In the Gospel account we just heard, we are dropping in on the final pieces to a discussion among Pharisees, Jews, scribes and followers of Jesus. We missed the pieces that might have sounded like a family argument. We can imagine though what led the Pharisees to come to Jesus and tattle in their asking Jesus why his followers didn't follow protocol and wash their hands before they ate – as was custom for the elders. Perhaps it sounds almost like something we don't need to hear and we're tempted just to tune out on this one.
In some ways, the reading reminds me of a childhood situation. You know it. You know the tattling that goes on when the younger one does something the older one was told not to do. The older one takes delight in finding fault with the other one and reporting the infraction to the parent who's closest.' Mommy, Jason didn't wash his hands.' Sometimes it works – that reporting; sometimes it doesn't. In fact, sometimes it downright backfires and the reporter gets reprimanded!
But wait a minute. Perhaps it's not just childish behavior and reporting going on here in this piece from Mark. Perhaps these Pharisees and scribes are really concerned about real issues close to their hearts and are a part of their religious tradition. Perhaps too we need to remember we fall into the very same kind of behaviors with similar concerns as the scribes and Pharisees expressed when it comes to religious practices. We complain about some folks' worship attendance for instance – oh we don't do it to their faces but, some of us, we wonder just how much does Jesus mean to them if they can't take an hour out of their week and be here. Or… We have a concern over how communion is served when we do come – which is the appropriate way, which is the way that is most meaningful (I guarantee you we as a body would not agree on one way!); some of us get hung up on what color the candles should be in the Advent wreath – isn't it always three purple and one pink? No, they might be all purple; they might be a deep blue; or when the communion table/ altar candles are lighted, we know the correct way the acolytes should extinguish the same. The time of worship is another hot topic that draws certainty out of some folk: this is the time (and we can fill in a variety of times) it should be. Something else, some other item or issue might come to your mind that's important and when there's a change from what ‘should' be, it disrupts worship for us and we question whether it could be worship when a longstanding way is not followed. The Pharisees and scribes are us!
For those who came to Jesus, he turns the tables upside down on them! Their reporting to Jesus backfires on them! He does not dismiss their concern; he takes their concern seriously. But he delivers a disastrous blow and essentially calls them hypocrites. From Isaiah he says as God's voice, “People honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.” Jesus says you're doing all these things, following the rules that bring you closer to God but you're missing the point, you're missing the picture as a whole. You're setting up shop but you haven't built the foundation. For us, missing the point might be like putting a jigsaw puzzle together piece by piece but we don't know what the end result looks; we don't know the reason for finding an agreeable arrangement.
Perhaps it's something like the: The older sibling sitting; she teases the younger one. She does everything in her power to aggravate the younger one: coming up behind the little one and yelling, BOO!, playing with the younger one's favorite toy and then hiding it, whining just loud enough so only the sibling can hear: nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah (while fingers are in her ears). When the younger one's screams brings mom, the older one protests, “I didn't do anything; I did just as you told me. I followed the rule: I didn't touch her!” The older one had followed the rule but tried like anything to create the same reaction as if the rule hadn't been complied to. At that tender age, the older one didn't get or want to hear the whole message her parent was trying to convey, the one of how to be in relationship with another human being, the one of how to love her sibling and what loving entailed.
In following the rules, the scribes and Pharisees lost track of why they were following those rules: the rules were reminders for them so they might better love God, live a holy life, reach a sense of holiness, which is, to be more like God. Our pieces of worship, too, are reminders for us, too, pointing to the holy in our lives and how we might love God and be more like Jesus. The worship pieces themselves aren't the be all, end all.
Jesus says this to the scribes: when you get all caught up in what others are not doing, you loose sight of God. Rather your concern is over petty things. All the worship in the world following all the rules does not make up for your hearts being unattached, far away from God. Jesus says that to us, too. In fact, many of us follow all the rules we set up for ourselves, we're supposed to be here and we still are unattached, uninvolved, far away from God. How can this be? Jesus goes on, He continues, he says: it's what's within, what's inside of us that's important. That's what corrupts; that's what gets us off kilter or that's what loves. It's not what's on the outside that corrupts. Rules aren't the ‘be all, end all.' In fact, they are nothing if they are not followed with a heart that loves me and in turn loves others. Loving God is what counts. Jesus might say further to us today: Loving me is what counts.
