Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
      American Pharisees

         

7:1 - 7:8  Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, "Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?" He said to them, "Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, 'This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines. 'You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition."

7:14 -7:15 Then he called the crowd again and said to them, "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."

7:21 - 7:23  For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.

All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person."

      Jesus spoke out against the Pharisees in the harshest of terms. He set the groundwork for a new church, a new vision. It is ironic that the church founded on diatribes against the Pharisees is now guilty of many of the same things that Jesus was railing against. This is not just true of the Roman Catholic church but many churches here in the United States and around the world. One only needs to read this scripture passage to get a vision of what they are like. It is not unlike the Taliban and it is here in the hearts, the preaching and actions of some churches; unthinking, unloving, unforgiving, rules oriented at the expense of the true message Jesus spoke and lived by. Based in or guilty of the avarice, wickedness, deceit, slander, pride and folly. Lord knows I could go on.

       It might be terribly interesting to go through this scripture reading line by line and write commentaries on each one but that would take way too long for a daily blog entry.

       Let me focus on some of the sexually related issues that Jesus spoke of since that is what many churches are fixated on. Fornication and Adultery. Neither one of these pertains to gay sexual activity by themselves. They would apply equally to heterosexuals as much to homosexuals.  Fornication would never be used to describe sexual relations between a married couple. Now that marriage equality is here in New York State, gay people can be guilty of adultery but that certainly wasn't so in Jesus' time. Although Jesus was aware of same sex relationships as part of the normal social construct of his time, and although Hebrew scripture speaks of love between same sex couples, Jesus did not rail against it at all. I do not understand then how any church or any person can rail against gays today if they don't in the very same breath rail against fornication in straight people. No one group is more guilty than another. 

        This does not seem to be as much of the spirituality, meditation based entry that I would prefer to set down on paper. I am comforted though by the fact that even Jesus recognized these problems and it upset him too. I can imagine a very angry Jesus who has no desire in his heart to be angry. It troubled him as it troubles me as it should trouble you. 

       Today, Sunday morning, I feel the need to pray, to meditate on how to move forward; what actions are called for when the very church He created is so patently wrong.