Prairie Theology (Mark 7:24-30)

 Today marks the beginning of Illinois Prairie Week. Illinois Prairie week is observed every year during the third full week of September, thanks to a law passed by the state legislature. The purpose of Illinois Prairie Week is to help people understand and appreciate prairies.

Because I grew up in California, learning about the prairie wasn’t part of my education. I do remember one line from a National Geographic kids book I had, a sentence which, strangely, I remember word for word: “grasses grow taller in the east, and shorter in the more arid west.” Apparently, I thought that was interesting. I don’t even know if I knew what the word “arid” meant. It was a new word for me. Maybe that’s why that sentence caught my attention, and lodged in my memory.

But now that I’m a resident of the Prairie State, I’ve learned more about prairies. Prairies historically covered nearly a third of North America, and two-thirds of Illinois. From here in Illinois, the native prairies stretched south to Texas, north to Saskatchewan, and west all the way to the Rocky Mountains.

And, yes, the grasses do get shorter the farther west you go.

Sadly, the native prairies are, today, almost all gone. Especially here in Illinois. I’ve seen a few remnant prairies—not even “remnant”, really, but reconstructions, an acre or two at most, meant to remind us of what the prairies once looked like. There’s one in the park near my house. There’s another at Camp Walter Scott. But in the entire state of Illinois, only 0.01% of the prairie remains.

In native prairies, many types of grasses and wildflowers all grow together. It’s a mature and complex ecosystem, that also supports a wide array of wildlife. Acc. to a National Park Service website, “Prairies developed into one of the most complicated and diverse ecosystems in the world, surpassed only by the rainforest of Brazil.”

Prairies are a miraculous wonder of creation.

A lot of what makes the prairie special is underground. The roots of some prairie plants grow 10 to 15 feet deep, and often, the roots interweave so thickly that early settlers cut bricks out of the sod to build homes and schools.

(I did read Willa Cather in high school, and I wondered how the sod homes she described could be so sturdy. Now I know.)

Prairies are a mix of dozens or even hundreds of different types of grasses and plants, all growing together. A healthy prairie has a kind of wild, untamed look to it. 

Few people want a prairie for their front yard. What most people want is a lawn, a manicured expanse made up of a single species of grass, mowed short, giving the yard a uniform, unblemished appearance.

On the west coast, where I’m from, there are more forests than grasslands, but forests, too, have many different species of plants growing together.

For a long time, foresters thought it would be better if they could create forests of a single species of tree. They thought that having all these different species growing together made it harder for trees to grow. But if you could grow a forest of just one species of tree, and those trees grew faster, that would be better for loggers and lumber companies. So they set about trying to create forests of a single type of tree.

But it turns out that trees don’t grow faster or stronger when there’s only one type of tree growing in the forest. The trees grow faster and healthier when there is a diversity of species growing together. For example: pine & fir get nitrogen from alder; the nitrogen travels from the alders to the pines and firs via the fungi that connect their roots underground.

That’s just one example; in many ways, different species of trees actually help each other grow stronger and healthier and more resistant to disease. And lumber productivity actually doubles when there’s a variety of species all growing together. 

The same is true for the grasses of the prairie. A prairie is a much healthier ecosystem when there’s a diversity of species present. A prairie is much better for the ecosystem than a lawn that has only one species of grass. 

Healthy prairies protect and purify water, clean the air, prevent erosion and soil loss, and provide habitat for countless species of animals, including bison, elk, deer, antelope, grizzly bears, cougars, and wolves, all of which thrived in Illinois before the prairies were destroyed.

When humans come together and form tribes and communities and nations, we try to do with groups of people the same thing we try to do with our lawns: limit them to a single type. Make everyone the same. 

We want our clan to be made up of people just like us. Our interactions with those who are not like us tend to be more hostile than the interactions we have with people with whom we have much in common.

Today’s Bible story is about a woman who was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. Among first-century Jews, she was an alder in a forest of pines. She was the black-eyed Susan in a field of big bluestem. She was a weed in their well-manicured lawn… and they didn’t really want anything to do with her.

And she should have known better than to speak to Jesus. A woman wasn’t supposed to speak to a male. A Syrophoenician wasn’t supposed to speak to a Jew. They were supposed to be kept separate. 

How audacious of her, to show herself, and to speak, without invitation, to Jesus.

