Lectionary blog for Sept. 2
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9; Psalm 15;
James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-22
In our gospel reading, Jesus confronts people who focus on obeying the rules while ignoring the relationships for which the rules exist. This is sometimes true of us as well. We make religious rules that are intended to help us live together as people of God. Then, over time, we forget that the rules are there to help us, not to hurt us; to bring us together, not push us apart. What really matters are our relationships with each other as a sacred community, as the body of Christ—not strict adherence to rules.
There used to be a 1918 Dodge Touring Car on display in the Car Collectors Museum in Nashville, Tenn. Its little placard told an interesting story. “In 1918, the father of Albert Hillyard bought this car for $785. In 1921, Albert and his brother got into an argument over who got to drive the car into town on Saturday night. Their father drove the car into the garage and shut the door. There the car remained until found 38 years later, covered with dirt and chicken manure, with only 1800 miles on the odometer.”
I’ve thought about Mr. Hillyard and his Dodge Touring Car many times over the years. Dad attempted to heal the breach between his children by making a rule. “OK, neither one of you gets to drive it!” I’m willing to bet that the boys just went on to argue about something else, and then about something else, and then about something else. The car wasn’t the problem. The problem was the jealousy and strife that lived in that family and in those brother’s hearts. They didn’t need rules and judgment— they needed reconciliation. So it is with all of us. Because our problem lies within our hearts, our healing must start there as well. Jesus calls us to understand that it’s not about the rules; it’s about the relationships—the relationship between us and God and the relationships between us and others.
After I left the family farm, my first real job was as a daycare worker. Besides supervising the playground and changing diapers and serving lunch, I had the great pleasure of watching Sesame Street every afternoon from 4 to 5 o’clock. Seriously, it was a great pleasure; I really liked it. One night recently I saw a documentary on the making of Sesame Street. Someone asked the producer about the reaction of the child actors to working with the Muppets, who are, after all, puppets with a human being crouched on the floor holding them up with one arm. The producer said the kids don’t pay any attention to the humans; they just talk to the Muppets. In fact, he said, there was one child who saw Big Bird take off his top half and an actor step out. The child stared and then yelled to his mother, “Mom, Mom. Do you think Big Bird knows he has a man inside?”
The purpose of the law is to remind us that we have a human being inside, inside our heart, inside our soul, in our center of being—in that part of us that makes us something other than a thinking animal. The law also reminds us that everyone else has that hidden humanity, that heart and soul, that center that belongs to God. In today’s lesson, Jesus invites us to remember that communal broken center in our dealings with each other. Jesus invites us to remember that we are called to transcend the rules in the name of love.
That’s why Jesus says, “there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” (Mark 7:15). And also, “for it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come” (7:21) Blaise Pascal said in his Pensees, “There is a hole in the heart of everyone that only God can fill.” And St. Augustine prayed, “Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in thee.”
No rules or regulations or guidelines can change our hearts. Only God can do that. Only God’s Spirit can move us in that way. Only the Cross of Christ, only the broken body and spilt blood of Jesus can break our hearts enough that we will let the love of God flow in to change and reshape us.
Amen and amen.
