Unclean

This is my sermon text for the Covenant Joint Service for September 2, 2018 at Ascension Lutheran. The texts for my message were from the Gospel of St. Mark, Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23, and from James 1:17-27.  + pBRC

Lord God, help us to know your ways; 
teach us your paths.
Lead us in your truth, and teach us, 
for you are the God of our salvation; 
for you we wait all day long. Through Christ, our Lord. AMEN. 


May God’s Grace through the Good News of Jesus Christ be at the center of your lives forever.  AMEN.

It is good to have all of you together in one place. It is good to have the three congregations of our covenant together. Each of us individually has much work to do on our journey as disciples of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, but it is better and easier to do it when we work together.

Similarly, each of our churches has much work to do as it is and represents the Body of Christ in the area of the Reign of God, and it is better and easier to do it collectively, when we work together.

The lectionary brings our Gospel lesson back to Mark until Advent comes. In Mark’s Gospel, especially at this point in the story of the Good News, there is a lot of not understanding. Those around Jesus do not understand that he brings a new way of life.

Today’s lesson is a basic and elementary issue. The Jewish people had a cleanliness code and Jesus’ disciples were breaking it. The code itself makes sense. It is basic human hygiene codified into law.  

I hope that all of you who prepared food for the meal we will have after our worship service observed the simple requirements: before you begin to prepare food or eat food, wash your hands. Wash the utensils you are going to use. Rinse off the unpackaged food you purchase in the market.  It’s all common sense. So the Pharisees and scribes are right in pointing out the failure of the disciples. But their reasoning was wrong.

What Jesus tries to point out to the Pharisees and scribes is that while they are following God’s rules, they have strayed from doing God’s will.

Jesus was trying to get the Pharisees to understand. The rules of cleanliness are good. But when you focus on following the rules, and enforcing the rules, rather than what the rule tries to ensure, that people can eat without getting sick, then you have lost your way. If the rule becomes what is primary, then you have strayed from God’s will.

If your focus is on rules, rather than the goal, then you are venturing into the hypocritical behavior that Jesus is condemning. “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition." (Mark 7:8)

In organizations, they call this mission drift. They get so focused on the details that they forget why they are in business. So they turn back to their mission statement.

It is the behavior that James warned about, “But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.“ (James 1:22)

For Christianity, I think our mission statement is the Greatest Commandment and the One that Is Like it. So how does, Love the Lord your God with all of your heart and mind and soul and strength and Love your neighbor as yourself, affect the cleanliness code.

In our last class on the Parables, we talked about what we could do to love God. We came to the conclusion that we showed our love to God by loving our neighbor and others. I’d amend that to add we show our love to God by caring for God’s creation as well.

If the goal is to love God, and we show that by loving and taking care of our neighbor and others, we shouldn’t let rules about who is worthy and who is a sinner, who is included and who is excluded, who is clean and who is unclean, those rules should not matter.

While the rules of cleanliness for food and food preparation materials made and make sense, the rules of human cleanliness reflect a time of a lack of knowledge and fear. People could be considered unclean by being engaging in traditional human relations, and women were unclean on a monthly basis.

None of these behaviors are worthy of making someone unclean, and therefore, to be shunned and isolated in their community.

Jesus was right in saying that it is what comes out of a person, their harmful, hate filled words and actions that defile them and make them unclean. He said, “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." (Mark 7:21-23)

Our uncleanliness comes from within. It comes from putting ourselves and our desires above the needs of others. It comes from putting ourselves and our wants above the will of God. It is a ‘me first’ way of thinking. It puts mine before thine.

It is reflected in how we talk about people, how we act toward them. It is living in suspicion, rather than living in hope. It is living in fear, rather than living in love. Uncleanliness from within causes us to separate and divide rather than unite and bring together.

Jesus’ life and ministry were about bringing in the outcast, healing and restoring the sick and shunned, forgiving the sinner, helping the needy, welcoming  the stranger. Jesus ministry was all about reuniting the lost.

That is why at the table we take bread, made from broken grains that have been brought together and we take wine made from grapes that have been crushed and blended together. Because that is what Christ does with and for us. By the sacrifice of his life, by his death on the cross and his glorious resurrection, he takes us, who are unclean by what we have said and done, unclean by what we have done and left undone, and he declares us clean and restored, worthy of being his children.

He brings us together and restores us.

We have to fight our human impulse to divide and degrade. We have to resist our nature to separate and castigate.

We need to work together. We need to move beyond those things that make us different, and focus on what makes us one, the belief and trust in Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God and our Savior.

We need to work and strive to keep our focus on loving God by loving our neighbor, and not on satisfying our needs or desires. We need to love God as God has loved us. We need to love others as we want to be loved.