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.”

We love when Jesus lets the Pharisees have it. When they say something stupid or selfish or unholy and self-righteous and Jesus puts them in their place with a well-cited piece of Scripture. He does it more than once in the Gospels and it’s awesome. He calls them blind guides and blind fools. He compares them to a brood of vipers and white-washed tombs. It’s one of the ways I want to be more like Jesus sometimes.

And that’s what he’s up to this morning. The scribes and the Pharisees are getting after Jesus for letting his disciples eat with defiled hands – for not washing them, first – as their history and tradition instructed them to do. This wasn’t just about cleanliness and hygiene, either. The handwashing they were after had as much to do with religious ritual and piety, so the Pharisees and scribes were pointing out the supposed sinfulness of the disciples and judging them for it.

So, Jesus pulls that quote from the prophet Isaiah out of his back pocket and uses it to call them all hypocrites. “Hypocrites” because the Pharisees and scribes and religious people of all stripes were using the letter of the law to shame and scare and pass judgment on others, while they, themselves, had plenty to be ashamed of.

There’s an interesting bit of scripture, removed from this lectionary text for some reason, where Jesus gets specific about it, too. He calls out the Pharisees for creating a loophole, where they could avoid “honoring their father and mother” by declaring the portion of their income they would, could, and should be using to care for their elders, as “corban,” or as an offering to God, which was exempt from such worldly purposes. (In other words, maybe they didn’t want to pay for mom’s nursing home, so they designated that money as holy, sacred, and blessed by the synagogue so that it was off-limits in some way.)

And we know they threw stones, too – literally, threw stones – at women and girls for adultery and divorce and prostitution in ways men didn’t have to suffer.

And they declared food unclean and people unworthy and sins unforgiveable – which is what all of this with Jesus and his disciples is really about, in the end. These religious people were so good at pointing fingers and casting judgment and declaring who was in or out, who was loved or not, who was chosen or damned, and all the rest.

And Jesus’s point, I think, is that it’s easier to fight and point fingers and cast judgment about the stuff “outside,” than it is to look within ourselves or to wonder about what’s within the heart of our neighbor, too.

For the Pharisees, this “outside” stuff that left a person “clean” or not was stuff like handwashing … or all of those dietary laws they had to follow … or who was sleeping with whom.

For us – these days it seems like the “outside” stuff marks a person – is stuff like masks … and vaccines; political parties … and still, too much of the time, who’s sleeping with whom, for crying out loud!

We can throw all the proverbial stones we want – and we do, and we are as good at it as the Pharisees, some of the time – but, the genius of God, in Jesus, is that, because he looked so much like those Pharisees and because he looks so much like us, just the same, Jesus compels us all to look in the mirror, and deeper into our own heart of hearts, too.

Where are we throwing stones, when we could be offering mercy?

Like, maybe that person isn’t connected to a community of faith because they’ve never been invited before or because they’ve been burned by them in the past.

Where are we casting judgment when we could be asking better questions?

Like, is it a coincidence that, four of the states with the lowest levels of COVID vaccinated people are also among those ranked lowest in education in our country?

Where am I arguing about what’s on the outside instead of trying to understand, forgive, maybe even heal, what’s on the inside?

Like, maybe that really angry, ignorant, naive social media rant is the only vehicle for being heard that those special someones in my Facebook feed have at their disposal.

Where am I getting angry when I could be turning the other cheek?

Where am I being more proud than humble? More afraid than faithful? More selfish than self-sacrificing? When, where, and why would Jesus let me have it, just like he did those Pharisees so much of the time?

There’s a line in a Brandi Carlile song called “Looking Out,” where she sings, “Some people get religion. Some people get the truth.” Brandi Carlile, a lesbian who was denied the waters of baptism as a teenager because of her sexuality, sings about how she never got the truth. And I think that’s the case for too many people in our world these days.

“Some people get religion. Some people get the truth.”

Misguided religion draws lines in-between and divides based on differences. Faith and truth draw a gathering circle around to celebrate those same differences.

Misguided religion finds fault and flaws. Faith and truth promise forgiveness.

Misguided religion stokes fear. Faith and truth offer hope.

Misguided religion points fingers. Faith and truth lends a hand.

Misguided religion does the same-old, same-old, just because it is the same-old, same-old. Faith and truth get out of the boat and try new things.

Misguided religion counts sins. Faith and truth count blessings.

Misguided religion lives in scarcity. Faith and truth trust in God’s abundance.

“Some people get religion. Some people get the Truth.”

The Pharisees in Jesus’ day were all about religion. Jesus was and is all about the Way, the Truth, and the Life:

The WAY of discipleship that calls us to follow in his loving footsteps…

The TRUTH of God’s grace for the ways we stumble and fall as we go…

And the LIFE everlasting that belongs to each of us because we all belong to him.

Amen

Check out this performance of Brandi Carlile’s “LOOKING OUT” for a little inspiration.

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.

When they had crossed over, they came to land at Genessaret and moored the boat. When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized Jesus and rushed about that region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard that he was. And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.

It didn’t used to be this way, but when I read this bit of Scripture nowadays, I’m not so impressed by the crowds. I’m not drawn to the way they recognized Jesus or how they chased him around Galilee, like a rock star. I’m not even moved by his compassion for those crowds or for the sick people he healed or even for the great faith it takes to believe touching his cloak would work a miracle, let alone that those sorts of miracles apparently happened. For good or ill, we’ve come to expect that from Jesus, right?

So, what gets my attention these days is how it seems like, maybe, Jesus was trying to avoid all of that some of the time.

