“Fence Building”
September 1, 2024
Mark 7:1–8, 14–15, 21–23 (The Message)
1–4 The Pharisees, along with some religion scholars who had come from Jerusalem, gathered around him. They noticed that some of his disciples weren’t being careful with ritual washings before meals. The Pharisees — Jews in general, in fact — would never eat a meal without going through the motions of a ritual handwashing, with an especially vigorous scrubbing if they had just come from the market (to say nothing of the scourings they’d give jugs, pots, and pans).
5 The Pharisees and religion scholars asked, “Why do your disciples brush off the rules, showing up at meals without washing their hands?”
6–8 Jesus answered, “Isaiah was right about frauds like you, hit the bull’s-eye in fact: These people make a big show of saying the right thing, but their heart isn’t in it. They act like they are worshiping me, but they don’t mean it. They just use me as a cover for teaching whatever suits their fancy, Ditching God’s command and taking up the latest fads.”
14–15 Jesus called the crowd together again and said, “Listen now, all of you — take this to heart. It’s not what you swallow that pollutes your life; it’s what you vomit — that’s the real pollution.”
20–23 He went on: “It’s what comes out of a person that pollutes: obscenities, lusts, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, depravity, deceptive dealings, carousing, mean looks, slander, arrogance, foolishness — all these are vomit from the heart. There is the source of your pollution.” ***
“Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.” This anonymous quote is true in my experience. One aspect of this truth I have experienced has been seeing amazing places that offer insight into the depth of religious and human history. I have been awed by the immensity of the creative genius of ancient cultures and their fervent pursuit of the sacred when standing places like the Areopagus in Greece, the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Saint Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square and the Smol’nyy Cathedral in Saint Petersburg. These sites expand the mind even as they reflect centuries of history, from classical Greece, the Byzantine and the Roman Empire.
A variety of places have inspired my thoughts on how, throughout the centuries people of faith, in the name of the Divine, have created some of the most breathtaking architecture, art, music, literature, ritual, and rite imaginable. Beyond visual and aural inspiration, in the name of the Divine, people have been moved to build hospitals to heal, schools to educate, and centers to feed and house people in need.
But there is another side where actions of religious people are not memorialized in gothic cathedrals or sprawling museums. They are the times in history when people conquered, colonized, enslaved, and decimated each other in the name of the Divine.
The truth is religion has always had the power to build and enrich, tear down and destroy. In human history religion has provided us with peace and stirred us to war. It has made us creative and generous, closed-minded and stingy, even violent. Which is to say that those who pursue God should not take it lightly. What we profess and practice when it comes to religion really matters.
In this reading, Jesus is confronted by the Pharisees who ask why his disciples eat with “defiled hands.” The Pharisees followed the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy). To the Pharisees, the Torah was a gift from God that guided them toward holiness. Thus, they attempted to make Temple-holiness and purity laws a part of everyday life to fulfill this command: “You shall be holy for I, the Lord your God, am holy.” (Leviticus 19:2).
These laws were often taken beyond individual purity and a gateway to holiness. Those who thought they were perfect rule keepers could use the laws to set themselves apart as God’s righteous and holy. So, they would refuse table fellowship with the “unwashed” or the morally compromised like tax collectors and prostitutes. They could set themselves apart as God’s righteous and holy people.
This is religion as fence-building and it still happens today. Jesus: “These people make a big show of saying the right thing, but their heart isn’t in it. They act like they are worshiping me, but they don’t mean it” (vv 6–7)
Notice Jesus does not condemn ritual hand washing or disparage religious traditions. But he indicts the legalism, self-righteousness, and exclusivism that keeps the Pharisees from freely loving God and loving their neighbors. He calls out the priority of rite over mercy, heritage over hospitality, ritual over compassion. Jesus disdains those who feel the need to police the boundaries of their religion, based on their own narrow definitions of purity and piety.
Sadly, religious fence building is alive and well today. People still hold religious litmus tests for each other, deciding who is in and who is out based on conditions that have nothing to do with Jesus’s open-hearted love and hospitality. We still struggle with the love of neighbor.
In some faith communities, religious fence building has to do with the authority of scripture, who is welcome at the Lord’s Table, female clergy, divorce, pre-marital sex and the list goes on. The guises vary, but in the end, religious fence building and its legalism is anything that deadens us towards God and neighbor.
Legalism infect us personally. It makes us stingy and small-minded, cowardly and anxious. It strips away our joy and robs us of peace. It causes us, in Jesus’s cutting words today, to “honor God with our lips” but to “worship him in vain.”
After Jesus cutting words, he gives advice saying, “notice what comes out of you.” Notice what fruit your adherence to religious tradition and purity bears. Does your version of holiness lead to hospitality? To inclusion? To joy? To forgive others? Does it cause your heart to open wide with compassion? Does it lead other people to feel loved and welcomed in your church, or at the Lord’s table? Does it open your mind and attitudes that leads to a greater experience of life and love?
Or does your version of holiness make you rigid, anxious, small, and stingy? Fearful, suspicious, and judgmental?
Jesus offers an invitation through the confrontation with the Pharisees. It is to consider what is really sacred and holy in our spiritual lives. It is to go deeper — past lip service, past tradition, past purity, rules and piety. It is an invitation to practice a religion where the God of heritage and history, is also the God of a surprising, innovating, ever-living newness, today and forever.
