Another one bites the dust

       I really love the play and story of Fiddler on the Roof.  There is something magical about Zero Mostel, Herschel Bernardi or Chaim Topol playing the bigger than life role on stage. Perhaps it is because I am gay. From the first words about 'Tradition' there is oddly, something comforting about the whole story even when it involves such sorrows and something close to an effort to marginalize and exterminate the Jews. We handle many horrific subjects with comedy from MASH to Hogan's Heroes. This does not minimize the horror. What gives us all comfort are the traditions of life and of our people. It gives a sense of community, unity. 

         In today's passage from Mark, Jesus is once again taking up the mantle of rebel. While wholly Jewish, Jesus rails once again against the Temple power elite and man made rules and rubrics that make followers "twice as fit for hell".  Truth be told we all like tradition when it brings comfort. I have vivid memories of Sunday dinners with pasta, meatballs and sausage along with 9 children, spouses, significant others, aunts, uncles and assorted guests. Every Sunday. What a tradition! 

        But we all know the feeling of being trapped. When tradition becomes a rote exercise that does not bring community and only brings obligation and empty gestures.  Tradition is a wonderful thing but when it is fails to serve a purpose it is times to jettison what is no longer useful.

     Traditions are meant to be reminders of something important, to bring that sense of community. Traditions serve a purpose. In the case of today's passage, Jesus quite pointedly notes that these are all man made. We should be mindful of what is man made and what actually serves the purpose of fostering a closer relationship with God, of creating a sense of community.

        When I first came out at the age of 50, I wanted to immerse myself in all things gay. I wanted to know my community. To that end I attended gay film festivals, gay Expo's and the biggest and best, the Pride parade in New York City. That is a great tradition in it's own way. Over the top perhaps but the sense of community and love is palpable. My husband and I marched in that same parade several years later alongside our State Governor as a sign of marriage equality, a recently recognized right.  But that parade is probably a bit too 'young' for this old geezer now. It has served it's purpose and now we have moved on to other interests in the gay community and that is not only great, it is right and correct.

        Shaking things up a bit, questioning traditions and seeking new ways to foster love and community, especially when it relates to our relationship with God, is a sign of intelligence, perhaps even brilliance. Jesus is creating a template for love and growth, for questioning and evaluation.  Let us test everything, evaluate and jettison the unnecessary. Do so in a  sobering, thoughtful and deliberate manner. And always, always, with love in your heart.

        

Mark 7:1-23

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 honours 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.’

 Then he said to them, ‘You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! For Moses said, “Honour your father and your mother”; and, “Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.” But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, “Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban” (that is, an offering to God)— then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.’

 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.’

 When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. He said to them, ‘Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?’ (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, ‘It is what comes out of a person that defiles. 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.’