"The End of Lip Service"

The Pharisees and some of the scribes gathered around Him when they had come from Jerusalem, and had seen that some of His disciples were eating their bread with impure hands, that is, unwashed. (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they carefully wash their hands, thus observing the traditions of the elders; and when they come from the market place, they do not eat unless they cleanse themselves; and there are many other things which they have received in order to observe, such as the washing of cups and pitchers and copper pots.) The Pharisees and the scribes asked Him, “Why do Your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with impure hands?” And He said to them, “Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written:

'THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR LIPS,
BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR AWAY FROM ME.
'BUT IN VAIN DO THEY WORSHIP ME,
TEACHING AS DOCTRINES THE PRECEPTS OF MEN.'

Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men.”

He was also saying to them, “You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition. For Moses said, 'HONOR YOUR FATHER AND YOUR MOTHER'; and, 'HE WHO SPEAKS EVIL OF FATHER OR MOTHER, IS TO BE PUT TO DEATH'; but you say, 'If a man says to his father or his mother, whatever I have that would help you is Corban (that is to say, given to God),' you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or his mother; thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down; and you do many things such as that.”

After He called the crowd to Him again, He began saying to them, “Listen to Me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside the man which can defile him if it goes into him; but the things which proceed out of the man are what defile the man.

Since Tuesday, the sermon title has undergone a metamorphosis. Our secretary went on vacation Wednesday, so she printed the bulletin early this week. The original title for the week was "True Religion," as you can see. As I pondered this scripture further, the focus has changed.

I began the week thinking about "True Religion" but I abandoned that theme. I abandoned it because even the phrase "true religion" is an oxymoron. By definition, religion is flawed. By definition, religion is a human construct and therefore, religion is ripe for hypocrisy. Who am I to attempt to describe "true religion?"

Let's together consider a new theme, "The End of Lip Service".

"Lip service." Do young people understand this phrase? I decided to Google it. If it shows up on Google, there's hope. Wikipedia defines it as follows, "Lip service is an idiom which means giving approval or support insincerely." I am glad to see there is a definition in Wikipedia, but this definition doesn't really capture the hypocrisy Jesus speaks of.

"Lip service" is exactly what Jesus is talking about when he gets into yet another argument with the legalistic religious types. This is about the fourth time Jesus sets the Pharisees' teeth on edge in the gospel of Mark. Here we have this rather obscure argument about ritual hand washing. The disciples weren't doing it and the Pharisees want to know why.

Jesus accuses the religious people of giving God lip service. Jesus knew his Bible. In response to the Pharisees' condemnation, he quotes the great prophet Isaiah. He throws Isaiah right back at the preachers----"These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men." To add insult to injury, Jesus calls them hypocrites!

Somehow even though the crowds were very attracted to Jesus in his day, I cannot see Jesus making it as a televangelist or megachurch preacher today. Jesus was too truthful.

We hear two things in this account from Mark. One: Jesus is saying all this ritual hand washing is not important. External cleansing is not the path to holiness. Two: Jesus challenges those who use religious laws in order to avoid deeper responsibilities. Some people were avoiding their financial obligations to their parents by declaring their money was already committed to God. They were, in effect, weaseling out of their Biblically mandated family responsibilities.

How often today do we see people hide behind the veil of religion to promote their own personal agendas?

The Pharisees stuck to their conviction that the hundreds of laws of the oral tradition must be followed. They did this not because they were stubborn, but because this is what they had been taught. This was the way they'd always done things. To them, this was the path to holiness. Trouble was, with all those hundreds of rules and regulations, they'd gotten lost. They lost sight of who God was. They were way off track. This is one of the reasons Jesus came. To get us all back on track. To focus us on what's important.

Of all the characters in this story, we are the Pharisees. We are the religious people, doing our best to follow traditions we have been handed. We humans are continually tempted build religion into our own image. We are comfortable within the system we have created. It is much easier to follow rules than to follow God.

Yet when we really listen to what the Bible has to say about things important to us, like our money, it makes us extremely uncomfortable. I am a wealthy person, as are nearly all of you. Jesus is pretty clear that wealth is hazardous to our spiritual health. He says, point blank, "It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." To paraphrase: It is easier for a rich person to get into heaven than for Bill Gates to squeeze through the overnight deposit slot at the First National Bank.

Or take another example, the way Jesus talked to us about loving our enemies and taking care of our neighbor. This causes us serious discomfort. We have to love someone we hate? Someone who continually hurts us? And then, are we really supposed to go out of our way, change our life, for people we don't even know and certainly do not care about?

Jesus didn't say, "go and staff committees", he said "go and make disciples."
Jesus didn't say, "give away your leftovers", he said, "go, sell all you have and give your money to the poor."

Jesus didn't worry one whit about denominations or theology; these are human concerns. What I hear Jesus say in this message today is, "peel away the layers." Get rid of what is superfluous. Get down to basics. Don't worry about the rest. You don't have to think any more about Cumberland vs. PCUSA or about Methodists vs. Episcopals.

The good news this week frees us from worthless lip service. The good news is that God desires, above all else, that we know Him, trust Him, and honor Him with everything we are. All that we are. Our whole being. Our heart, mind, body, emotions. Not just our lips. Not just lip service.

No more lip service, but life service.
No more self -focus, but Christ focus.
No more going through the motions, but moving through God's will.
Get back to basics. Focus on what is crucial. Love God and love neighbor.

I don't know about you, but I find all of that very good news indeed.

We peel away the layers to find our center. To find who is crucial, to rediscover Jesus.

Recently I have been going through a desert-like period in my faith. I know you know what I am talking about. I have lost sight of Jesus. But thanks to the help of fifteen other brave souls and the overflowing grace of God, I have been rediscovering Jesus in the gospel of Mark.

The Jesus we meet in Mark would be unrecognizable to many Christians today.
He surprises us, even shocks us.
This Jesus is unsettling and unnerving.

The Jesus we are rediscovering in the gospel of Mark is not a particularly religious person, though he certainly knew his Bible.

He is not an easy person to get along with, though he continually reached out in compassion to others.

He is definitely not a politically correct person, as he insulted and challenged the religious establishment again and again and again.

No wonder they decided to kill him.

The good news today is that Jesus brings us
the end of lip service, the beginning of love.

And yes, I am not going to sugar coat it,
     it is love of a tough and challenging sort.
Not the love of comfort and ease
But the love of the unlovable
   ---low life tax collectors
   ---poor, stinking fishermen
   ---a sorry band of followers who never seem to "get it"
   ---the unconnected and the disconnected
   ---the rejected and despised

It is not at all easy, this thing Jesus wants. But then we know this, deep down, if our faith were easy, it wouldn't be faith.

Just this week I talked to a congregant. He struggles about the depth of his faith. He was worried about lip service. He said, "I worry about my belief. I worry my faith isn't deep enough. I have trouble with the tenets of theology, things like understanding---and believing---the virgin birth, eternal life, even."

To this person, and to myself, and to all of you out there who I am sure have had this thought more than once in your own walk of faith, our gospel today is wonderfully good news.

Our faith is not in a religion, or a set of rules, or even in a theology. Our faith is in God. God who is so wondrously revealed in the person, Jesus Christ. A person whose life was all about being real and true, about compassion and giving, about sacrificial love, inclusiveness. God's kingdom.

Not about lip service, no indeed.