Twenty-second  Sunday in Ordinary Time
August 30, 2009
Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Passing Inspection

Next door at the Preschool, inspectors are a common sight. They can show up at any time, unannounced, and take up most of the day looking through records, measuring this and that, and doing other official things. Inspectors check to see that all children are being served the requisite ounces of milk (even the ones who don’t like milk), that the snacks are nutritious, that the cots in the nap room are at least 18 inches apart, and that the water heater is working properly. (Of course, the inspectors don’t always agree with one another. One week the health inspector said the water was too cold and a week later the safety inspector said the water was too hot.)

If an inspector finds an irregularity, the Preschool Director must write a "corrective action plan" and submit it to whichever agency the inspector works for. For instance, if the health inspector finds a lid missing from a trash can, the Director must write a plan to correct this situation. In this case, the plan would be "Put the lid on the trash can." It takes longer to write the plan than to take the corrective action.

Please don’t misunderstand. Inspectors are necessary. They assure that standards are being met. I think it’s fair to say, however, that as visitors go, they are not a barrel of fun.

It appears from our Gospel reading that the word came down to Jerusalem that certain irregularities were taking place up near the sea of Galilee. Apparently a team of inspectors was dispatched, clipboards and measuring tapes in hand, to look into the situation.

Sure enough, when they got up there, there was Jesus with his twelve scruffy disciples behaving as though they had never read the rulebook. Jesus healed on the Sabbath, ate with sinners and tax collectors, touched lepers, and if all that weren’t bad enough, his disciples neglected to wash their hands before eating. Even the kids in the Preschool can tell you that’s a no-no.

Corrective action plan: Provide soap and water, or at the very least, jumbo jugs of hand sanitizer to the twelve men who are following Jesus.

The inspectors have more than sanitation in mind. There were solid theological reasons for Jews to wash before eating. It had to do with their calling to be God’s holy people. Since priests have to wash their hands before serving at the altar and eating the holy meat of sacrifice, all Israelites should wash before eating, the reasoning went. "You shall be for me a priestly nation and a holy people" says Exodus 19:6.

Washing your hands before a meal was a way of making something holy out of something ordinary. When you think of it that way, the rule that said "All Jews must wash before eating" was a pretty good rule.

The problem was, people came to think of food that had been touched by unwashed hands as ritually unclean, as unacceptable to God. It’s a short step from there to the notion that certain people are also unclean, also unacceptable to God.

The inspectors from Jerusalem, it seems, are much more interested in filling out their clipboards and filing their reports in triplicate than they are in listening to what Jesus is saying about the kingdom of God. There’s a reason why Jesus eats with tax collectors, sinners, and people who forget to wash their hands. These are the very people whom God welcomes into God’s holy company. Despite the dirt under their fingernails, these are the holy people of God.

It turns out that it’s the inspectors themselves who need a corrective action plan. They need to pay more attention to what actually makes a person holy than to what the manual says about preserving holiness. It’s not what God finds in your mouth that creates the problem. It’s what God finds in your heart.

The inspectors delivered their report to Jesus: lots of violations. Jesus looked at the inspectors and said, "You hypocrites. The prophet Isaiah had your number when he said, ‘You honor me with your lips, but your hearts are far from me.‘"

Back in Jesus’ day the heart was considered to be the seat of decision-making and will. The faithful turned their hearts towards God and the unfaithful turned their hearts away from God. The most serious spiritual condition of all was "hardness of heart." To have a "hardened heart" meant to lack compassion for others.

The inspectors, it seems, honored God with their clipboards, but not with their hearts. When they looked at Jesus’ disciples and the other folks he ate with, they didn’t see fellow Jews, the holy people of God. They didn’t see anything holy at all. What they saw were pages and pages of violations. The paperwork alone would keep them up all night and far from the kingdom of God.

If your heart is misdirected, Jesus goes on to say, it’s going to lead you down some very dangerous paths. "For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come." He goes on to provide a rather depressing list: "fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly."

Jesus does not completely reject the rituals that mark him as a Jew, a member of the holy people of God. What he does reject is preoccupation with ritual. When ritual blinds us to the hardness of our own hearts, it becomes an obstacle to true holiness.

These days most Christians don’t worry very much about the rules and regulations that so preoccupied the inspectors of Jesus’ day. In fact, we encourage hand washing – for the sake of fending off the H1N1 virus, if for no other reason – but we don’t see hand washing as a spiritual requirement. We are not, by and large, preoccupied with ritual purity.

But our hearts are another matter, aren’t they? Our hearts are just as prone to evil intentions as those first followers of Jesus. Like our forebears in the faith, we tend to honor God with our lips, but not with our hearts. Jesus had a word for this: hypocrisy.

Spotting hypocrites at church is easier than shooting fish in a barrel. Roll a bowling ball down any church hallway, and you’re bound to hit several. The fact that the church houses hypocrites is not news. It only seems to be news to people outside the church.

Not long ago I took part in one of those meetings at the Civic Center where participants are divided up into discussion groups. The topic, as I remember it, was racial unity, but for one fellow in my group, the topic didn’t really matter. He was there to tell everyone else what was wrong with them. He railed against politicians. (They’re all crooked.) Against doctors (They’re all greedy.) Against teachers (lazy) and of course against young people (crooked, greedy and lazy). Then he looked at me. "And as for Christians, I’d never belong to a church. The church is full of hypocrites."

"Not quite full," I said. "There’s always room for one more."

Jesus wasn’t on a hunt for hypocrites. Finding hypocrites is easy. He was on a hunt for people to welcome into the kingdom of God. Judging from the company he kept, he’d have been happy to include those inspectors from Jerusalem, if only they had been willing to throw aside their clipboards and follow him.

Where is your heart? With Jesus or with those whose life is consumed with finding fault and placing blame? The gospel says, "Come, here’s a place at the table. You can wash your hands after you’ve taken your place – provided, of course, that you’re willing to commune with all the other people Jesus has invited.

　

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