlooked by Christian churches in the West today: Jesus was ornery. This is evident in the miracles he performed, the wisdom he taught, the friends he made, the freedom with which he lived his life, and the way he understood and related to God. All of it clashed against the customs and rules of his time.

Ornery Jesus reserved his most radical and controversial actions for the Sabbath day–the day no work was to be done. I imagine Jesus was pretty low key throughout the week, but as soon as the sun goes down on a Friday night, Jesus would get a look in his eye that suggested he was ready to break some rules...because some rules are made to be broken.

In the gospel story for today, Jesus is teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath. He’s not teaching like everyone else teaches...this guy is impressive! He’s engaging, authoritative, and exciting. He’s pushing boundaries. He’s the skateboard-riding, thrill-seeking, excels-at-everything guy captivating a room full of rule-followers wearing safety glasses, pocket protectors, and bike helmets...or whatever the equivalent was 2,000 years ago.

He is addressing an assembly of people whose power is perfectly preserved by the rules they impose and enforce. But here they are, eating up Jesus’ every word. They begin to see that the rules should ensure that all people thrive. Maybe someone other than a priest can forgive someone’s sins in God’s name. Maybe people should be allowed to be healed on a Sabbath day. Maybe sinners, tax collectors, and prostitutes are worthy companions with whom to sit down and break bread.

And then someone in the assembly recognizes what Jesus is doing and calls him out on it. “I know who you are. You will destroy us!” Scripture says this is the voice of an “unclean spirit.”

The unclean spirit has found a compatible host in this religious man preoccupied with his own power. This unclean spirit is threatened by anyone suggesting there is a life to be lived beyond the rules, regulations, and structures that preserve the power and privilege of the elite. The voice insists what matters in life is to follow the rules so that you can keep your cupboards and treasure chests full, even if those same rules mean others are denied their fair share.

Jesus does not sit quietly and listen to the concerns of the unclean spirit. He does not allow the voice of lies, deceit, and unbelief to utter another single word. He has no time to waste rationalizing with such narrow-mindedness. Instead, Jesus commands this unclean spirit to be silenced and remove itself from the man. It does. All are amazed.

I like to think that all those who witnessed this event in the synagogue that Sabbath day left feeling free and emboldened to push the limits of society, ready to treat people with more respect and compassion than they had before. However, there were some whose hearts were hardened against the new gospel they were hearing and witnessing with their own eyes. They saw Jesus as an ornery rule-breaker. And when your identity, value, and salvation is tied up in maintaining the rules even if those rules oppress others, then ornery rule-breakers must be stopped at any cost. These men would conspire with other powerful people to rid themselves of this rebellious Jesus once and for all. They would, of course, fail.

Fortunately for human civilization, history is full of examples of people who have been in touch with the rebellious nature of the universal Christ and have gotten into “good trouble,” as the late Georgia Representative John Lewis liked to refer to it. John Lewis, leading the crowd of black southerners across the Edmund Pettus bridge to register to vote. Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, raising the world’s awareness of the sin of apartheid in South Africa. Malala Yousafzai, shot in the head for demanding girls be given the right to be educated in Taliban-occupied Pakistan, only to survive and find an even louder voice. These are just a few of the stories most of us know well. But each day there are people who challenge rules and assumptions that only serve to preserve the power of the privileged. They get into good trouble.

God did not send Jesus into the world to sanction our worldly preoccupation with preserving our sense of power and privilege. God sent Jesus into the world to expose the sin of humankind, teach us a more beautiful way for all people, and remind us that we are forgiven even when we fail to follow that more beautiful way. In the coming days and weeks, I encourage you to get to know ornery Jesus. Ornery Jesus calls out injustice. Ornery Jesus calls out the unclean spirits that tell us our salvation lies in our power and privilege. Ornery Jesus looks at an obstacle as intimidating as a 60’ brick wall and says, “We can make it up there.”

Amen.

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 honors 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."

I’m a rule-follower. I know what the rules are, I know who makes the rules, and I’ve thought I understood why they are made. Being a rule-follower has opened many doors in my lifetime.

My 34 years as a white, upper-middle-class, average intelligence heterosexual Christian American male who has followed the rules, stayed out of trouble, and minded my own business, has resulted thus far in a good job, an incredible wife, and healthy children all under the roof of a large home in a safe, white, middle-class neighborhood. And I earned it. I followed the rules, stayed out of trouble, and minded my own business. I played the game and so I get to enjoy my winnings.

Of course, there are some drawbacks to being a rule-follower. I’m a terribly boring person to be around; I don’t have any wild and crazy stories to bring to a party; and I’m pretty unlikely to go and do something ridiculous and entertaining. But the second, and more devastating drawback, is that my rule-following has left me with a sense of entitlement and a daily struggle to understand whether the grace of Jesus matters much in my life.

At least, that’s what was becoming more clear as I spent time wrestling with today’s gospel story.

Jesus and his disciples were gathering for a meal when the Pharisees (who were watching Jesus closely, looking for any slip-up that they could use to attack his credibility) noticed that some of Jesus’ motley crew of fishermen, tax collectors, laborers, and other various marginalized followers were not washing their hands before eating. They weren’t following the rules! Finally, the Pharisees had a charge against Jesus that would stick. The Pharisees from Jerusalem could certainly mount a smear campaign against a rabbi whose followers didn’t follow the rules their religious tradition had so prioritized.

