Sunday, August 30, 2015 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

The What or the Why

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 45:1–2, 6–9
Mark 6:53–7:9

God, keep us from accusing others and excusing ourselves;
keep us from pointing out the faults of others while passing over our own;
keep us from blaming others and ignoring our own deep need.
For you love and came for all of us.

David Lose

“It’s time for the church to get in trouble again.” Representative John Lewis proclaimed those words last weekend as he paced back and forth in front of a huge gathering of people at a conference in Montreat, North Carolina. My husband, Greg, and I were in attendance, along with almost 1,000 other people who represented a variety of races and church denominations. The conference was called “Dr. King’s Unfinished Agenda: A Teach-In for Rededicating Ourselves to the Dream.” It took place August 21–23 because it was fifty years ago that very weekend when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had preached in Montreat. And on that night fifty years ago, Dr. King lovingly admonished the faithful to remember that the time is always right to do right.

And so fifty years later, we were back—a few people who had been there when Dr. King spoke that night; others who had fully participated in the civil rights movement; some who had once eyed the movement suspiciously and for whom this kind of talk still made them nervous; and many people, like me and Greg, who had not yet been born when it all started. We were all there together, and our task was to consider the progress our country has made in the area of racial equality, but even more, to get honest as to how much more we have to go.

As columnist Leonard Pitts said in the first keynote address, “It’s like we are on a car ride from Tampa to Seattle and we have stopped in Kansas City for a while. And that’s fine, because Kansas City is a good place to visit, but let us not make a home here. Let us not get too comfortable setting up our house that we forget we have to get back in the car and keep going. We have come a long way,” Pitts claimed, “but we still have many untraveled miles ahead of us.” And then he and the other speakers turned up the psychological and spiritual thermostat on us, creating some heat and increasing the tension, hoping that, as people of faith, we might not leave what happened in Montreat at Montreat. Our leaders did not want us to forget why we were there, and especially for those of us who are white, they did not want us to get comfortable again with the way things are and to casually ignore the faithful work left to do.

Given Jesus’ rather volatile reaction to the Pharisees in our text, I am wondering if Jesus thought those religious leaders had started to get too comfortable with the way things were in the structure of their world, so much so that they were no longer actively on the lookout for God’s reign, no longer aware of the faithful work still left to do. Had they symbolically gotten out of the car in Kansas City and stopped giving much thought about moving on to Seattle? Had the Pharisees forgotten the “why” they did what they did, not lifting their heads to see the bigger picture of God’s desired shalom for all, Jews and Gentiles alike? Was that why Jesus appeared to be so angry and frustrated with them?

We see that anger and frustration on full display when the Pharisees ask Jesus that seemingly innocent question: “Why do your disciples eat with defiled hands?” Based on his reaction, it was as if they had dropped a lit match into a pile of kindling. WHOOSH went Jesus. “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.” Goodness gracious, what has gotten into him?

Surely this interchange between the Pharisees and Jesus contains a level of complexity we cannot glean from a mere surface reading, otherwise Jesus would not react with such fire. So let’s step back for a minute to figure out why the Pharisees, the religious leaders, would even care whether or not the disciples washed their hands. At the very best, that question sounds awfully nitpicky. At its worst, it sounds blatantly legalistic. And yet, in fairness to the Pharisees, they were not trying to be nitpicky or legalistic. Rather, they were just doing what they had been charged to do: they were being the keepers of the tradition, maintaining the structure, watching the boundaries.

It is helpful to remember the Jewish people lived in a culture inhospitable to their very identity. Polytheistic religions and cults abounded. The Romans were the ones in charge and always took the time to remind the Jews of their lower ranking in the social pecking order. Therefore, it was in the middle of cultural chaos, in the middle of Roman domination, and in the middle of the constant threat of syncretism that the Jewish people felt called to remain faithful to their one God. They felt called to hold on to their unique identity as God’s chosen people while making a life in the middle of all that messiness.

But the religious leaders also realized that the more time passed and the more complex their world around them grew, the more difficult it would be for them to hold on to their distinct identity. And this is why the Pharisees, motivated by spiritual devotion, began to adopt distinctive practices based on the law. They created concrete actions—big and small—so that when the Jewish person performed that action, their unique identity would be proclaimed and they would remember whose they were (John Ortberg, “Pharisees Are Us,” Christian Century, 23 August 2003). That is why the purity laws came into being.

Take today’s text as just one example: In Jesus’ day and time, washing one’s hands before a meal was not universally practiced nor was it very convenient. Therefore, when a Jewish person washed her hands, through that small action she was doing something distinctively Jewish. She was keeping the tradition and maintaining her identity. By washing her hands, she told everyone who she was and was herself also reminded to whom she ultimately belonged.

And it was the importance of that kind of intentional practice that led to the religious leaders’ strong reaction to Jesus’ disciples and their unwashed hands. According to those leaders, the disciples were not keeping the tradition or maintaining the boundaries. And the disciples’ lack of concern about it was a big deal to the Pharisees. But apparently what was a big deal to the Pharisees was merely a big irritant to Jesus. As we read, Jesus immediately went on the offensive. He accused them of hypocrisy and told them they cared more about appearance and tradition than they cared about faithfulness and justice. As scholar Douglas Hare notes, it appeared to Jesus that the religious leaders were subordinating ethics to piety.

