September 18, 2005 Sermon

The Law Is Not Mocked
Mark 7:1-13

To understand todayÕs passage from the Gospel of Mark we must understand the concept of ÒCorbanÓ. In Bible times (as today) the Jewish Law demanded great loyalty within the family. Parents had tremendous responsibilities toward children, and children had equal responsibility for their parents. As generations aged their children were expected to care for them in every way: physically, financially, even spiritually.

Along came the concept of Corban. It allowed a person to take what they ÒowedÓ elsewhere and give it to God. For example, a man could take the financial support he would have given his parents and put it into the offering plate, instead. While well intentioned, Corban quickly became an excuse to dodge responsibility. By JesusÕ day the Pharisees had made an art form out of cynically abusing Corban. They proclaimed that they did not have to support their extended families because they were offering all their money to God. In fact, their offerings actually supported themselves. They lived off the collection plate.

Mark chapter seven opens with the Pharisees noticing that Jesus and his disciples did not wash their hands before eating (and after moving about in public). This was a clear violation of Jewish law. ÒWhy,Ó they demanded of Jesus, Òdo your disciples not live according to the traditions of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?ÓÊ

Did Jesus respond with restraint?Ê Did he thoughtfully consider the sociological and emotional issues that gave rise to the PhariseesÕ point of view?Ê Did he take care to preserve their self-esteem while gently correcting their misapprehensions?Ê Not a chance. He called them hypocrites. ÒYou have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition!Ó he spat out. ÒHonor your father and mother,Ó begins the fifth of the Ten Commandments. But these hypocrites, who scrupulously kept every law on the surface, who weighed the salt they put on their food so they could give a strict one-tenth of it to God, were dishonoring their parents.

Jesus threw Corban back in the PhariseesÕ faces. ÒYou say that if anyone tells father or mother, ÔWhatever support you might have had from me is Corban,Õ (that is, now an offering to God instead)Ñthen you no longer permit doing anything for father or mother, thus making void the word of God.ÓÊ The Pharisees used the Law to break the Law. They enriched themselves while piously telling the world they were enriching God. Mom and dad they conveniently left out of the discussion.

Jesus called for obedience to the will of God. But the Gospels teem with examples of Jesus breaking rules in order to do the work the Father gave him. He did not let hand-washing get in the way of healing. ÊHe did not let tithing get in the way of worshiping. He did not let the distinction between GodÕs People and Not-GodÕs-People get in the way of spreading the Good News about the Kingdom of Heaven . Neither should we.

Jesus calls us to obey God. Do not let rules get in the way of heeding that call. What Would Jesus Do?Ê Jesus would do whatever makes the love of God real for hurting people. Obey God. Let love flow.

We have to perform a balancing act between obedience and disobedience. Going out of our way to break rules can be destructive. I served as a commissioner to the 1996 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Albuquerque , New Mexico . This annual meeting of pastors and elders debates all (and I mean all) the issues that face the church. In 1996 we dealt with abortion, clergy sexual misconduct, two hotly contested national Presbyterian elections, and whether to ordain actively gay people. We considered major papers on the environment and the pension plan for our ministers.

The General Assembly lasted nine days. Each day began at 8:00 a.m. and lasted well into the night. My headache lasted the whole time. Afterwards my family and I drove up the road to Ghost Ranch, a Presbyterian conference center at which Linda and I had worked years earlier. We moved into our cabin, enjoyed an authentic Mexican dinner, and gratefully settled down on our porch to watch the spectacular sunset over the high mesas of the southern Rocky Mountains . For the first time in weeks I felt at peace.

The next morning, a Sunday, we rolled out of bed and wandered over to the outdoor worship service. It did not begin on time, so we sat in folded chairs and read through the bulletin.

The delay was a blessing. The service included communion. From the bulletin I learned the sacrament would include a Navajo smoke ceremony to the snake god. Between the bread and the cup people who had lost most of the votes at the just-concluded General Assembly were to be given the chance to speak out against the church. I am not much for rules. Some rules, however, promote the love of God and must not be flaunted. Toying with communion, which ushers us into the presence of the risen Christ, is wrong. My heart was heavy. I had hoped to worship in a place special to my wife and I. Instead, we felt we had to escape.

The trick is knowing when to keep the Law of God. Jesus often broke the rules. Yet breaking rules can do damage. How can we know when to break the rules and when to obey them?Ê We know only by asking whether the rules serve to promote the love of God, or to obscure it.

In his monumental work, Les Miserables, Victor Hugo created the character of Inspector Javert. Javert lived for the law. His nemesis, Jean Valjean, repeatedly got away with breaking the law. This drove Javert crazy. At one point in the musical version, after Valjean has escaped what Javert considers justice yet again, he sings, ÒI am the law and the law is not mocked!Ó

This is the problem in a nutshell. ÒI am the Law and the Law is not mocked!ÓÊ When we forget that our purpose is to serve the God who loves even lawbreakers, when we forget that the Law of God exists to serve God, thatÕs when we become Pharisees. ThatÕs when we get self-righteous. ThatÕs when we stop taking the love of God to hurting people.

These past two weeks we have watched the drama of Hurricane Katrina play itself out. First came the fury of the storm, then the suffering of its victims, then the farce of the politicians using the tragedy to try to harm their opponents. Can we all agree that there is more than enough blame to go around?Ê Can we not agree that everybody, from the President to the Governors to the mayors to the people who could have evacuated but didnÕt, everybody shares the blame?

And then can we please focus on making the love of God real to people who have lost everything?

Jesus came to proclaim the kingdom of heaven. When asked to describe it he said that there the poor got fed, the naked got clothed, and those thirsting for justice were satisfied. Hundreds of thousands of our fellow Americans are poor, naked and thirsty. Let us do our part to make the love of God real for them. Let us support the special offering weÕll take in a few moments. Let us send groups to work on the Gulf Coast in the months to come.

And let us quit worrying about rules, if the rules keep us from doing our God-given job. Obey God, the God of love. Let love flow.