Unfortunately for them, Jesus responds with a scathing commentary about their hypocritical habits and the ridiculousness of their rules. For all the Pharisees’ strict adherence to the religious rules, they failed to see that God had come to them as someone who refused to play the game, someone who refused to keep his nose clean, someone who refused to mind his own business when there was so much suffering in the world that others endured at the hands of the rule-makers.

God was doing incredible things for the people in the world who didn’t deserve it – the sick, the widows, the orphans, the outcasts, the prostitutes, the wicked, the smelly, the uneducated, the lazy, the über rich, the dirt poor. God, as evidenced by the ministry of Jesus, had definitively sided with those who refused to play the game as well as those who, by virtue of their birth in a specific time and place in history, lost the cosmic lottery and never even had a chance to play the game of worldly success, much less win.

I hate that scripture is full of verses like this–verses that point out the ridiculous entitlement issues of rule-followers like me. I am rarely willing to side with or speak up for the outcasts, the wicked, the smelly, the lazy, or anyone else who wasn’t playing by the same rules I was. These are people who have nothing to offer me in my pursuit of ease, luxury, safety, and comfort, which society (and culturally co-opted religion) tells me are the most important things in life.

I hate hearing Jesus say that the whole time I’ve been so focused on following the rules and pursuing success, he’s been doing amazing things for, with, and among people I’d worked hard to ignore or put down: people who were born with a different skin color or a different gender attraction; people born into a different income bracket or a rougher neighborhood; people born with bodies more susceptible to diseases of the flesh or the mind.

I’ve had countless opportunities to stand beside and speak up for people who need to hear the promise of grace, and I haven’t been able to share it because I didn’t want to risk anything. Just in the past week-and-a-half I can think of examples including the woman on the plane who, after hearing I was a pastor, asked me my thoughts about how all public school districts are teaching kids to be homosexuals. Or there’s my friend who is a police officer and regularly says disparaging remarks about African-Americans. Each time I mumbled something like, “Huh, well, I don’t know.”

Way too often I choose to say nothing. Why would I? I gotta play the game, keep my head down, be amicable, not challenge prejudices; or else I’d risk losing a friend, a parishioner, or even the esteem of a complete stranger on an airplane–each person I see as a measure of success in my life.

And of course I see my behavior impacting my children. The other day at bedtime in my big, beautiful house I have earned by keeping my head down, being amicable, and not challenging prejudices in myself or others, my youngest son was being his independent self. He had his own idea of what adventures he could embark instead of brushing his teeth. I was tired and in no mood to play along with his daydreaming and not listening, so I grabbed his arm, put my face in front of his, and shouted, “Just follow the rules!”

And there it was, my life’s philosophy laid bare.

Just follow the rules. Make my life easier by playing the same game I am. Keep your head down. Be nice. Suppress any desire to stand out or do your own thing. And don’t challenge my idea of right and wrong. Do that, and you too can be successful like me.

I will never forget those tears that fell from his blue eyes.

I think about those tears and I see the tears of countless youth contemplating suicide because they feel the weight of not fitting in at school.

I think about those tears and I see the tears of mothers whose black children were killed either by police officers who were taught to assume they were dangerous, or from other youth who, for a myriad of reasons, knew they would never be accepted by society, so they play the game offered by gangs and drugs.

I think about those tears and I see the tears of struggle from immigrant families who came to America by circumventing the legal process because they believed their families’ livelihoods were worth the risk; only to find out that the people who had the fortune of being born here see them and treat them as drug dealers and pariahs of society.

I think about those tears and I see the tears of Jesus as he was dying on the cross on the hill overlooking Jerusalem–the place where the rules were made and enforced; the same rules that condemned him and the people he had come to save. I see the tears he cried as he tried to show all of us rule-followers a more noble, beautiful, and just way to live.

Jesus says it is “from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come.” The problem isn’t what enters my body through my eyes, ears, or mouth. Rather, the problem is in my internal desire for self-justification, self-indulgence, and self-preservation that blinds me to the real struggles and issues of injustice. It all makes me wonder if I leave much room for grace in my life; and if not, do I really have any room for Jesus in my life?

For me, this darn scripture from Mark has been like seeing something horrific that I can’t unsee. I can only see myself as one of those self-righteous Pharisees, condemning people who don’t measure up to my standards; finding salvation in rule-following, as opposed to the unearned grace of a loving and just God.

It is painful to have my eyes opened to the ways that I participate in the oppressive and dangerous games that oppress people who are different from me. It’s not something I wanted to think about; but as a Christian in today’s world I have to admit that grace is the only answer in the face of so much injustice, self-righteousness, inequality of opportunities, and game-playing. Grace to forgive myself. Grace to share with others. Grace that sustain me when I stop trying to insulate my life with measures of success. Grace that transforms my weakness into something beautiful.

As hard as it has been to think about bearing these honest convictions with you today; I stand before you in complete faith and trust that God is offering an invitation to a way of life that would enable me to be of service to the people in our world I’ve spent so much time trying to ignore. If you sense that for yourself as well, then praise God! Let’s do the hard work of honest self-reflection. Let’s keep each other accountable and honest. Let’s make room for amazing grace to ignite in our hearts. And let’s finally allow God to work in and through us so that all people can live lives of health, security, opportunity, and justice.

Amen.