FINDINGS II
Proper
17- B - August 30, 2009
Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23
(Deuteronomy
4: 1-2, 6-9; Psalm 15; James 1: 17-27)
 By Harry T. Cook
8/24/09
RUBRIC
This exegete is relieved to return for a season to the
normative gospel for Year-B: According to Mark. In a recent exchange with a
reader of these FINDINGS -- he a retired parish priest as I am -- wrote to say
his research and homiletic practice led him to think that According to Mark was
a product of a community rather than of one or two persons. I responded that I
had come to see that maybe Mark was, among the four canonical gospels, as much
the product of one person than any of the others, except perhaps According to
Luke.
Either way, Mark is a fairly direct "get-down-to-business"
document that begins with the brief appearance of the Baptist in an eight verse
introduction of the main character: a Galilean named Jesus who by verse 16 of
the first chapter is in the business of gathering disciples. By the 21st verse,
Jesus has encountered "a man with an unclean spirit," and so the battle lines
are drawn between the old and the new, the superannuated and the innovative,
between the stasis of tradition for tradition's sake and the dynamism of
change.
If we pay attention, Jesus' arrest and execution will come
as no surprise.
WORKSHOP
Mark now sets up a confrontation between the Pharisees and
some "scribes from Jerusalem" (maybe scribes whose local counterparts had been
subjects of scorn in the aftermath of Mark 1:21ff, when the crowds there "were
astonished at [Jesus'] teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority
and not as the scribes.") The location of this incident is not specifically
given, but, among others, C.S. Mann says it was probably somewhere in the
Galilee. Whatever, the issue is now the proper eating of food.
Some of Jesus' company were eating with "defiled hands, that
is without washing them." Of course, we will not make the mistake of thinking
"sepsis," because it would be 1800 years before that phenomenon would be
understood. At issue in the passage was ritual purity. The Jew following the
then current tradition would ceremoniously have washed his or her hands after
coming from the "agora" or public venue, market place or place of assembly.
Why? Because who were by nature "koinos" or common, or unhallowed or unclean
would have been in the agora, and something of their unclean nature may have
rubbed off on the Jew. So the Pharisees and scribes want to know of Jesus why
his followers do not "peripatousin," literally "walk" in the way of the
"elders," or "old ones."
This is the kind of confrontation Mark clearly delighted in
depicting: an iconoclastic episode in which he and his community, perhaps in
light of the disappearance of the Temple and its sacrificial apparatus after 70
C.E., considered such purity rituals irrelevant. Sort of, "Well, we guess we
didn't need to do that stuff after all" -- a form of denial of the importance
of that which through fault of theirs was lost and gone. Mark even has Jesus
cite Isaiah (29:13) to the effect that outward appearances count for nothing,
that it is the inward commitment that is important. Mark goes so far as to say
that Isaiah spoke directly and presciently of such a Pharisee or scribe as a
"hupokritās," or pretender, play actor, fraud or deceiver. Our English word is
"hypocrite." Mark contrasts the "human tradition" with the "commandment of God"
(7:8).
Then comes the thrust of the rhetorical sword (7:15): "There
is nothing outside a person which by going in to him can defile; but the things
which come out are what defile" (or makes him "koinos"). By this Mark means not
only to dismantle what he perceived as an irrelevant and possibly oppressive
purity tradition, but to emphasize the necessity of authentic commitment over
the mere performance of surface ritual. It is not finally "koinos" food or food
made "koinos" by how it was harvested or slaughtered or prepared or conveyed
since, as Mark has Jesus point out so graphically, the bowels take care of that
problem (see 7:19, which the delicate lectioneers omitted from the appointed
reading).
One can imagine the uproar that such an exchange as the one
depicted between Jesus and those along the Pharisee-scribe axis would have
produced. Think of the liberal and conservative members of the U.S. Senate
debating what is really "American" and what is not.
