It's What Is On The Inside That Matters

Please read Mark 7: 1-8, 14 & 15

I was asked very recently what I was required to wear as a Methodist Presbyter.  My initial thought was to answer “nothing” until I quickly realised it could be taken the wrong way.  But it is a fact that there are no formal dress requirements for Presbyters, whether leading worship or just in everyday life.

There is nothing in CPD that dictates what I have to wear or not wear when I lead worship.  The Roman Catholics and Anglicans have very strict rules, but we Methodists don’t have any.  I don’t have to wear preaching bands or a cassock or a stole.  I don’t even have to wear a clerical collar, or dress smartly: I could turn up in a faded pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and there are certain styles of worship where that might be appropriate.  On the whole, though, as you may have noticed, I do stick with tradition.  I’m a scruff at heart and my wife maintains that I am completely incapable of looking smart; yet I do try to be appropriately dressed when taking a service. I always wear a clerical collar and, for Holy Communion, a cassock and appropriately coloured stole.  I wear these things because they are the traditional dress of a Methodist Presbyter and I can see no harm in following that tradition.

At the same time, I am fully aware that how I dress, whether leading worship or doing something else as a Presbyter, doesn’t matter one bit unless my life is consistent with that expected of a person who has been ordained; unless there is an integrity between the ordination vows I made and the way I live.

It is what is on the inside that matters.

We have to be very careful about tradition in our church family; about the destructive power that traditions can have when they are treated and enforced as if they were rules.  Some of the most destructive words, or very similar words, that I’ve heard said time and time again in church meetings are, “but we’ve always done it that way.”  My invariable answer to that is, “then it’s time we stopped doing it that way!”

Traditions can be a tyranny and make newcomers to churches feel unwelcome and unwanted.  I remember somebody telling me that, when they were younger, they went for the first time to a service in their local Methodist Church in jeans and a smart open neck shirt.  They were actually told by the duty steward that men weren’t welcome unless they were wearing a jacket and tie!  Can somebody please point me towards the Bible passage that says men must wear a jacket and tie in church!  The person I was speaking to hasn’t been in a church since.

That is one perhaps extreme example, but how often do we make people feel unwelcome because of our church traditions without even realising it?  How often do our church traditions come between a person and an encounter with the God they are seeking? 

Some of the Jew in 1^st century Judea had forgotten that very simple maxim: it is what is on the inside that matters.  In other words, who a person really is, what their character is like: is far more important than whether they are following traditions that can become a tyranny and a burden.

This is precisely the point Jesus is a making in our verses from Mark’s gospel.

Some of Jesus’ disciples were eating without first having washed their hands.  The Pharisees noticed it and said, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”

“Why do you come to our church and ignore our tradition that you should wear a jacket and tie?”

“Why do you come to our church and ignore our tradition that you should stand up during the hymns?”

“Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”

I must stress that such handwashing wasn’t for any hygienic purposes; it was supposed to make a person ritually clean.  William Barclay explains it this way, “It was ritual, ceremonial, rules and regulations they considered to be the essence of service to God.”

These rules were not in the books of the Law in the Old Testament, they were simply man made rules created in centuries past as the proper way to do things, traditions, not laws.  The result of these traditions, according to Barclay, was that “ethical religion was buried under a mass of rules and regulations.”

Jesus response to the Pharisee’s question about the disciples not washing their hands is critical and cutting: “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 commandments of God and hold to human traditions.”

The word hypocrite means to pretend to be something or somebody you aren’t; it speaks of a lack of personal integrity.  I’ll turn to Barclay again, “Anyone to whom religion is a legal thing, anyone to whom religion means carrying out certain external rules and regulations, anyone to whom religion is entirely connected with the observation of a certain ritual and the keeping of a certain number of taboos is bound to be a hypocrite. They believe that they are good if they carry out the correct external acts and practices, no matter what their heart and thoughts are like.

The biggest mistake many Christians make is to think that they are good because they do certain things like going to church, reading their Bibles, praying regularly, giving a tenth of their income as a tithe and so on.  These things do not make a person good.  It’s what’s in a person’s heart that makes them good.  If your heart is full of bitterness, grudges, pride and bitterness no amount of religious practice will make you anything other than a hypocrite.

“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.”  Not only did Jesus call the Pharisees hypocrites, he also accused them of being proud of their own cleverness instead of listening to God.

Our world is full of people who are so proud of their own intellectual abilities that they think they can deny the truth of God.  I’m thinking not only of atheists like Richard Dawkins but also of Christians who seek to deny the truth of God by so watering down the Holy Scriptures that they become nothing more than a collection of ancient writings that we are free too cherry pick according to our own preferences: or who deny things like the miracles and resurrection of our Lord simply because they appear to be at odds with current scientific understandings.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, we must never let our own cleverness come between us and God.  We must put aside our pride in our own mental capabilities and open our minds to the truth of God in the Holy Scriptures.  This is not to say that we shouldn’t use our minds and mental capabilities as we study the scriptures, indeed we should be doing so: but we need to remember that we should study the scriptures prayerfully, seeking the mind of God and opening ourselves to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

In verses 14 and 15 Jesus says, “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.”

It is very hard for us to understand just how radical this statement was to those who first heard it.  It was a truly revolutionary set of words. 

In our passage Jesus has been arguing with the Pharisees and Scribes about tradition.  He told them of the irrelevance of ceremonial handwashing.  In verses 9-13, which are not part of this morning’s set Lectionary reading, he demonstrated how keeping man made religious traditions can mean disobedience to God.

This would have been startling enough to the Pharisees and Scribes.  Now Jesus goes on to say that, “There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”  No Jew had ever believed that and no orthodox Jew today believes it.  A very large part of Judaism was based on the idea that certain things are clean and other things are unclean and that contact with unclean things brought ritual defilement.

To the Jews I would be ritually unclean right now because I had bacon for breakfast and the pig is seen as an unclean animal.

By saying what he did Jesus was telling them that there was no such thing as clean and unclean, challenging the very core of their religious understanding.  Only people can be clean or unclean.  They become unclean not by what they come into contact with but by living lives that are selfish and self-centred; lives that reject the love of God because they put themselves first.  That is what sin really is.  All the things we think of as sins, as disobedience to God, stem from people being selfish and self-centred.

If we are truly to call ourselves disciples of Jesus of Nazareth then we must do our best to avoid being self-centred, putting ourselves and our own needs and desires first.  If we do that we will be defiled by what comes out of us.  Instead we need to be focussing first on God, on loving God and, with the help of God’s Holy Spirit, living lives that are Godward and outward focussed.  Second, we should be focussing on the good of others, not ourselves.

To give one practical example; I’m sure we are all aware of the people gathering in Calais who want to come to Britain.  The British press call them migrants and David Cameron called them “a swarm”.  They are simply people, people who have nothing and who are looking for a better life.  People who are in need.  The selfish, self-centred person says that we must stop them coming into our country at all costs because they will use our resources, we might have to pay more in tax and our standard of living might be adversely affected.  The God-centred person doesn’t worry about such things, but simply wants to help them; recognising that we are all one race of human beings and that countries and boundaries are simply human created traditions that have no eternal significance.  The God centred person doesn’t see Syrians or Liberians or Africans; he or she simply sees people in need of help.

In our passage Jesus warns us of the dangers of human made rules and traditions that can come between us and God, of focussing on the trivial instead of that which is really important to God; to love God and each other and to live God-centred, unselfish lives.  I pray that God will help us all to do that today and for the rest of our lives on earth.