[Music] welcome to friends Congregational Church sermons we are an open and affirming Congregation of the United Church of Christ no matter who you are or where you are on life's journey you are welcome and you belong I'm Becky rowski and I'll be introducing this week's sermon if you enjoy this podcast and would like to learn more about our Ministries and College Station Texas take a look at our website friends- ucc.org we have sermons that were recorded before we began producing this podcast please enjoy this sermon originally recorded in 2020 reflecting on Mark 7: 1-23 with a message the heart of the matter preached by our executive Pastor the Reverend Trent Williams [Music] [Music] I want to invite us to hear this word from the gospel of Mark 7: 1-23 the Pharisees and some legal experts from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus they saw some of his disciples eating food with unclean hands they were eating without first ritually purifying their hands through washing the Pharisees and all the Jews don't eat without first washing their hands carefully this is a way of observing the rules handed down by the elders Upon returning from the marketplace they don't eat without first immersing themselves they observe many other rules that have been handed down such as the washing of Cups jugs pans and sleeping mats so the Pharisees and legal experts asked Jesus why are your disciples not living according to the rules handed down by the elders but instead eat food with ritually unclean hands he replied Isaiah really knew what he was talking about when he prophesied about you Hypocrites he wrote this people honors me with their lips but their hearts are far away from me their worship of me is empty since they teach instructions that are human words you ignore God's commandment while holding on to rules created by humans and handed down to you Jesus continued clearly you are experts at rejecting God's commandment in order to establish these rules Moses said honor your father and your mother and the person who speaks against father or mother will certainly be put to death but you say if you tell your father or mother everything I'm expected to contribute to you is Corbin that is a gift I'm giving to God then you are no longer required to care for your mother or father in this way you do away with God's word in favor of the rules handed down to you which you pass on to others and you do a lot of other things just like that then Jesus called The Crowd again and said listen to me all of you and understand nothing outside of a person can enter and contaminate a person in God's sight rather the things that come out of a person contaminate the person after leaving the crowd he entered a house where his disciples asked him about that riddle he said to them don't you understand either don't you know that nothing from the outside that enters a person has the power to contaminate that's because it doesn't enter into the heart but into the stomach and goes out into the sewer by saying this Jesus declared that no food could contaminate a person in God's sight it's what comes out of a person that contaminates someone in God's sight he said it's from the inside from the human heart that evil thoughts come sexual sins thefts murders adultery greed evil actions deceit unrestrained immorality Envy insults arrogance and foolishness all these evil things come from the inside and contaminate a person in God's sight this is the word of God for the people of God God is still speaking thanks be to God there's an ancient Jewish Parable that tells of two brothers who had lived their entire lives inside a city never venturing outside beyond the walls and into the countryside one day however they decided to take a journey outside the walls of their city as they went walking along the road they saw a farmer at his plowing they watched him and were puzzled what on Earth is he doing that for they wondered he turns up the Earth and leaves deep furrows in it why should someone take a smooth piece of land covered with nice green grass and just dig it up later they watched the farmer sewing grains of wheat along the furrows that man must be crazy they exclaimed he takes perfectly good wheat and throws it into the dirt I don't like the country said one in disgust only crazy people live here and so he returned to the city his brother who decided to remain in the country for a while saw a change take place only a few weeks later the plow field began to sprout tender green choots even more beautiful and fresher than before this discovery excited him very much and so he wrote to his brother in the city to come at once and see for himself the wonderful change his brother came and was delighted with what he saw As Time passed they watched the sproutings grow into golden heads of wheat now they both understood the purpose of the farmer's work when the wheat became ripe the farmer brought his Sith and began to cut it down at this the impatient one of the two brothers exclaimed the farmer is crazy he's insane how hard he worked all these months to produce this lovely wheat and now with his own hands he's just cutting it down I'm disgusted I'm going to go back to the city his brother the patient one held his peace and remained in the country he watched the far farmer gathered the wheat into his Grainery he saw him skillfully separate the grain from the chaff he was filled with wonder when he found that the farmer had harvested h hundredfold of the seed that he had originally SED then he understood there was logic in everything that the farmer had done it's an important question for us to ask why do we do the things that we do what's the reason the logic the backstory for most of us I suspect we don't really think very much about the reasons for doing certain things the way that we do them I know that I don't at least part of the time something works for us it's a tradition maybe it's what we were taught and so we do it but if you've never seen a furrow being plowed or a seed being sewn if you don't know how things grow it might look pretty strange it's true I think that we often only look at the surface of things forgetting sometimes to ask those deeper questions about why things are the way they are it's true that human beings have a tendency to look only on the outside to only see things from our own perspective in light of our own experiences but what's really behind it that question comes powerfully before Jesus in our gospel story today as he confronts the religious leaders of his day over tradition over what really matters in the end to God the Pharisees the educated religious leaders the keepers of the Jewish tradition are upset to see that Jesus and his discip IES don't participate in the traditional ritual of handwashing before eating now in that time and place the washing of hands was not primarily about cleanliness at least in the way that we think of it it was both a social and a religious practice things that were indistinguishable at that time the Torah the law of Moses prescribed certain rituals as part of daily life the ritual of washing hands the way that Foods were prepared even which foods could be eaten and which were forbidden and they weren't only arbitrary or legalistic either the laws of Torah Were Meant to sanctify what was ordinary to sanctify the ordinary everyday things of life and to remind the people of the source of all things that all of the world is the Abode of God and the sacred is all around us the Pharisees as good Jews simply wanted to protect those rituals and make sure that they were respected but Jesus wants to push them a bit to get them to understand something a little deeper and in so doing perhaps to Glimpse the in-breaking of God's kingdom now before