She’s not just any weed; she’s that one weed that sprouts up faster than the rest, the one you can’t get rid of. She’s that honeyvine milkweed I have in my yard; I pull it up one day, and it’s back the next. Very persistent.

And with that persistence, she seeks Jesus out, and begs him to heal her daughter. But Jesus looks at her, and what does he see? A weed. A plant that doesn’t belong. And he dismisses her.

He even insults her.

Does Jesus’ reaction here bother you? It’s always bothered me. For years, I’d read this story, and wonder what I was missing. Why was Jesus so rude? So unkind? 

I find this portrayal of Jesus problematic.

But lately I’ve been learning a new way to read Bible stories like this. I’ve learned that there are quite a few Bible stories, actually, that start out just playing into our expectations. These stories describe a scene that seems to confirm the ideas of the intended readers, their preconceived notions, their biases… It’s a literary device that sets us up for the big shocker that comes at the end, which takes all those ideas and turns them on their head.

For example:

There’s the story of Noah and the flood. Many ancient religions had a flood story, and they all were similar to each other. The one we have in the book of Genesis starts out like all the others: God gets angry at humanity, and God sends a flood to destroy humanity.

I find the notion that God decides to destroy humanity problematic, but it's a setup that plays into ancient ideas of how gods behaved. 

At the end, there is a twist that is unique to the God of Israel. This God makes a promise, a covenant: that never again will God do such a thing.

 So the story starts the way anyone familiar with those ancient flood stories would expect, but the main point of the story comes in the surprise ending.

The near-sacrifice of Isaac works the same way. Every ancient religion had stories of sacrifice. People were expected to provide and offer sacrifices to God—sometimes even human sacrifices.

So the story of Abraham and Isaac begins with God demanding that Abraham take Isaac, his only son, and sacrifice him. I may have a problem with a God who issues such a command, but to the ancient way of thinking, that was not a surprising thing for a god to do. It’s what one would expect a god to do.

But then, in the end, God stops the sacrifice of Isaac, and instead, God provides the sacrifice. In no other story of sacrifice in the ancient world does the god provide what is to be sacrificed. 

It’s another way of showing that this God is not like any other God.

When Jesus reacts in a negative, hostile manner toward this Syrophoenician woman, that’s what was expected, in the first century. That’s how Jews treated Gentiles.

Whether Jesus actually displayed such hostility toward this woman, I don’t know. But when Mark wrote his gospel, he knew that his readers would expect a good, honorable member of their community to react a certain way toward a Syrophoenician woman, and that’s how Mark wrote the story…

But then…

The woman makes a comment that stops Jesus in his tracks. Her comment changes the direction of the story. It completely alters the plot. And Jesus is awed and impressed by what she says, and by her incredible faith; and Jesus agrees to show kindness to her and heal her daughter.

That is not the ending that any first-century reader would have expected. Jesus’ community, and the gospel writer Mark’s community, did not expect kindness to be shown to a Syrophoenician woman. 

Like a parable, this story toys with your expectations. A first-century reader would expect the story to go a certain way, to follow a familiar path… but then, BAM! You get this ending that just shocks you! It rattles you, it shakes you, it turns your world upside down.

In this story, in the end, this Syrophenician woman isn’t sent away, she isn’t ignored. Instead, Jesus not only grants her request and heals her daughter, but Jesus himself seems to have been taught by this woman, educated by her, corrected by her!

What! That just didn’t happen in the first century! And yet, in this story, it does happen.

In this story, she opens his eyes to look at her and see not an ugly weed, but a beautiful human, a flower, an essential part of the prairie ecosystem. 

And his faith was strengthened by her just as the pine and fir trees are strengthened by the alder. Together, they were both made stronger and their community was made stronger. 

Just like the interwoven roots of dozens of prairie plants, creating a material strong enough to build houses, this story shows that when the lives of women and men, Syrophoenicians and Jews, are interwoven together, the end result is something much stronger and healthier.

That’s the beauty of the prairie. That’s the beauty of a world of diversity. 

I read a book this summer by Lore Ferguson Wilbert called The Understory. It’s a book about forests, religion, and humanity.

In that book, she writes: “We need diversity, not just for diversity’s sake but because we are, like the trees of the forest, mutualists. We cannot get what we need only from our own kind, those who think like us, act like us, vote like us, and plan like us.

There are a lot of people today who worship differently than I do, and who vote differently than I do, and I disagree with them on a lot of things, and they disagree with me on a lot of things.

