The Rev. Josh Shipman
The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B/Track2, 2015
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
The girl clomped down
to the kitchen, as usual.
She had lost her leg
in a hunting accident
and she liked to let
everyone know it.[1]
Her mother’s hired hand,
Mrs. Freeman,
was especially interested
in her prosthesis.
“Mrs. Freeman had a special fondness
for the details of secret infections,
hidden deformities,
assaults upon children.
Of diseases,
she preferred the lingering
or incurable.”
The girl’s mother,
Mrs. Hopewell,
“had no bad qualities
of her own,
but she was able
to use other people’s
in…a constructive way…
Nothing is perfect.
This was one of Mrs. Hopewell’s
favoritesayings.
Another was: that is life!
And still another,
the mostimportant, was:
well, other people have their opinions too.”
The usual morning conversation
between Mrs. Hopewell
and Mrs. Freeman
went something like this:
Mrs. Hopewell would say,
“You know, you’re the wheel behind the wheel,”
Mrs. Freeman would say,
“I know it. I’ve always been quick.
It’s some that are quicker than others.”
Everybody is different,” Mrs. Hopewell would say.
“Yes, most people is,” Mrs. Freeman would say.
“It takes all kinds to make the world.”
“I always said it did myself.”
(pause)
The girl, if truth be told,
was not a very pleasant person.
Her given Christian name
was “Joy.”
She had it changed to “Hulga.”
(pause)
“She had arrived at it
first purely on the basis
of its ugly sound
and then the full genius
of its fitness had struck her.
She had a vision of the name
working like the ugly sweating Vulcan
who stayed in the furnace
and to whom, presumably,
the goddess had to come when called.
She saw it as the name
of her highest creative act.”
(pause)
One evening,
Joy-Hulga and Mrs. Hopewell
were interrupted
by a curious interloper:
A Bible Salesman.
(pause)
“Mrs. Hopewell,” he began,
using her name in a way
that soundedalmost intimate,
“I know you believe in Chrustian service.”
Mrs. Hopewell,
immediate asks him
what he is selling, of course.
When he notices
that she doesn’t have a Bible
in her parlor,
she lies,
telling him that it’s by her bedside
(actually, it’s in the attic somewhere).
When she tells him
she doesn’t want a Bible,
and she has to get back
to making dinner,
he seems crestfallen,
and says that folks like her
don’t want to mess
with simple country folks.
And she took the bait.
“Why!” she cried,
“good country people
are the salt of the earth!
Besides, we all have different ways of doing,
it takes all kinds to make the world go ‘round.
That’s life!”
“You said a mouthful,” he said.
“Why, I think there aren’t enough
good country people in the world!”
she said, stirred.
“I think that’s what’s wrong with it!”
(pause)
Hulga had other plans
for the simple Bible salesman.
(pause)
To make a long story short,
They go off to a private place,
and he tells her he loves her…
…and that he would like a
closer look at her
artificial leg.
It turns out,
this Bible salesman
isn’t so simple after all.
His Bible is hollow
and has a whisky flask inside.
(pause)
As he’s about to take
off with her leg,
leaving her stranded
in the barn, he says,
“‘I’ll tell
you another thing, Hulga’,
using the name
as if he didn’tthink much of it,
“you ain’t so smart.
I been believing in nothing ever
since I was born!”
Mrs. Hopewell sees him,
walking off in the distance,
and says,
“He was so simple, but I guess the
world would be better off
if we were all that simple.”
Mrs. Freeman adds,
“Some can’tbe that simple
I know I never could.”[2]
(pause)
Things are not
always as they seem.
(pause)
Take today’s Gospel lesson,
for instance:
You have these Pharisees
and Scribes,
and they’re always
washing their hands
after they use the restroom.
And they’re always
washing their fruits and vegetables
before eating them.
And if that’s not crazy enough,
they also wash their dishes, too.
What insanity is this?
Or maybe it’s
not that simple.
(pause)
One commentator
recalls the flannel boards
from Sunday school ,
of his youth.
