Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost Year B 2009

13 Pentecost B 09
August 30, 2009

Song of Solomon 2:8-13
8 The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. 9 My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, there he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice. 10 My beloved speaks and says to me: "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; 11 for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. 12 The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. 13 The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

Psalm 45:1-2, 6-9
1 My heart overflows with a goodly theme; I address my verses to the king; my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe. 2 You are the most handsome of men; grace is poured upon your lips; therefore God has blessed you forever.
6 Your throne, O God, endures forever and ever. Your royal scepter is a scepter of equity; 7 you love righteousness and hate wickedness. Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions; 8 your robes are all fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia. From ivory palaces stringed instruments make you glad; 9 daughters of kings are among your ladies of honor; at your right hand stands the queen in gold of Ophir.

James 1:17-27
17 Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 18 In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.
19 You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20 for your anger does not produce God's righteousness. 21 Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls. 22 But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. 23 For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; 24 for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. 25 But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act--they will be blessed in their doing. 26 If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. 27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
1 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."
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."
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 Journey to Gennessaret

That day began late in the bright sunny morning with difficulties with the house servants. The Pharisee had said his morning prayers, thanking God that he was not a woman or a sinner, and thanking God for the many rewards that God had granted him for his pious life. He then reminded his chief steward that he needed not sixteen but seventeen jugs of water drawn from his private well. The steward had the gall to argue with him, complaining that carrying so many jugs of water in addition to all the other morning duties was a burden to the staff. The Pharisee shook his head. He was really paying these lazy servants too much money. He took his rod of birch and whipped the steward. It really is a burden on a good man to have the responsibility of managing such a large household.

The Pharisee joined his wife and children for the morning meal, carefully inspecting the bowls and dishes for cleanliness before he went into the dining room. The servants really didn’t understand the big picture, how important it was to maintain purity before God. He took the opportunity during the morning meal to school his wife and children on the importance of cleanliness, reading aloud some of the many verses from Deuteronomy that were written in his very expensive personal copy of the scroll having to do with exactly how one is to wash to maintain one’s acceptability to God. Of course, these passages were addressed to the priests of the temple, but the Pharisee understood the tradition of the elders, who wisely extended these rules to everyone.

He had a busy day. He had to make a journey out of busy, cosmopolitan Jerusalem up to the country province of Gennessaret with a few of his fellow Sandhedrin members to investigate a teacher who had been getting some notoriety of late. His name was Jesus, and the people were very fond of him. Some of his colleagues on the Sanhedrin thought he was dangerous, that he might be stirring up some kind of revolution. Others thought his message was at the very least interesting.

But before he left with his retinue of servants who would carry his tent and his supplies, he had one bit of business to attend to. A landowner owed him money and hadn’t been able to pay, and today was the day he would seize the man’s land to cover the debt. Really, these country people, so ignorant, so irresponsible. It would be painful to take the land which had been in the man’s family for centuries, but it was after all only what he deserved for his poor management. It would add another fifty acres to the Pharisee’s already wide holdings.

Meanwhile, in the country village of Gennessaret, where Jesus and his followers were staying, the woman was carrying her second jug of water the mile and a half back from the community well. Her back had troubled her for some years now and the daily trips to the well had become a misery. She knew from the synagogue teaching of the Pharisees that bathing was necessary to be right with God, but she just couldn’t manage going back and forth to the well so much. The water she carried was just enough to drink and to use for cooking the family’s meager morning meal. She silently prayed, “I’m sorry, Lord, it’s the best I can do. I hope you understand.”

Her husband was already at work in the fields, fields his family had owned for centuries, now lost to one of the temple priests who had loaned them the money to pay the Roman’s taxes. They hadn’t been able to pay the loan back on time, and so now they were tenant farmers on their own land. The temple priest was very rich and sent overseers out to make sure that the entire tax, along with the tithe to the temple, was always taken, no matter how little was left for her and her family. All of them were getting very thin, and one of the little girls was sick. She couldn’t afford to take her to the priests.

This morning though, her back seemed to feel better. It was strange how hope could make so many burdens lighter. Jesus had come across the Galilee just the day before. So many people healed. God had to be with him. Her husband had come home full of stories about Jesus’ teaching. He planned to take their daughter to him that day. It was said he fed a huge crowd of people a rich meal using only a few loaves of bread and two fish. Could it really be that God had heard their prayers? Could it really be that God was going to save his people?

The Pharisee arrived that evening just in time to join his friends and go to the humble house where Jesus and his followers were to have dinner. There was a huge crowd of filthy peasants milling about outside the house. The smell was just awful. Really, can’t these people take a bath now and then? The peasants cleared the way and bowed and scraped as the Pharisees made their way into the house. The Pharisee recognized several men whose lands he’d seized for debts. Their eyes weren’t friendly.

The house was packed with dirty smelly people. The Pharisee had to cover his nose with his prayer shawl, the stench was so strong. And they were all so happy, laughing and sharing food. There was Jesus in the midst of all of them. He was hard to pick out because he and his disciples looked so much like the poor country bumpkins around them. Their clothes were worn and dirty and so were their hands.

The Pharisee was outraged. This was disgusting. This man was claiming to be a rabbi but he wasn’t even clean. “Why, may I ask,” the Pharisee said, “don’t you and your disciples wash your hands before the meal as we have been taught by tradition?”

And Jesus had the audacity to call him and his friends hypocrites. He even quoted Isaiah. The room fell silent. The Pharisee looked around at the dirty peasants in the room. He saw triumph in their eyes.

He and his friends left the house.

While the Pharisees were heading away from the village to their overnight camp, the woman who had carried the water that morning was with her children, telling them stories about Moses she had memorized when she was little. Her husband had taken her daughter to see Jesus and he hadn’t yet returned. She was anxious and worried, but she was trying to hide it from the children, who were listening to her stories with bright and hopeful eyes.

Suddenly her husband’s frame filled to door. At first she didn’t see her daughter. Without saying a word, her husband led the child into the dark room. “I feel better, Mother. The man Jesus touched me, and I feel much better.”

One question burned in the woman’s mind. She whispered “How much did it cost?”

Her husband said, “Nothing. All he said was, ‘Great is your faith. Let it be done as you ask.’”

At the camp of the Pharisees, over a sumptuous meal of lamb and bread and honey, The Pharisee brought up what they were all thinking about Jesus. He said, “This man has to die.”

Amen.