But, despite our differences, we need each other. Together, we are all a part of the prairie. Together, we can be stronger. Together, we can find healing. Together, we can learn and grow.

The Flag on the Refinery (Mark 7: 24-37)

 

1. The Flag on the Refinery

Welcome to worship. My name is Danny Bradfield, my pronouns are he/him/his, and I’m pastor here at Bixby Knolls Christian Church.

Two weeks ago, when I was gone, it was because Tristan, Ethan and I were camping in Yosemite. In the weeks leading up to that trip, we realized that we really wanted to take our bikes with us.

But in order to take our bikes, we needed a bike rack for our car. And in order to put a bike rack on our car, we needed to have a trailer hitch installed.

I couldn’t find any place in Long Beach that would install a trailer hitch in time for our trip, but a U-haul place in Torrance was able to, so I made the appointment. 

As I was driving up the 405 on my way to Torrance, passing through Carson, I noticed the giant marathon refinery just south of the freeway. Did you know: it is the largest refinery on the west coast, and it refines an average of 363,000 barrels of oil per day.

And on the side of the refinery, facing the freeway, is a giant American flag, which I’m sure you’ve noticed if you’ve ever driven by it. 

That flag is huge. It’s about 40 feet by 60 feet, which is big enough to cover all the pews here in our sanctuary - the whole room.

That flag has always bothered me. Seeing it turns my emotions sour just a little. Usually I ignore it and drive on, but this time, instead of ignoring it, I decided to do a little mental investigation, to try and figure out just what it is about that flag that bothers me.

I do that sometimes. I find it helpful. If I find myself all of a sudden feeling unhappy or bothered, it’s not always obvious what causes that… 

I find that it’s helpful to pause, and try to figure out what’s going on...What is the source of my grumpiness? What is causing me to feel so negative? Sometimes I need a little timeout to think these things through.

I had time to think these things through as I waited for the trailer hitch to be installed. And I realized it wasn’t the flag that bothered me. I have great respect for the American flag, and I love my country. 

It was how the flag was being used.

That refinery has had several changes of ownership in recent years, but the flag has been there through all of them. These oil companies claim that the flag is there to “honor America;” however, oil production and consumption is actually working to destroy America, land that we love.

2. Effects of Climate Change

More and more, people are realizing that the production and consumption of fossil fuels is a major contributor to climate change, and climate change causes extreme weather events - like the ones we’ve seen in recent weeks.

The wildfires here in California get bigger and more intense each year - and more deadly. And just this past week we’ve seen three separate hurricanes land in North America, the biggest being Ida, a historic, devastating storm that intensified so quickly that many in its path had no time to evacuate. It was the strongest storm to ever hit Louisiana. 

Then it moved up to the mid-Atlantic, where it broke records, overwhelmed the infrastructure, and caused dozens of deaths. 

Central Park in New York set a new one-hour rainfall record, with over three inches of rain falling in a single hour.  And the National Weather Service issued its first-ever Flash Flood Emergency for New York City. Riders were trapped in the subway, in the dark, for hours, unable to see, while listening to the sounds of water cascading into the underground tunnel.

And since all this is aggravated by climate change and the use of fossil fuels, it is no exaggeration to say that oil is killing us and other forms of life on this planet; and the oil companies know this. 

So what’s an oil company to do? They make money off of oil production. They want to keep making money. So they wrap their refinery in the biggest American flag they can; they say to the world, “We’re proud to be American.” And they make it so that anyone who dares criticize the oil companies or who pushes for the development of more sustainable forms of energy is perceived as unAmerican.

It’s quite clever marketing, actually.

3. Called to Protect the Land

But what’s really unAmerican, I think, is destroying the spacious skies, the amber waves of grain, and the purple mountain majesty of this incredible country. God has indeed shed God’s grace on this beautiful land. 

But when we wrap the American flag around that which pollutes and despoils this land, it flips things around, so that, now, it becomes unAmerican to defend and protect the natural health and wealth and beauty of this country.

And those who work to protect the land, the water, and all the natural resources of this great country get branded as villains. 

So instead of holding oil companies and other polluters accountable for the damage and destruction they cause, we instead arrest those who are protesting against the oil companies; those who are out there trying to protect the land and water.

The polluters have wrapped the flag around themselves and have fooled us all; but the real Americans, - the true patriots - are the ones working to protect the land and the water and the health of us all.

Now, you may be wondering why I’m spending so much time talking about this in a sermon. It’s because it shows exactly how some Christians use the Bible. 

