Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 3, 2006
Sermon by Pastor John Marboe
The
Holy Gospel according to St. Mark. (Mark
7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23)
Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who
had come from
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 evils things come from within, and
they defile a person.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father, from our
Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ.
Jesus said, “Listen to me and understand. It is from within, from the human heart, that
evil intentions come.”
How well do you think you know yourself? Do you ever experience being overcome in a
passionate moment? Do you ever erupt
emotionally? Do you ever surprise
yourself with your emotional reaction?
Have you ever said or done something and later wonder, “Where did
that come from?”
We all live with a powerful emotional chemistry within
us—our love, rage, sorrow, hate, sympathy, elation. These things make us mysteries unto
ourselves. I’m going to call them,
for the sake of discussion this morning, “locations of feeling” within us. You might call them something different—maybe
your own internal goblins—but I’m going to call them “locations of
feeling.” And these locations of
feeling within us are powerful, and they are not always pretty. So, as the saying goes, we’d just as soon “not
go there,” to those locations. We
would rather not acknowledge parts of ourselves we don’t like. These are what
Jesus called “evil intentions,” and he listed some: fornication, theft,
murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander,
pride, folly. These, all of them,
live in all of us.
It’s a funny thing about human nature—the degree to
which we fail to see something we would rather not see in ourselves tends to be
the same degree we are expert at seeing that very thing in others. True, no?
The degree to which we fail to see something we would rather not see
in ourselves is the same degree to which it bothers us in others.
In the Gospel story, the Pharisees were incensed that
Jesus’ disciples didn’t wash their hands before eating, a clear violation of
the tradition. The context of Jesus’
words in our Gospel today is judgment. Not a formal judgment in a courtroom,
but people judging other people. The
Pharisees are judging Jesus’ disciples for what they are not doing
properly. And the Pharisees, as we know,
are professionals at judging other people. We’re pretty good at it, too. We’re good at it without trying. We judge other people constantly on
the basis of what we observe. But here’s
the thing—you really can’t judge another person by what you see.
A person related a story to me not so long ago about
a congregational meeting at another Lutheran congregation. At this congregational meeting conflict
arose, quite intense conflict. People
had very strong feelings on different sides of an issue, and the
conversation became intense. People
began to speak, not about the issue but about one another, in very uncharitable
ways. At a certain point the pastor
intervened, not to take sides with one or the other faction, but rather to say
this: “You have no idea about one another.
You have no idea what’s going on in each other’s lives. You don’t know enough to be saying these
things about one another.” Somebody
began to object, saying, “No, we actually know one another pretty well.” And he said, “No, you have no idea.”
If you don’t think that’s right, just consider for a
moment, in the depths of your own heart, how well you feel understood by
others. We really do have no idea
about one another.
My father, rest in peace, had a favorite joke, and if
I heard it once I heard it a hundred times.
And the joke goes like this:
There was a man and there was a woman.
The man had a wooden eye; the woman had a rather large nose. Both of them were a bit bashful about their
physical features, and so they tended to withdraw from social company. They were talked, by mutual friends, into
going to a public dance where they sat on the sidelines, until some friends
coaxed the man into asking the woman for a dance. So he did.
Stirring up his courage, he walked over to the woman and sort of
stammered out, “Wou-would you care to dance with me?” To which she responded, “Would I! Would I!” To which he responded, “Big nose! Big nose!”
Our powers of misperception are amazing. Our
powers of misperception are really amazing.
Those things that bother us, that anger us, that excite us, that
frustrate us, have really more to do with us, what’s going on “in here” than with what’s “out there.” Think for a moment: What or who is most
under your skin right now? Got
it? Now, think of that phrase—“under
your skin”—whatever it is has gotten inside of you and has you fouled up.
Now, listen to Jesus’ words. “There is nothing outside a person that by
going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” If something has gotten under our skin, that
is, inside of us, we can be sure it was an inside job. Some friendly party opened the door.
Letting go of our judgment of others, from the heart,
is one of the deepest and most difficult spiritual challenges we face. It requires deep humility; it’s a lifelong
journey. Few ever get there, but all
of us are called.
Jesus said, “Judge not, lest you be judged.” And to the Pharisees in our story today he said,
“Don’t worry about my disciples soiled hands. Worry about your soiled souls.”
Most of us in our lifetime never really get free or
healed of our judgmentalism. But we can,
by grace, begin to turn.
Consider: that our most negative feelings toward others are likely
really negative feelings toward those parts of ourselves we like the least. For
there is no essential difference between ourselves and anybody else. Every possible human expression and
feeling and action reside in some form in every human being.
So it is that compassion toward others begins with
honesty and compassion toward ourselves.
And compassion toward ourselves comes from God, in Christ, who
sees everything, and yet regards us with
compassion.
The Pharisees feature prominently in the Gospels
because, I believe, through them we learn about ourselves. There is more than a little Pharisee in each
of us. Have you ever been a
Pharisee? Have you ever said, either out
loud or to yourself, “Did you see that?”
“They don’t wash their hands.”
“They don’t go to church.”
“They don’t pay their bills.”
“They don’t care for their children.” “They don’t dress appropriately.” “They don’t have any discipline.” “They don’t have good manners or show
respect.” “They don’t make any
effort to be friendly.” “They
can’t control their drinking, or their temper, or their gambling, or their
language.”
Have you ever been a Pharisee? Of course, we all have. In those moments, the Spirit of Christ
would urge us to take the opportunity to pull back our judgments and to
look instead to ourselves, for Jesus said, “Judge not.” You can never know by what you see the
complexity of another being. But we
can, by God’s grace, begin to learn the complexity that is
ourselves. Then we begin to taste a bit
more spiritual freedom, when we realize that God has already forgiven
what we least appreciate about ourselves…
for Jesus’ sake.
Amen.