It was one thing for Jesus to have dazzled (at least
initially) the synagogue crowd with his prowess where evil spirits were
concerned as he was perceived as one with authentic inner strength. It was
quite another for him to be depicted as challenging the very power base of the
ruling religious authority. To what extent, in the immediate post-70 C.E.
context out of which According to Mark probably came, a scribal or Pharisaic
party existed with any strength is debatable. It may be that Mark, as Matthew,
Luke and John were to do after him, used those old party or faction labels to
describe new or different ones. The purity traditions depicted in the passage
may have been newer forms of oppression and irrelevance.
Footnote: The
Deuteronomy reading coupled by the RCL with the Marcan passage has got to be
read and commented on with great care, because any superficial treatment of it
will make it seem contradictory to the iconoclasm of Mark. The Deuteronomist is
strong on the keeping of the commandments unchanged by amendment of addition or
deletion -- an argument for original intent, we might say. It is the keeping of
the mitzvoth, not the foofaraw of ritual that counts.
We have more direct help from the Epistle of James as its
author deplores religion that is "worthless" due to a lot of talk -- maybe even
about the finer details of ritual purity. "Religion that is pure and undefiled
. . . is this: to care for the orphans and widows in their distress . . ."
HOMILETIC COMMENTARY
It is an unfortunate datum of the human experience that
people give sometimes unthinking obedience to religious and cultural traditions
that may at some point been intended to serve them. Often enough people end up
serving the traditions. One such tradition for Jews of antiquity was the
purification code rooted in a kind of xenophobia of the hoi polloi, or what we
might appropriately call "the great unwashed." That is what is at issue in the
Marcan reading appointed for liturgies this coming weekend.
A clearer angle on the issue is the declaration concerning
the Sabbath attributed by Mark to Jesus: "The Sabbath was made for man and not
man for the Sabbath." As we see time and again throughout the Bible, much
legalistic concern was abroad about Sabbath observance that it became entangled
in a plethora of rules impossible to remember and to observe. Consequently, the very peace the Sabbath was meant to
provide was disturbed.
Yet neither the purity codes nor Sabbath observance is at
issue here. For 21st century people trying to make sense of the
Jewish/Christian religious persuasion, the issue is how the institutions and
traditions of the same serve them, rather than the other way around. The issue
is how do we keep what is meant to serve us from becoming our master. This is
not only a good Jewish/Christian question. It is a quintessential American
question.
Banks, for example, are supposed to be convenient
depositories for people's hard-earned dollars and places from which the same
people can obtain credit. Banks were not intended to be rapacious institutions
that essentially appropriate the aggregate of people's deposits to enable risky
investing and careless gambling all for the profit of the bankers. Banks were
made for people's money, not the people's money for banks.
Hospitals are supposed to be places where the sick and
injured may go to be treated and, when possible, cured and mended. People who
go there must, of course, pay or have paid for them, the cost of their
treatment. But what is its cost? How can one night's stay in a hospital bed,
two laboratory tests and a 17-second physician visit end up costing $15,000?
Hospitals were made for people, not people for hospitals.
The Mark reading is a legitimate basis for a homily or a
homiletic discussion about how to make that which should serve human beings
actually serve them, rather than requiring human beings to serve them. This
point may handily be applied to religious institutions. In no way should any
such institution with any connection to the Gospel According to Mark, for
example, be permitted to make human beings serve its ends. The church was made
for man, not man for the church.
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READERS WRITE
W.A. Wells, Danville, VA: I live in . . .
south-central Virginia about 60 miles southeast of the city of Lynchburg...home
of the Falwell machine. The local paper recently reported that a
satellite of Thomas Road Baptist Church will soon be opened locally. Now
people will no longer have to sequester themselves in their homes and may
gather together in community to watch the weekly display on big screen
TV. This is the milieu in which I was raised, educated and now try to
conduct business. It is why I look forward to "Findings" every Monday
morning
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