There are people who take the most unbiblical, unChristian ideas - ideas and practices that go against the Bible’s emphasis on showing love to one’s neighbor, growing in compassion, being makers of peace - and they wrap these unChristian ideas in the Bible, so that, all of a sudden, anyone who criticizes them gets labelled as unChristian. 

4. The Syrophoenician Woman

This is not a new phenomenon. It’s been around since biblical times. Some of the most influential and powerful religious leaders wrapped the Torah around the wrong things… and Jesus called them out on it.

And one time, Jesus himself got caught up in it… or so it seems. Maybe it was a rhetorical device. I’m not sure. It’s a very difficult passage, a story about Jesus that  I’ve wrestled with a lot over the years, and I understand it a little differently every time I study it.

It’s the passage where Jesus meets the Syrophoenician woman. 

She begs for his help; her daughter has what the scripture calls an unclean spirit; her daughter needs to be healed. But Jesus responds: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

It’s a terrible thing for Jesus to say. It’s, “Jews first; you and everyone else can fend for themselves.” And it seems so contrary to every other thing Jesus ever said.

Did Jesus really say such a horrible, bigoted thing?

The woman replies, “But sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs,” and this seems to open Jesus’ mind. And then he gives her the blessing and the healing she desires.

Well, what I’m wondering today is, perhaps Jesus was quoting to her a phrase that was commonly said by the religious leaders… She asks for a healing, and Jesus says, “Well, you know what they say… they say let the children be fed first.” 

That’s what they say. The religious leaders. The ones who have wrapped the Torah around statements like that, statements that actually go against the Torah. Because after all, the Torah says that God’s people are to be a blessing to the other nations of the world; the Torah says that God’s people are to treat immigrants and foreigners as if they were citizens. But the statement, “let the children be fed first” implies just the opposite. 

But, whoever “they” are, they’ve taken the teachings of their faith, and twisted them so that just the opposite is taught, and then they claim that anyone who contradicts these teachings is going against the faith.

So, I think what’s happening here is that, when Jesus responds, he first quotes to her the expected answer, the answer that many religious leaders would have given, the answer that has the Torah wrapped all around it. 

And this allows her to respond with words that show just how wrong that is, how unjust and oppressive the teachings of the religious leaders are, and how - even though these teachings come wrapped in the Torah - they are actually contrary to what the Torah teaches.

Which is why Jesus then praises her, and says: “for saying that, you may go. The demon has left your daughter.” Through this dialogue, the Syrophoenecian woman has helped Jesus expose the lie taught by the religious leaders. And she demonstrates that she actually has a better understanding of the Torah - a better understanding of scripture - than do the scribes and the Pharisees and many of the other religious leaders. 

And I see that a lot today: people who have left the church or given up on the church, doing a better job of living the way taught by Jesus, the way of love, than many who claim to be Christ’s followers.

5. Grounded in Truth

More and more, I see myself being called to do what Jesus did here, to try and expose the false teachings. Many already know they are false, including many who aren’t even a part of the church. And yet religious leaders continue to persist in teaching them.

Teachings like, “God hates LGBT people.” That is taught by so many religious leaders, even today, and they wrap the pages of scripture around that teaching. But that teaching is contrary to the Bible’s declaration that “God is love,” and it is based on a misunderstanding of a few obscure verses that are intentionally misinterpreted so that they reinforce the prejudices and hatred of those who misuse them.

Here’s another one: “I don’t need the vaccine, because God will protect me. Those who get vaccinated and who wear a mask lack faith in God.” Well, that’s just about the most foolish thing I’ve ever heard. It’s like saying, “I don’t need to look both ways before crossing the street, because God will protect me.” Please: look both ways before crossing the street. And wear a mask, and, if you can, get vaccinated.

We hear so many people say so many things, and they say, “this is what God says,” or, “this is what the Bible says…” And they try to make you feel ignorant if you question them.

Anyone who tries to make you feel ignorant, or tries to shame you, or tries to use fear to manipulate you, doesn’t have your best interest at heart. Because the Christian faith is not about fear or manipulation or even shame. The Christian faith is about hope and assurance and grace. 

The Syrophoenecian woman knew that. She knew that the answer presented to her by the religious leaders, and repeated by Jesus, was a lie. She knew it didn’t come from God. So she dared to challenge that teaching, that interpretation of scripture. Even when it meant challenging Jesus himself, and contradicting the words Jesus spoke.

