Reflections from The Hill – Freeways and Freedoms (Mark 7.1-23)

 

Then there’s the one about the guy who was watching the local news one night when a story came on about a car going in the wrong direction on the freeway. The man knew his wife was on the freeway, so he called her. (ed: don’t try this, please).

 

He said, “Sugar, please be careful; there’s some idiot in a car going the wrong way on the freeway.” She exclaimed, “A car? No dear, not one; there’s hundreds of them”.

One of the reasons that’s funny is that we believe, for most of the time, that we’re absolutely right, no question about it. Those other cars on the freeway (or whatever) are the ones that are in the wrong. It couldn’t possibly be me.

It’s a bit like the old tale I read once that told of a man who fell ill at the mid-point between two villages. This presented a problem: who was going to care for him? The authorities decided that the village to which he was closest would take care of him. Problem solved? Not.

 

One village maintained that the distance should be measured from the man’s navel; the other village argued that it should be calculated from the man’s mouth so, while the two communities argued over a mouth versus a navel, the guy died.

I sometimes reckon the same kind of thing happens with Churches: it’s more than possible that our understanding of what is good and right and pleasing to the Lord is short-sighted. It’s more than possible that, like the woman driving on the freeway, people can actually be going the wrong way.

 

Moreover, it’s more than possible that, like the authorities in the two villages arguing about who was closest to the sick man, we can be majoring on the minors while, all the time, people are dying.

The Gospel for today shows Jesus challenging the religious authorities with exactly that conundrum. Remember? When the Pharisees and Scribes saw Jesus’ disciples not wash their hands before they sat down to eat, they went berko. They said, “You aren’t teaching your disciples to honour God like our ancestors did.”

 

I think this sounds a lot like the argument over mouth v navel measurements, don’t you? People are on a slippery slope to Never-land but don’t actually know it.

Jesus told the Pharisees, “These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”

The Pharisees and Scribes were driving the wrong way on the freeway and they thought that Jesus and the disciples were wrong. They were worried about gobs and navels while people around them perished.

 

The real tragedy is that those guardians of faith and order (the Scribes and Pharisees) are still alive; their spirit lives on. Whenever we take a matter of grace and turn it into a requirement for the Kingdom of Heaven, we honour God only with our lips.

 

Whenever our worship becomes a matter of law rather than a matter of grace, we honour God only with our lips. And the real sadness of living a life of bondage to rules and requirements is that Christ actually died to set us free from them.

Worship is not about rules and regulations; it’s not just about liturgies or hymns. It’s not about how well we memorize or read Scripture or whether we’ve taken a 2-year rather than a 2-week Baptism or Confirmation class.

Honouring God is about meeting Him on His terms. Worship is not about doing something for God, but rather receiving a great deal from Him: receiving his forgiveness and trading our sinfulness for his perfect and holy way of life.