See, the disciples show up – sometime after he’s sent them out to share the good news and heal diseases and cast out demons and whatnot – and they start to tell Jesus all about their exploits. And I imagine they’re more than a little proud and excited about all they’ve been up to. I wouldn’t be surprised if these former fishermen had traded one sort of “big fish” story for another, if you know what I mean. Like, what used to be a competition about who caught and sold more or bigger fish out on the lake, now had likely become a chance to one-up each other about who’d converted the greatest number of new believers; or who had cast out the most demons; or who had forgiven the most sinful sinner; or who had healed the grossest case of leprosy, or whatever.

Now, I’m sure Jesus was proud of his protégés. I imagine he was pleased with their progress, if their reports were true. I suspect he was impressed with their enthusiasm and their faith and all of their hard work. But – again – what gets my attention these days is that Jesus tells the disciples to stop; to step away from all of that; to go to a deserted place, by themselves, and rest for awhile. And I think maybe Jesus does this because he has as much compassion for his closest friends and followers, as he does for all of those crowds, who were like sheep without a shepherd, looking to be healed.

And the truth is, Jesus’ disciples weren’t any different, or better, or worse, than the crowds who followed them around. They needed healing, too. And the same is true for you and me. We are no different, or better, or worse, than those with whom we live our lives of faith out there in the world.

And sometimes we need to step away from all we’re up to in order to remember and to recognize and to receive the rest we need and that God longs for us to experience. Sometimes we need to stop looking outside of ourselves at the needs surrounding us and start looking in the mirror for the needs that are ours. Sometimes we need to be quiet and still long enough to hear something other than our own voices or the noise of the world. Sometimes we need to listen for what God has to say about what we need most, rather than what the world out there is trying to convince us is so important.

And that’s hard, right – the stillness and the solitude and the listening, I mean? I was reminded about it at our last “Wild, Wacky, Wonderful Wednesday,” with the kids. I did my best to talk with them about prayer and meditation. And we talked about the difference between praying – where we do all the talking and ask God for all the things we’d like God’s help with – and meditation – where we sit still and be quiet and listen for what God might be trying to tell us. Some of the kids got it and played along – or at least pretended to. But several others hated it. I know because they told me so … out loud … in front of the group! They couldn’t do it. They couldn’t stand it. Wouldn’t do it. And it made them want to go home.

Which is as funny as it is frustrating. And it’s not unique to kids. I’ve had adults tell me the same thing – that it’s hard, frustrating, impossible, even, to be still and quiet in prayer and meditation for too long. And I struggle to make time for it, too, to be honest.

So, I think this Gospel is a perfectly-timed message for us – not just because it’s still summer and those of us governed by the school calendar have a couple of weeks left before another school year – and all that that means. But this is good timing for all of us as we continue to wonder about what Fall will look like post-pandemic – out there in the world and in our lives together at Cross of Grace.

I thought of something I’ve seen Social Worker and Professor, Brene Brown, get credit for saying – that we shouldn’t long so much for a return to whatever “normal” was just for the sake of it. She says, “Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than [that] we normalized greed, inequality, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate, and lack. We should not long to return, my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.”

Now all of that doesn’t apply to all of us. But it begs the question for me. “What will ‘normal’ be for us?”

Will we fill our schedules, calendars, and agendas with all of the things that were there before – just because? Have we already started to do that – and why? Or will we be thoughtful and deliberate and faithful about engaging what matters? Will we say “yes” to what does matter? And might we practice saying “no” to what doesn’t? Might we schedule more time away – to stop – in deserted places, by ourselves to pray and listen and plan to live more deliberately? And will we be kind and gracious, forgiving and compassionate toward those who have the courage and faith to say no – or to do differently – in the days to come?

I hope so. Because I think this is what Jesus is calling his disciples to this morning. And by extension, of course, this is our call as followers of Jesus, just the same.

What time apart and time away, in deserted places, means to do for us is to give us rest and refreshment, yes. It allows us to stop and relax. It replenishes our energy and restores our enthusiasm and builds our strength and increases our stamina. Personally, it has a knack for getting my creative juices flowing in new ways. All of this is called Sabbath, remember, and it’s one of God’s Top Ten commandments. And when we get it right, it forces us to stop relying on ourselves and on our own accomplishments, and reminds us to rely on God more often, instead.

And this takes faith, because we have to let God be God in those moments when we dare to stop doing, producing, accomplishing, proving and distracting ourselves with all we have on our respective agendas. And it takes humility because it reminds us that our value, as far as God is concerned, comes from simply being, merely existing – nothing more and nothing less – and that is a lesson in grace, for sure.

And when we practice that kind of Sabbath well… when we put away our busy schedules and our big fish stories (unless they actually involve some fishing, I suppose) and the pride that goes along with them… when we stop filling our calendars and our schedules and our lists of things to do… we will start to see that value and that worth and that kind of grace in the mirror, for ourselves, apart from our ability to “do” anything about it.

And when we learn to see it in the mirror, we’ll begin to see it in the world – in friends, family, neighbors and more. And then we might normalize – and prioritize – things like grace and patience, humility and each other, instead of what was “normal” before. And when that happens, our compassion will be stirred, like Jesus’ was way back when. And we will begin to live and move and breathe and serve in the world, with joy, more meaningfully, beside still waters, perhaps, and mindful of our place in the midst of what all belongs to God, and resting assured in God’s grace to care for every bit of it – and even for us, in the end.

Amen

Some People Get Religion, Some People Get the Truth

Sabbath Stillness and Solitude