I also wonder if Jesus had finally just become fed up with the reality that although he was healing sick people, casting out demons, giving visions of freedom to the oppressed, helping the deaf to hear, granting sight to the blind, and revealing the reign of God everywhere he went—even though all of those things were taking place all around them, the only thing those religious leaders wanted to talk about was the fact that his disciples had dirty hands! All they wanted to focus on was how Jesus’ people broke the rules, seemed to not care one iota about their tradition, and were intent to upset the structure of the way things worked in their world.

Jesus heals a man with a withered hand, and all the religious leaders care about is that he did it on the sabbath. Jesus touches a leper and makes him whole; he brings a dead girl back to life; a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years is finally made well—and all the religious people seem to care about is that Jesus transgressed the boundaries between clean and unclean. Jesus eats with tax collectors and other known sinners, ushering them into a new way of life, a new way of being, bringing them to discipleship, and all he hears from the leaders of his tradition is how he spends time with the wrong kinds of people and is stirring up the pot. They wonder why he can’t just leave well enough alone.

Those religious leaders frustrated and angered Jesus because they seemed to have forgotten the “why” of their religious practice. Yes, they were faithful in washing their hands, but they had forgotten that the most crucial action of faith is to love God with all one’s heart, mind, and strength and to love your neighbor as you love yourself. Yes, they made sure to keep the sabbath and obey all restrictions, but they had forgotten that what God desires even more than worship is for God’s people to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with their God. Yes, those religious leaders were good at making sure they remembered who they were as God’s people, but they were not so good at lifting their heads to recognize what God was up to in Jesus, some of which was to enlarge the family and bring outsiders in. Yes, the religious leaders were good at keeping the peace and maintaining appropriate structures, but they no longer seemed to remember that the God who led them out of Egypt did not appear to be interested in keeping any sort of superficial peace or maintaining any kind of structure that ended up oppressing others or exploiting the poor, the widow, and the orphan—biblical shorthand for all those on the margins.

So when the Pharisees chose to point out one more time that his disciples were not behaving according to the rules, Jesus let loose. “Beware, you religious people,” Jesus says, “when your rules and desire to be pure get in the way of being faithful.” Beware, you religious people, Jesus says, whenever living becomes more about playing it safe and keeping the status quo and less about loving God with all that you are and taking whatever risks necessary to love all your neighbors as you love yourselves. Beware, you religious people, Jesus says, whenever the church is tempted to avoid stirring up righteous trouble in order to maintain its own power or prestige. Beware, you religious people, Jesus says; ethics cannot be subordinated to piety. There is good, holy trouble for the church to get into, and there are still miles to travel until the reign of God is all in all. So, church, Jesus implies, church please don’t just focus on somebody’s dirty hands, a breaking of rules, a change of tradition. There is too much at stake in the world. People are still hurting. Jesus did not hold back.

Now unfortunately we do not have record of the Pharisees’ immediate reaction to this dressing-down by Jesus. We know what eventually happened: they sought to have him killed. But we do not know if on that day they were stunned by his hot-tempered response or hurt by it. Perhaps it was both. They might have been stunned, because they had asked an honest question. And they might have been hurt, because they knew that loving God with all their heart, mind, and strength, and not hand-washing, was the centerpiece of their faith. They knew that.

They just did not realize how, somewhere along the way, their desires to keep the tradition, to keep the structures, to keep the peace with the powers of the world had all started to eclipse their ability to love, to take faithful risks, and to participate in God’s new thing. It was not something they did on purpose. They had just forgotten they were only in Kansas City. They had gotten comfortable, put their house in order, and begun to casually overlook all the faithful work left to do until God’s reign was all in all and the beloved community for all people had finally come to fruition.

I understand those leaders and can identify with their struggle. So last weekend, with this scripture already in my mind, as I heard speaker after speaker give their testimony about what it is like to live these days as a person of color and heard them name out loud how many challenges to honest equality still exist and to lament how honest, real conversations about race and privilege are still too few and far between, I started to wonder if I was living and leading too much like the religious leaders who frustrated and angered Jesus. How much of my life and leadership, I asked myself, has become about maintaining tradition and structures and trying to keep a shallow peace within this congregation with all of our diverse opinions and life experiences? How much did I fear rocking the boat with you lest I lose your trust or willingness to let me be your pastor? Those are convicting questions for me.

But I also started to ask myself how much of what we do as Fourth Presbyterian Church tends to focus on keeping things decently and in order, even if God might be asking us, a community of faith with both power and influence, to start getting into righteous trouble again, to lift our communal eyes and recognize how much more faithful work there is left to do in this city and in our country until all people are able to live the abundant lives God intends?

After all, I know for a fact that we would never want miss out on all that the Living Christ is doing in and among us simply because we did not think to lift our eyes off of each others’ slightly messy hands, muttering to ourselves about broken rules, changing traditions, all the while not noticing that, in the corner of our eyes, someone is starting to dance while the reign of God comes near and they’re loading up the cars again for the trip and hoping we will come along, for there are still untraveled miles to go and more holy trouble to stir up . . .