This past Saturday morning, I got up early and headed to the
kitchen to make breakfast.
I had taken, literally three steps, when the room started to
spin around me. Now, I have suffered
from chronic vertigo for many, many years, so the sudden spinning of the room,
though frightening, was unsurprising.
Been there done that.
Except this time was different.
These vertigo spells usually only last a few seconds—that’s
all I have to hold on for, just a few seconds and then, it will pass.
I had never fallen.
But this Saturday, the room started spinning and the next
thing I knew I was face first on the floor, my arms pinned up under me. My chin took the brunt of the fall.
It was amazing how fast it had happened. And it was amazing to me how out of control I
felt during those few seconds. As much
as I would have liked to have tried to catch myself, or brace myself, it was as
if the world put its hand on my forehead, like a faith healer of old, and said,
“Down,” and I was powerless to do anything but fall.
Prior to that, the last time I fell, I was in Vancouver,
sixteen years ago. I slipped going down
a set of steps and landed on my arm. It
was how I began my Alaskan cruise.
But other than that, I hadn’t fallen since I was a kid,
remarkable considering that, like I said, I have been suffering from vertigo
for more than ten years.
I was lucky this past Saturday that I didn’t break
anything.
When I was six years old, I fell and broke my arm—clean
break, both bones. I wore a cast up
above my elbow for weeks, and I still remember when they took off that cast, to
replace it with a smaller cast, how my arm looked, pale and scrawny and still
slightly crooked. It didn’t look like it
belonged to me. It was in the midst of
healing. It was in the midst of being
made new.
If you have ever had a cast for a significant period of
time, you know what I’m talking about.
And even when the cast comes off for good, there is still healing to be done. It is a complicated process.
Even if you have never broken a bone, if you’ve had the flu,
for example, you know what it feels like when that fever finally breaks, when
you’re able to get out of your pajamas and into the shower, when you take those
first wobbly steps outside into the sun—it feels like you’ve been reborn.
So, we’re all familiar with that feeling of being physically
reborn.
But today I want to address what it means to be spiritually
reborn, what it means to take care of our spiritual health and what Jesus has
to say in today’s Gospel reading about the importance of keeping our spiritual
selves healthy and safe.
The Gospel reading today is from Mark 7, but if it seems difficult
to understand, it’s because we’ve been thrown into the middle of the
conversation, depriving us of some key context.
Basically, the beginning of the chapter beings with the
Pharisees upset because the disciples haven’t washed their hands before eating.
Now, from our point of view, here in the twenty-first
century, yeah, not washing your hands before a meal, especially in what was
probably not the most hygienic time period to live in—the first century—seems a
little gross and unsanitary.
But the Pharisees aren’t worried about the disciples being
germy. No one had any idea that such a
thing as germs existed back then.
Instead the Pharisees are upset because the disciples are
violating tradition, and by tradition, we mean religious law. And the Pharisees are the self-appointed enforcers
of such law.
At first, Jesus responds to the Pharisees by simply pointing
out their hypocrisy. You say this, but
you do this. You say that, but you do this. I imagine it’s an argument the
Pharisees are used to hearing.
Perhaps they even roll their eyes at Jesus or stare at him
with their arms crossed over their chests, because, a second later, Jesus
completely abandons that argument.
Their hypocrisy is irrelevant because this isn’t even about
hypocrisy; this is about cleanliness, and what it means to be clean.
Again, for the Pharisees, cleanliness wasn’t about germs, it
was about law, and not just any law, but the law of Moses handed down
generation after generation. Washing
one’s hands wasn’t about keeping physically clean, it was about keeping
yourself spiritually clean, to remain closer to God.
What Jesus says to the Pharisees, though, in Mark 7:14-15 is
about to flip their world on its head.
Jesus says, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there
is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that
come out are what defile.”
As far as we can tell, that was the proverbial mic drop from
Jesus, because in the very next verse, he leaves the crowd and walks into the
house.
Did the Pharisees know what Jesus was saying? The disciples don’t appear to know because as
soon as they’re in the house, they ask Jesus what he meant.
And so he says to them in verses 18 and 19, “’Do you not see
that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters,
not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?’ (Thus he declared
all foods clean.)”
I love that that last part—“he declared all foods clean”—is
in parentheses. That’s not a message to
the disciples right there, that’s a message to us, the reader, in case we don’t
understand.
The Pharisees get a one sentence declarative statement.
The disciples get a paragraph explanation.
And we get the annotated version of it all.
Jesus is always speaking to us in a way that we can
understand.
And understand this, the Pharisees knew exactly what Jesus
was saying.
For Jesus to declare all food clean—he was destroying the
foundation upon which Jewish society was built.
For Jesus to do that—the Pharisees would have seen Jesus as crazy, as
the ultimate disruptor. They would have
been terrified.
Jesus, as he explains to the disciples, is trying to lead the
people of the time away from a literal and limited understanding of spiritual
health (wash your hands to remain spiritually clean), to a more figurative
understanding (what food you put in your mouth has nothing to do with your
spiritual health).
The food you eat doesn’t make you evil, Jesus says, but the
thoughts that develop on their own in your heart, are what make you spiritually
ill. Murder, pride, adultery, deceit—all
these things, Jesus says, originate in the human heart, not in any food you
consume.
This would have been a mind-blowing statement for Jesus to
make. He was telling the disciples, the
Pharisees and anyone who would listen that they alone were responsible for
their actions—no excuses.
Jesus destroys one foundation here in order to begin
building another, a new law, where we are responsible for our spiritual selves,
and because we are naturally flawed, we will fail again and again to keep
ourselves spiritually clean. No washing
of hands can save us.
Only Jesus can.
They don’t know that—the disciples and the Pharisees—not
yet.
But we do.
Only Jesus can heal and make clean our hearts.
And it is his sacrifice on the cross that will allow for us
to be spiritually reborn.
Amen.
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