I can imagine Jesus saying further to the scribes and religious scholars: my followers may not abide by all the rules but how they love God, and what they do comes out of a love of God and of others.
And so Jesus urges us to explore our own hearts – rather than a neighbors' dirty hands. In a way he's saying, ‘Mind your own business!' ‘Mind your own hearts.' How does what we do and think mesh with what's within our hearts? Does what's within corrupt? Does what's within love? Does what's within our hearts effect what we do? Affect what we do? What we do, how does that impact others? Does it harm? Does what we do Friday evening express what we really want to say of ourselves or to others? Does what we do when we get up on Monday morning express a love we have through God? If not, what's in the way? What's keeping us unattached from God?
Perhaps, this may be a good point to bring in the other reading because in some ways it dovetails with what Jesus is getting at. The other reading we have for today is from Song of Songs. What a love poem! This woman speaks of her love; her lover responds. The voice of my beloved! And she then goes on to compare him to a gazelle. And then he speaks and promises a glorious, new future. I would say that most often we shy away from this Song of Songs. It is too explicit; it is sensual; it speaks of two lovers so in love you might say they are giddy. If we were to read more of this book we would continue to read of this exchange between the two which gets into much more detail of the gifts of the body and love.
I do suggest we read this book often lost to our awareness; I suggest specific parts of this set of love poems as most appropriate for weddings. I don't know that I have ever had a couple choose a reading from Song of Songs. Nevertheless, I have used pieces as I speak with couples for it talks of intimacy in a relationship.
Our puritan background perhaps keeps us from speaking of our human desires even when they may be legitimate and healthy. Perhaps that's why it's not included much in our commonly accepted set of Sunday readings. Even early on, as the Hebrew canon was developed, Jewish authorities would keep it from the formal temple readings. But still it remained a part of the canon. The people would read it before they entered the temple.
Taken literally, the two unnamed lovers placed in an idyllic sort of Garden of Eden of God's creation are a wonderful counterbalance to the story of Adam and Eve. This couple enjoys, loves, delights in each other. They are taken by each other something like Julia Child's delight in food – butter! And over and over the one says to the other, “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”
Taken as an allegory, Jewish interpreters understand the book as describing God's love for Israel . God is delighted in Israel ; God has chosen Israel to be God's delight. God is a Loving God. As such, it is often read as a part of Passover.
In our Christian tradition, the poems also are often understood as allegories of Christ's love for the church, for the human soul, and/or Mary, often referred to as the bride of Christ.
Whether it is a love story about two human beings or an allegory about God's love for God's people, the sense of delight is striking. God's sense of delight and in return our sense of delight in God is mutual, is interactive, is intimate, is all encompassing, is freeing, is life-giving.
God's loving us invites us, “Arise, my love, and come away into my kingdom living.” Now, that might be a little too idyllic for we who are realists, down to earth sorts of folks. And it might be downright scary for some of us, to have God, to have Jesus – delight in me! To know me inside out and still take delight. But that is our Loving God; that is our Loving Jesus. No matter what might think or do, it comes down to, God knows. We can't hide it. The only hiding that goes on is a veil we place between our true selves, our hearts, and what we present as ourselves, what we try to tell ourselves and the world is true. God hears our hesitations, our questions, our doubts, our ‘buts' and responds, I love you. Come away with me.
This, my friends, is what Jesus shared with his followers. They were beginning to get it. They longed for a Loving God: That One had been so absent from their lives. They hungered for that Loving, intimate Holy One and they found that Holy, Intimate One through Jesus. So when some came to Jesus to ask about these things that Jesus' followers were and were not doing, Jesus said, “They get it.”
Jesus followers were Loving God in return for the love God gave. So let our hearts be opened, captured by this Holy Loving One. Let our lives be lived through this Loving God. And thereby love God in return.
