Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Texts:
Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9;
James7-27;
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23.

Where exactly do you draw the line? This questions can be heard in two ways. Where is the proverbial line to be drawn? And where do you personally draw the line?

In Deuteronomy 4 Moses draws the line for Israel with God’s commandments. Nothing is to be added, and nothing may be taken away. Diligent following of these things will lead you across hostile territory into every good inheritance God promises. It’s all there in the fine print of the statutes and ordinances.

Ah yes, the fine print. It’s in every passage contract. That thing you never read when you buy a ticket for a plane or ship or train. It essentially says, we promise to get you there whole and sound, but there will be hazards. It’s up to you to navigate them successfully.

As you set out for the journey it all seems so inconsequential. What could possibly get in the way of your well-planned trip? Tell that to the people who formed a trivia team with us on the ship to Alaska. They arrived at our last evening trivia game with quite a story to tell.

They’d come all the way from England, and were very experienced travelers. They’d been on ships before. Travelled many countries without issue. But when the toilet explodes, and water floods your stateroom, that’s a problem. The ship’s plumber was summoned and the water stopped.

Then the question of responsibility arose. This had to be settled before addressing the question of whether our new friends were to remain in a soggy stateroom, or be assigned a dry one. This seemingly obvious fix was not so simple according to the ship’s representative. The only cabin available was an upgrade. The passage contract has certain limitations, conditions, requirements and exclusions.

You may recall that Moses first brought God’s instruction to the Israelites in the desert in the form of the Ten Commandments. These were delivered in Exodus 20 as God’s “ten words”, short utterances without elaboration. All of them things that pertain to good and right relationship with God and with our fellow travelers in life. These ten words help us draw the line too.

The line that Moses drew in Exodus 20 was repeated in Exodus 34. Yet in Deuteronomy the wording is a not quite the same. Moses evokes statutes and ordinances. Are these the same as God’s ten words? Well, yes, and no.

In fact, there are references to statutes and ordinances in Exodus 12, 15, and 18. These were things that existed even before God gave the famous ten to Moses. A statute (choq) is a thing prescribed or appointed. An ordinance (mishpat) is a local judgement about how to observe them.

So the two go hand in hand. Over time in the bible the phrase statutes and ordinances came to mean all divine law. The word mishpat came to encompass fairness, equity, and impartiality. And in a larger sense, it means something like the right balance of all things for all creatures.

Mishpat is what Jesus expressed both by word and action over and over again. And as we see in the gospel today, his understanding of where to draw the line differed from that of some Pharisees and scribes who came from the Jerusalem Temple community.

There, among the leaders of Jerusalem’s Temple, purity was everything. The elders had given the religious community specific renderings, called traditions. These followed the law given by God. And yet, they seemed burdensome to Jesus.

Why? The elder’s tradition regarding washing is a genuine biblical instruction. So why did Jesus draw the line differently? And why did he say the Pharisees and scribbles were hypocrites? (Literally, “actors”.)

Jesus recognized that outward righteousness can mask an inner mess. The heart was then considered the place of reason and intellect. A changed heart comes before a changed mind. Emotions can drive us to bad ends sometimes, but worse that than is our capacity to reason our way into evil things.

Jesus believed that we are all capable of treating one another with respect and kindness. We know at heart what equity, fairness, and impartiality look and sound like. Doing otherwise is a choice.

Using God’s divine law to treat other people or things with contempt is exactly counter to what the law was meant to accomplish. Specifically. For Christians it is a betrayal of Jesus – of the things he did and said.

This is what James says to well. “If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless.” The word religion comes from a root word that means to bind or bring together.

So we could say that things which draw lines of separation and division are counter to what is binding upon us in the Christian religion. Jesus taught that his people are bound together by love. Specifically, it is love that is practiced in community through mutual accountability tempered with forgiveness and mercy.

Yes, we all have to draw the line somewhere. What statutes and ordinances shall we invoke? We have a contract with God after all. What does it say in the fine print?

Famously, we draw the line at the cross and empty tomb of Jesus. For God has said many things, but God’s most gracious and loving Word was and is Jesus. This is the best line and finest print of all. Amen.

(Oh, and our English friends on the ship did get a dry cabin. One of them was an insurance agent. She had read the fine print and successfully made her case.)