‘A Poem a Sunday’

Pentecost 14 B

Sunday, August 30 – 2015

Mark 7:1-23 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

Commentary:  Traditions or Laws, or the way we always do things can be used to control and even oppress others.  Traditions can become so entrenched that they get in the way of love of God and love of neighbor.  A church has lost its mission when tradition is never evaluated or questioned.  Mission should drive tradition.  Where 'Tradition' rules the mission is often lost.

The Tradition of the Elders

7 Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, ² they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. ³ (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; ⁴ 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.) ⁵ 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?” ⁶ 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;
⁷ in vain do they worship me,
    teaching human precepts as doctrines.’

⁸ You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”

⁹ Then he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! ¹⁰ For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’¹¹ 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)— ¹² then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, ¹³ thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.”

¹⁴ Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: ¹⁵ there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”^[f]

¹⁷ When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. ¹⁸ 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, ¹⁹ since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) ²⁰ And he said, “It is what comes out of a person that defiles. ²¹ For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, ²² adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. ²³ All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

A Poem a Sunday

Traditions of the Elders

‘This people honors me with their lips,

but their hearts are far from me.’ 

                                St. Mark 7:6b

Walking away after worship in a huff:

“You took my pew away!”

He promised to quit over roped off

pews during summer Sundays.

With heavy breath hardly able to speak

she stood stiff in the pastor’s office – hysterical, weak:

“You moved memorial furniture. Who gave you permission?

Relatives will question and wonder what happened.”

She told the quilters about how germs

travel through the ritual of Passing the Peace.

“We never did that before!” her weekly mantra

and ‘til her death day it never ceased.

Defile my church

        by roping off pews.

Defile my church

        by furniture moves.

Defile my church

        by passing the peace.

And so it goes.  It never stops.

The Christ is gone and love is lost.

But pews are safe, and furniture is in place,

and hands are eternally clean.

‘A Poem a Sunday’ – Kenn Storck – August 25, 2015