Just because somebody tells you something, and it comes to you wrapped in the flag or in the Torah or in the pages of scripture, doesn’t mean that it is actually right... It’s not right to continue destroying the planet when there are other alternatives available, and putting a giant flag on it doesn’t make it right... It’s not right to preach hate or condemnation or exclusion when Jesus preached love and affirmation and inclusion, and spewing a bunch of misinterpreted Bible verses out of context doesn’t make it right.

If we really want to honor the flag and what it stands for, we need to call out those who would misuse the flag and defile what it stands for.

If we really want to honor Christ and the Bible that testifies to Christ, we need to call out those who would misuse scripture and twist the scriptures to say what they don’t say.

More importantly, we need to ground ourselves in the spiritual practices, so that our faith is on a firm foundation; so that it can’t be swayed or manipulated by those who would seek to corrupt the gospel and twist the truth for their own gain. We need to ground ourselves in the spiritual practices - things like Bible study and prayer and worship - so that we will not stray from the way of Christ.

"The Arc of Scripture" (Mark 7:1-8)

“Everything you need, you already have.”

Remember that? That was my sermon message July 12. In that sermon I mentioned how there were two miraculous feeding stories in Mark’s gospel, times when Jesus found himself out in the wilderness with a large, hungry group of people and not nearly enough food to feed them all.

I talked about how Jesus told his disciples to have the crowd sit down on the grass as though they were going to have a banquet – to actually recline, because that is the proper posture for a formal banquet in Jesus’s time – even though there was no banquet table, no banquet hall, no servants to prepare and serve a meal, and no food.

The disciples thought he was crazy. Yet Jesus took one of the few loaves of bread they did have; he lifted it up to the sky and he blessed it: “Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu… praise to you, the Lord our God, who brings forth bread from the earth…”

You remember it now, don’t you, because that’s about the only phrase in Hebrew I feel comfortable attempting in public.

And after he took the bread, blessed it and broke it, he had the disciples distribute it to the people, along with two fish – just two.

And somehow, they did not run out of food.

I mentioned then that there are actually two miraculous feeding stories in Mark’s gospel. I didn’t have time then to explain why this story appears twice in one gospel, just a few chapters apart.

So that’s what I’m going to do today.

A clue as to why there are two feeding stories can be found in today’s scripture story. You’ve heard it, how the Pharisees washed their hands but the disciples did not. What do you think it’s about?

A. Hygiene (The Pharisees are worried about germs; the disciples aren’t. Clearly the disciples are right, so… God made dirt, and dirt don’t hurt!) … No, that’s not it. It’s not about hygiene. The washing was a ritual that identified them as Jews. It has as much to do with hygiene as the holy water Catholics use.

B. Tradition (traditions are stupid; get rid of them!) … No. Jesus actually had great respect for the ancient traditions.

C. Don’t know, but the Jews & Pharisees are bad, Jesus & disciples are good, and that’s all that matters. This is not far from how stories like this were taught to me in Sunday school, btw. But again, this is not what this story – or any other story in scripture – is about.

Well, let’s find out what this scene is really about.

The entire gospel of Mark reads like a story. Since this episode comes in the middle of the story, there is obviously something that comes before it, and something that comes after it.

Usually, when we read the Bible, we read it in bits and pieces, just a few verses at a time. According to a book I have by David Rhoads and Donald Michie, that’s like hearing quotations from Shakespearean plays without ever having read or seen one of those plays in its entirety. If you take just a few lines of Shakespeare out of context – well, come on, Shakespeare is hard enough to understand as it is, sometimes!

So here we have this strange story about the Pharisees who wash their hands and the disciples who don’t wash their hands. It’s in chapter seven. Let’s see what comes before, in chapter six; and after, in chapter eight.

In chapter six, right before this episode, we have the first miraculous feeding, the feeding of the five thousand. Jesus and his disciples had been teaching and healing people among the villages of Galilee, not far from Nazareth and the hometowns of the disciples, which means that they were among people like themselves. They drew huge crowds, even when they went out to the wilderness trying to get a break… and there, the first miraculous feeding took place.

The scene where the Pharisees accuse Jesus of breaking with tradition by not washing comes next, in chapter seven.

Then Jesus and the disciples venture out, going further away from their homelands. They go to places like Tyre and Sidon to the west, and the cities of the Decapolis to the east, and to Caesarea-Philippi to the north. They encounter Gentiles and Syrophoenicians and other non-Jews, and heal them.

