Pentecost 21, Year B
September 3, 2006
The Rev. Dena Cleaver-Bartholomew

Pentecost 21, Year B

There is a current television commercial in which an automotive expert named Dr. Z addresses a group of school children about his company’s concern in caring for the environment.  In the commercial Dr. Z extols the virtues of this company’s new hybrid SUVs while the audience is shown typical images for SUVs, namely driving in extreme off road conditions.  As the four much touted SUVs pull up to form a row in front of the children, Dr. Z concludes enthusiastically, “These are the four cleanest SUVs ever!”  The children look at him in a state of polite confusion, for the vehicles parked in front of them are all literally dripping with mud.  “It’s a joke!” he explains.  Evidently there is more than one way to be clean.

I have the impression that Jesus had an even harder time making the same point with his audience in today’s Gospel reading.  The Pharisees and scribes asked Jesus “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”  It was not a question about hygiene, as with our modern concern about germs.  This was a question of piety.  In the Book of Genesis God commands the priests to wash their hands and feet before coming into the presence of God (30:19).  A large number of Jewish people had made it a part of their personal piety to follow many of the commands given the priests so that they too might seek to be holy before God. It is similar to the way Christians might think of the “priesthood of all believers” (c.f. 1 Pet 2: 5, 9) and living out our call to holiness.  The Pharisees and scribes are questioning Jesus out of their understanding of what it means to be ritually clean and pure before God.  Jesus, however, is focused on a different definition of what it means to be clean.  Ritual cleanliness is worthless if one’s heart is not right with God.  Jesus’ quotation of Isaiah is a scathing response to emphasis on the exterior.  Instead, Jesus offers an alternative definition of what causes a person to be unclean:  “For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come… All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

This exchange between Jesus and the scribes and Pharisees captures the time honored practice among Jews of engaging in lively debate about the correct interpretation of the Law.  Because keeping the Law is central to God’s Covenant with Israel, much attention is given to how this should be done in daily life.   To hold fast to God is life, and one holds fast to God by keeping the commandments diligently. Yet the confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees and scribes sets up what appears to be a conflict with the reading from Deuteronomy:  “You must neither add anything to what I command you nor take away anything from it, but keep the commandments of the LORD your God with which I am charging you.”   It looks as thought the Pharisees and scribes have added to the commandments by making the “tradition of the elders” equivalent to the Law.  The oral tradition, which had originally emerged to help Jews live out the commandments, came to be held as equal to them.  On the other hand Jesus says:  “Listen to me, all of you, and understand:  there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile….” Our reading then skips verse 19, which says “Thus he declared all foods clean.”  Considering that a large part of the statutes and ordinances in the Law concern dietary restrictions so that one can separate the clean from the unclean in terms of food, it sounds as though Jesus is taking away from the commandments.  This shift was highly controversial, and was one of the major debates in the early Church.  The effect of Jesus’ teaching is to move the emphasis from the exterior to the interior.  The intention of the Law was to set the Jewish people apart as God’s people and create a way to consecrate everyday life with an awareness of their relationship to God.  The Pharisees sought to define the best way to keep the Law as God’s people.  Jesus taught instead a way to reframe from the inside out what it means to be in life giving relationship with God.  The danger of the Law-- or even the Bible--is that one can make an idol of it, seeking to keep the Law as an end in itself, an end that we as humans can control, rather than understanding the Law as a means to follow God.  The irony of placing anything, even the commandments of God, before God, is that by doing so we violate those very commandments:  “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Eypt, out of the house of slavery: you shall have no other gods before me.”  Jesus always points us back to God as the central focus.

As if to emphasize what a challenge it will be to keep our focus on God, rather than all of the temptations we face to engage elsewhere, Paul provides us with a wonderful image in his letter to the Ephesians.  His words are particularly appropriate today, for we will be having a baptism this morning.  Part of the preparation for baptism includes three renunciations and three affirmations.  The renunciations reject the cosmic, worldly, and personal power and appeal of evil.  The affirmations replace the lure of these realities with dedication to Jesus Christ as our Savior.  Hence Paul draws on the image of the soldier, prepared to face an assault:  “…be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power.  Put on the whole armor of God….”  Paul then systematically replaces the traditional uniform and weaponry of a soldier with the metaphorical equivalent of God’s armor.  Piece by piece, the symbols of our reliance on military and personal strength are recast into outward images of our inner grounding in God.  There is a website called Armor of God PJs which was founded by a mother who read this passage from Ephesians to her daughter every night because she was afraid to go to bed.  Her mom made her pajamas based on this reading and the girl felt safe and protected in them so that she could sleep.  In the morning she would trade the pajamas for the metaphorical “armor of God” for her day.  Would that we would make use of this, or some other biblical metaphor, to help us remember our own baptismal vows and the power of knowing that God desires to shape us to be God’s people, both inside and out.  To face each day clothed with truth and righteousness, “ready to proclaim the gospel of peace,” protected by faith and salvation, and empowered by the Spirit, is to dare to live out our call to “love and serve the Lord.”

Amen