The Hypocritical Christian

Read Mark 7: 1-23

I have a confession to make.  In our increasingly enlightened, progressive era of church attendance ( you know come as you are in jeans and a t-shirt or only engage digitally) there is something that still bothers me. Coffee in the sanctuary. I know there has been coffee shops in churches for decades now.  Also, let me be clear, I do not mind the relaxing of expectations about the way we are dressed.  I am in favor of relaxed expectations about the way that children behave in the sanctuary.  All this is true and good; yet, when I see a coffee cups in the sanctuary it just bugs me.  Recently, I even tried to get over it.  While ushering I had a small Styrofoam Cup o’ Joe in the back with me. It didn’t take.  I felt horrible having it in there even with it out of sight.

If you regularly have your travel mug with you don’t worry I am not judging you. Even if I were judging you you shouldn’t worry because that would be a me-problem not a you-problem. I bet there are similar things for you though.  Stuff that happens in church that irritates you a little inside. Maybe it is drums in the chancel? People not bringing their Bible with them? Folks talking during the sermon or songs. Little ones standing on the pews?

Whatever it is that bothers us 9 out of 10 times it is about us and not about God.  The Lord does desire orderly worship, but let’s be real, most of our worship hang-ups are about us not wanting things to change or being presented the opportunity to feel morally superior to the perceived miscreant.

Mark 7 begins with the Pharisees challenging Jesus on their perceived slights of his Disciples.  Seems His followers were failing to wash their hands before they ate or to follow all the rules that the Pharisees had teased out of the Torah for washing pots and pans, etc.  As I write this we are in social isolation for Covid-19 so washing hands and disinfecting things is crucial.  But that is a health concern not a worship thing.  So while it may seem like a big deal in our context right now, it shouldn’t have been that big a deal back then. This didn’t stop the Pharisees from trying to make it a thing.

Jesus engages in the debate and points out to the Pharisees ways in which they had stretched the Torah to accommodate behaviors that were outside the intent. In this case he highlighted how they had made a way for a person to essentially disown his mother or father and not care for them in their dotage all the while supposedly not have to be concerned with the commandment “to honor your mother and father.” 

In this way, Jesus claps back at the shade the Pharisees were casting upon him and his disciples. Saying that they contradict the very law of God by the traditions that they have handed down.

It isn’t just then and it isn’t just the Pharisees.  Every single Church and denomination throughout the history of Christianity has been guilty adding burdens on to people or explaining way things that should not be explained away about God from time to time.  Usually it is the former. 

For instance.  When I was a kid in a small East Texas town the Baptists were opposed to dancing and drinking.  Now I can see where they might have some concerns when these things were happening simultaneously, but there is a reason for the old joke: What is Grace?  That Baptists don’t recognize each other at the liquor store.  In that same small town, there were members of the Church of Christ and they did not have music in worship because they saw no proof of instruments in the New Testament.  Never mind the litany of instrumentation found in Psalm 150 all that is mentioned in the early church is singing. Even though the Old Testament couldn’t be trusted about guitars, organs, and drums, I would bet serious money they still pulled from Isaiah at Christmas time and from Daniel throughout the year to scare people about the end of the world. Many in the Assemblies of God are told that you cannot be a Christian and smoke.  I am sure that would come as quite a surprise to C.S. Lewis or Tolkien. I don’t know that they smoked pipes while they talked faith, but it was the mid-twentieth century and they were English. You do the math.

All this stuff is rules of man.  These are the ways that we separate ourselves and pass judgment on our fellow believers.  It is a variation of salvation by what we do (works righteousness) dressed up in the altar clothes to look more holy.  I suspect Jesus was thinking to himself, “Are you serious right now?  These guys have been going around doing the work of the Lord: exorcising demons, healing the sick, proclaiming the good news, and all you guys can think to complain about them is that they don’t wash before lunch?  Me, Give Me Strength!”