And again, huge crowds follow them.

And then, in chapter eight – way out in a remote, wilderness location – those crowds get hungry.

And the question arises: are the blessings of God that were evident when Jesus fed the 5,000 also available to these foreigners, these people from other lands, who practice a strange, deviant form of Judaism (or no Judaism at all)? Would they, too, receive bread?

After all, these people aren’t among God’s chosen ones. They don’t follow the Jewish customs. They don’t wash their hands before eating.

Again, there is nothing wrong with the rituals. Jesus would never say that it is wrong to take part in rituals that identify you as Jewish.

But at the same time Jesus would never insist upon imposing those rituals on others who were not Jewish.

It’s like the meme I saw on social media earlier this month: It’s cool to say “I can’t do that because of my religion.” It’s not cool to say, “You can’t do that because of my religion.”

Jesus’s mission is to invite people into the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is at hand! It is now! And there is room in the kingdom of God for all of God’s children, not just those of Jesus’s own religion, the Jewish faith.

“Why don’t you and your disciples wash, Jesus?”

“Because I’m preparing to go and invite into God’s kingdom those who aren’t Jewish. And they don’t have to be Jewish to be part of the kingdom. The kingdom is bigger than that. It is a kingdom of peace and love and justice and equality for all of God’s children.”

And this group of Pharisees didn’t like that, because they placed more importance on their religion than they did on the peace and love and justice and equality God desires for all.

But how does God feel about this?

When Jesus ended up in the wilderness with 4,000 people who weren’t hardcore Jews and didn’t participate in all the Jewish rituals like the washing of hands and bowls and cups, would God’s blessings still pour down on them?

The answer comes in chapter eight: in those days when there was again a great crowd without anything to eat, he called his disciples and said to them, “These people have nothing to eat.”

And the disciples said, “Yeah?...”

This time, there were only seven loaves, for four thousand people. Jesus took the bread and blessed it… baruch atah Adonai eloheinu…and he had the disciples start distributing the bread, along with what the scripture describes as “a few small fish.”

Would they multiply, for these people? These non-Jews? These foreigners? Would there be enough?

The crowd ate. Everyone had their fill. And there were seven baskets of leftovers.

God’s miraculous blessing had come upon these non-Jews, these “non-washers,” just as it had upon the Jews earlier.

I have to say it again, because scriptures like these have been used throughout history to condemn the Jews: there is nothing here that supports that. Jesus is not condemning Judaism or the Jews. But he is criticizing those who insist that everyone else must become like them. If certain rituals and observances are important to you, that’s good. But don’t say that everyone else has to follow them in order to participate in the kingdom of God.

What we see in Mark 6, 7, & 8 actually reflects the arc of scripture as a whole. There is, throughout the entire Bible, a movement that is constantly expanding the community of God, or at least people’s ideas of the community of God.

Remember when, way back in Leviticus, the people of Israel drew a circle that kept all sorts of people out, especially those who were considered foreigners. But then later, we have Ruth the Moabite, who becomes the great-grandmother to king David; and Job, the “most blameless man on the face of the earth,” who was from a far away place called Uz. And we have Isaiah, challenging conventional wisdom in saying that God’s house is a house of prayer for all people.

Jesus himself, in Luke’s gospel, gets a lot of people in his hometown upset when he mentions that the prophets Elijah and Elisha conveyed God’s word and God’s healing to foreigners in Sidon and Syria – people who of course did not follow any of the Jewish customs. This offends his fellow Nazoreans, who chase him out of town.

In Acts, the Spirit convinces Philip that a eunuch from Ethiopia can and should be welcomed into the community of believers, and the Spirit convinces Peter that “God shows no partiality, but in every nation are people who are acceptable to God.” After all, Peter says, Jesus is Lord of all.

It is always a challenge, to widen the circle. It means widening one’s understanding of who God is and how God works.

But that is the arc of scripture. At times, the disciples had a hard time following it; their eyes were blinded, and they made mistakes. The Pharisees and other religious elites had an even harder time following it and accepting it.

And many people today have a hard time with a faith that encourages one to continually open one’s mind, to draw the circle wider, to consider new possibilities. There is comfort in a static, non-changing view of the world, a faith that never changes, never challenges a person to expand his or her mind.

But scripture does not allow us to take refuge in that. Scripture is a non-stop challenge to continually open our minds to a God and a kingdom that is and always will be far more than we can ever imagine.