we go any further it's important to note that Jesus and the Pharisees would have agreed on and believed 99% of the same things as often as they show up as opponents of Jesus in The Gospel stories they're not meant to be seen as villains or evil and Judaism is certainly not meant to be set up in opposition to Christianity in fact Jesus would not have thought of his movement as a new Faith but as a reformed movement within Judaism the debates between him and the Pharisees are an intramural conversation between people in the same Faith Community the Pharisees are not evil any more than the disciples who also usually don't get it Jesus isn't trying to condemn them but to push them sometimes pushing hard admittedly but to push them nonetheless to understand more fully what it means to live into God's reign of love and of Justice but what about that tradition it was clearly something very important to the Pharisees and yet Jesus doesn't seem all that concerned about it is he suggesting that everything the Jewish people had come to know and to practice wasn't all that important or is there something more that's going on here if we look back into the history that formed and shaped the Jewish people we discover that Jesus was placing himself in a long line of prophets and sages who had preached and taught about God's kingdom the prophet Amos for example speaking from God's perspective says rather bluntly I hate I despise your festivals take away from me the noise of your songs but let Justice roll down like Waters and righteousness like an Ever flowing stream in other words your worship is just noise to me if you forget the poor and the oppressed in Isaiah in a dialogue between the people and God we have this passage why do we fast but you do not see why humble ourselves but you don't notice look look you serve your own interest on your fast day you oppress all your workers you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist such fasting as you do today will not make your voice Heard On High is such the fast that I choose a day to Humble oneself is it to bow down the head like a bull rush and to lie in sackcloth and Ashes will you call this a fast a day acceptable to the Lord is not this the fast that I choose to loose the bonds of Injustice to undo the thongs of the Yoke to let the oppressed Go free to break every yoke is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house when you see the naked to cover them and not to hide yourself from your own kin jesus takes up the mantle of those Hebrew prophets who came before him and he calls the people to live a life that's oriented toward God he's calling us to connect our spirituality with the rest of our lives to not divorce the two areas but to merge them Traditions are important but only in so far as they lead us into a deeper relationship with God and A Life That's oriented toward Justice this ultimately this is the heart of the matter that life is a gift from God and all of life is intimately connected we're called to connect what we do today in worship to how we live the other six days of the week worship and Justice have to be connected two sides of the same gospel coin as Pastor Dan often says ultimately there can be no true worship of God if there is not Justice that's what the epistle writer James gets at in his letter when he says religion that is pure is this to care for Orphans and widows in their distress now some might say that this is overwhelming that it's just not realistic to that we simply hear again the call of Jesus to take up our cross we're not promised an easy Journey but we are inspired with a vision and empowered by the spirit to rehearse God's kingdom As We Gather each week it's in this context that we find strength for that Journey we remember that it was in the context of the church and of worship that the Civil Rights Movement was born Martin Luther King and the other other leaders of the movement knew that you could not separate spirituality from Justice before they marched the people would often gather at churches to worship they would sing songs of Liberation and freedom songs that told of God's power of freedom and Justice and they would pray and only then would they March their worship prepared them and led them into the world to Proclaim and to enact God's Reign it was in the context of a worship service that Jesus first announced his mission of Liberation and Justice stepping into a synagogue and reading from the prophet Isaiah he proclaimed that the spirit of God was upon him and had anointed him to preach good news to the poor freedom for the captive to proclaim the year of God's favor on a weekend when we've witnessed the loss of a giant of the American legal system and an advocate for women's rights in the person of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg I'm reminded of the story of another woman who's a little less well-known but who challenged the Guardians of tradition in the name of a higher tradition who connected worship and Justice Paulie Murray was a Pioneer on Min fronts a black woman who decided Ed to go to law school in 1944 the only woman in her class at Howard University School of Law a brilliant thinker who was able to imagine a legal strategy for tackling segregation that no one had thought of yet her law school paper suggesting a way to challenge the doctrine of separate but equal would eventually be used by thg good Marshall's legal team that won the victory in Brown versus the Board of Education overturning legalized segregation in schools and Paulie Murray was also a devout Episcopalian who found a second career in a calling as the first black woman ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church in 1977 and as if all that was not enough the Reverend Paulie Murray was also queer someone who struggled with their sexuality and gender identity and had they lived in our time might well have identified as transgender paully was an extraordinary person on many levels someone that challenged Traditions traditions of exclusion while embodying the Grand and deeper tradition of the Gospel good news to the poor hope for the downtrodden healing for those wounded by the world in 1970 Paulie wrote these words in a poem titled dark Testament verse 8 hope is a crushed stalk between clinched fingers hope is a bird's Wing broken by a stone hope is a word in a tuneless diddy a word whispered with the wind a dream of 40 acres and a mule a cabin of One's Own and a moment to rest a name and place for one's children and children's children at Last Hope is a song in a weary throat give me a song of Hope and a world where I can sing it give me a song of faith and a people to believe in it give me a song of kindliness and a country where I can live it give me a song of hope and love and a brown girl's heart to hear it today even with weary throats We Sing a Song of Hope thanks be to God Amen [Music] in [Music] we hope you've enjoyed this week's message I'm Brook douly associate pastor to Youth and Young adults at Friends Church and I'd like to welcome you to join us for worship if you're in the area of colge station Texas at 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. Central Time on Sundays the 11:00 a.m. service is also live streamed on our YouTube channel friends Congregational Church UCC our mission is to be United by the example of Jesus to live Faithfully love limitlessly and serve boldly if you would like to support us we have a vinmo for easy donations of any amount at friends UCC no dashes no spaces to find out what's happening in the week ahead of friends visit our website friends- [Music] youcorn you to acts of service to The Wider Community our worship has ended and now our service begins thank you for listening [Music]