This may be why he gathers everyone around him saying “Listen to Me, all of you, and understand:  there is NOTHING OUTSIDE of a person going in that defiles them rather the things that PROCEED OUT FROM WITHIN a person are what defiles them.”

This means none of the food we eat, music we listen to, television that we watch, clothes we wear, or a thousand other things we say or do are causing our damnation.  That isn’t to say that there are not some choices that are better than others.  That isn’t to say that our choices cannot shape our character negatively. It also is not to say that none of things that we do work at odds with our salvation.  As the Apostle Paul writes “all things are permissible but not all things are beneficial.”

It is to say that when we get caught up in these arguments that we are missing the point.  We are misdiagnosing the problem.  We are failing to understand why we were in need of Jesus in the first place.

The disciples didn’t get it either and later asked him to clarify. By way of an answer, Jesus quoted Jeremiah to them and told them (and all of us) who we truly are:

“What comes out of people’s hearts are evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adulteries, deeds of coveting, wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness.  These things from the heart are what defiles a person.”

Take a moment. You are on that list somewhere.  If you think are not, then you need to stop lying to yourself.  As Martin Luther cautioned, “You have yet to consider the depth of your own sinfulness.”  I know that you are on it.  Everyone is.  Even if you are sexually pure, are never slothful or gluttonous, and have refrained from killing someone, you are there.  You are there because you have had evil thoughts (i.e. hatred, judgment, prejudice, etc.) or you have had covetousness ( i.e. wanted something that belonged to your neighbor or a stranger).   Face it you have been red hot angry with someone before or you have watched MTV Cribs.  All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.   In case you are wondering foolishness is a technical term that describes the person who does not have God in their life (either though atheism or stubbornness) and does not want God in their life.  Everyone is on this list because this list describes the human condition. The tragedy of the human being is not just that we sin but that we want to sin.

This may be the most important thing that Jesus ever taught.  This is the great physician diagnosing the virus infecting us all.  There is no cure. There is no magic combination of steps and behaviors that can solve it. No manner of hand washing, no specific religious practices, no carefully constructed moral principles, nothing whatsoever can solve the problem.  The virus will always run its course, we never develop natural immunity, and the outcome is always death.

This is the diagnosis and spiritually healthy people understand it.  Spiritually healthy people recognize their utter helplessness to do anything about it.   Go ahead take a moment and let it sink in.  Take a moment and argue with me.  All I ask is that you look in the mirror and be honest with yourself.  Again, spiritually healthy people recognize the illness and the inability to heal themselves.  Everything else is various shades of self justification.  Nothing more; nothing less.

This is why there is a Good Friday.  Make no mistake, Good Friday had to happen before there could be an Easter morning.  No Crucifixion; no Resurrection.  Neither are metaphorical but actual events that occurred.  Jesus wasn’t crucified because he was saying impolitic things and upset the powers that be.  That is liberal Christian modernity claptrap.  Jesus wasn’t just some great moral teacher trying to help us live enlightened lives. That is a dismissive label that allows for people to treat Jesus words like a buffet line and only consume what suits their tender palate.  Christ died because our hearts needed it.  Christ died because we have sinful hearts and the outcome of sin is death.

Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the Son of God, died for every one of the ways you related to that litany of evil that springs forth from the human heart.  From your heart. Every lie, every lustful moment, every judging comment, every action taken in anger, every hurtful word or gesture, every single way you violated the expectation to love your neighbor as yourself. 

That is why Christ died.

“For God demonstrates his love for us that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.  Much more then, having now been justified by His Blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him.” (Romans 5: 8-9)

And all you have to do is believe that it is true and, believing, trust that God is at work in you and your life through Jesus Christ.  

“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves but is the gift of God, not the result of works, that no one should boast.  And we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand that we should do them.”  (Ephesians 2:8-9)

This the gospel.

And you may recall what Jesus had to say at the beginning of Mark:

“The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is now; repent and believe in the gospel”