"Eating with Defiled Hands" (Mark 7)

Our scripture is from the 7^th chapter of Mark, but I’m going to start in the 6^th chapter.  Do you know what happens in the 6^th chapter of Mark?

In the 6^th chapter of Mark, Jesus is in a Jewish region near the Sea of Galilee, teaching a huge crowd of people out in the wilderness.  When he’s done, it’s late, and the people are hungry, and there’s no place to get food.  And yet, through the miracle of God’s grace, Jesus is able to provide food for those thousands of people out in the wilderness.

In the 7^th chapter of Mark, we hear a story about another feast.  This one is a more intimate gathering of Jesus and some Jewish leaders known as Pharisees.  The Pharisees were not clergy, but they were extremely religious.

One of the traditions of these very religious people was a ritual washing of hands before the meal.  This was a very old tradition, passed down through generations.

The purpose of the washing had nothing to do with germs.  It was symbolic, just like baptism, which has nothing to do with physical cleanliness.  It was a symbolic ritual that many of the Jewish elite took part in before eating.

As these Jewish elite washed their hands, it was a way of recognizing one another as fellow Jews.  “As a Jew I wash my hands; as a Jew you wash your hands.  Let us now partake of this Jewish meal together.”

But Jesus did not wash his hands on this occasion.  Jesus, and his disciples, probably did not wash on other occasions as well.  They did not observe the ritual.

Jesus and his disciples were Jews, of course; by not observing the ritual, they were insulting their hosts.  It was almost as if their host had extended their hand in greeting, but they had refused to return the handshake.  Or, it was as if their host had bowed to them in greeting, and instead of bowing in return, they just looked away.

So:  Why did Jesus and his disciples not wash?  Why did they not participate in the ritual?

The ritual washing was specifically a Jewish ritual.  Jesus was a Jew, and he did follow many Jewish practices; but his concern was with all people, not just the Jews, and he realized that the ritual washing was meant to exclude from the table those who were not Jews.

Consider this: the feeding of the 5,000 in chapter 6:  it took place in a Jewish region.  It was a Jewish meal.  All those present were Jews.  It’s followed by this story, of Jesus dining with the religious leaders, in chapter 7.  But in chapter 8, there is yet another meal…

In chapter 8, Jesus is again in a deserted place, with thousands of people who are hungry.  I’ve often wondered why the story of the miraculous feeding appears in Mark twice, since it is almost the same story each time.  But there is one important difference.

In chapter 6, the miraculous feeding is a Jewish meal in a Jewish region.  But in chapter 8, after the story of Jesus and his disciples refusing to wash, the miraculous feeding that takes place there happens in gentile territory, and includes people who were not Jews.

When Jesus and his disciples refuse to participate in the Jewish custom of not washing their hands, they are making a statement.  They are saying to the world that, in the kingdom of God, the table is open to all.

It doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a gentile; you are welcome at the table.  It doesn’t matter if you know the ritual or not; you are welcome at the table.

So, after Jesus dines with the religious leaders and refuses to wash, he hosts a meal among non-Jews, people who do not even know about the washing ritual. 

Jesus does not wash, because it is a ritual that excludes.  That second miraculous feeding could not have taken place if Jesus had insisted on the ritual.  The ritual would have prevented him from welcoming everyone and sharing God’s love with everyone.  A ritual like that had to stop.

This is the amazing thing about the New Testament:  it consistently portrays God’s kingdom as a kingdom where barriers are broken down; a kingdom where the circle that divides who’s “in” and who’s “out” grows larger and larger, until there is no one left outside the circle, and all are inside.

It’s a repeated pattern:  from the Jews to the gentiles; from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth.  The work of God’s kingdom is not done until everyone has been welcomed at the table.

The Disciples of Christ have always had an open table.  We welcome all to Christ’s table just as God has welcomed us.

World Communion Sunday reminds us that, at this table, everyone is welcome.  There is no judgment here.  We do not say to anyone, “You’re not good enough, you’re not worthy.”

When we gather around this table, we do so with people who are similar to us, and people who are different than us.  We gather with people we can see, and people who are thousands of miles away.  We gather with people who are present today, and people who lived in generations past.

A welcome invitation is at the heart of what we do and what we stand for.  Because “We are Disciples of Christ, a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world.  As part of the one body of Christ, we welcome all to the Lord’s table, as God has welcomed us.”