Writing about these
one dimensional
Biblical stories, he says:
“Perhaps the most flattened characters
were the Pharisees.
They were presented
as foils against which the virtue
of New Testament heroes
stood out in sharp relief.
When the Pharisees got into a fight
with Jesus over handwashing,
the flannel graph reduced the story
to a simple battle of bizarre legalism
and a Lady Macbeth-like obsession with purity
versus simple, sanctified common sense.
We all knew whose side we would have been on.”[3]
(pause)
A lot of the tension
between Jesus and the Pharisees
is indicative of tensions
between the early Christian community
and the developing Jewish synagogue tradition.
Think of it as sibling rivalry, if you like.
The Pharisees have gotten
something of a bad reputation.
Most scholars point out that
they were actually a reformist group
made up of lay persons.
What they were trying to do
was bring the faith of the Temple
into people’s everyday lives.[4]
They could be compared
to third order monks and nuns—
people who live in the world,
but are informed by a devout faith.
They seek to bring the best of monastic life
to the secular world.
This is sort of what the Pharisees
were doing: making Torah accessible to all,
not just the priests in Jerusalem.[5]
So, you can relax
and continue to wash your hands
and vegetables
and pots and pans.
It was a ritual washing,
at stake here,
part of the Jerusalem
Temple tradition.[6]
As with many rituals,
though,
this tradition had become
a social marker of who is in
and who is out—namely the Gentiles.[7]
As an aside:
Whenever we get worked up
about the inclusion of
people who are different
in the church,
we should probably remember
that most of us would not be here, today,
if the early church had not made
a radical departure from tradition,
and included non-Jewish people.
(pause)
You see, Jesus’ problem wasn’t with ritual—
but with ritual that had become empty
and ritual that’s use had become twisted,
uprooted from its original purpose.
(pause)
Now comes the really tough
part of the story, though:
Jesus says that it’s not things
outside of ourselves that
cause us to do evil.
It’s our own hearts.
There is no,
“the Devil made me do it”
in Mark’s Gospel.
We are responsible
for our actions.[8]
That doesn’t sound
like Good News to me!
But I guess that’s life!
(pause)
But there’s more.
He’s not just talking
to the Pharisees…
or to the Scribes…
Then he called
to the crowd again.
That’s us.
All of us.
As listeners of this passage,
we are grouped with the Pharisees
and the scribes.
And warned about our hearts.
(pause)
How can we live like this, Jesus?
How do we teach our wild hearts to love?
(pause)
When Jesus quotes
the Isaiah passage,
he says:
This people honors me
with their lips
but their hearts are
far from me.
There is another side to this passage, though.
Hearts that can be far from God,
also have the possibility of being
closer to God.
(pause)
On the front of the pulpit,
in the parish that sponsored
me for the priesthood,
is a passage from scripture
in bold letters:
But be ye doers of the Word,
and not hearers only.
(pause)
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.
(pause)
This is the worship
that Almighty God seeks.
Not empty ritual.
Not easy moralisms
or a thin veneer of Christian piety.
Not a Bible in every parlor.
Christ-centered religion…
not Christ-haunted.[9]
(pause)
The early Christian Church
didn’t grow by leaps and bounds
because they were Good Country People,
guilting people into purchasing Bibles.
Or handing out tracts
and asking people where they would be
if they died today.
They took care of widows
and orphans!
They welcomed women
and other marginalized groups
of the time,
into their diverse circles!
They fed people.
They clothed people.
This is how the wild heart is trained:
By living fully, into God’s Presence,
and sharing God’s love with all people
through concrete actions.
Oh, that our deepest desire
were to be that simple!
1
[1]What follows is a retelling of Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People.” The material and all quotes come from:
[2] End of retelling.
[3]Ortberg, John, "Pharisees Are Us,"The Christian Century, 2003. p. 20
[4]Progressive involvement: Lectionary blogging: Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23, p.2
[5] Ibid.
[6] p.1
[7] 3
[8] pp. 1-2
[9] Thanks, Flannery O’Connor!