Hypocrite

Today, in this service, may we bring to God not only the words on our lips, but the praise in our hearts. May we bring our honesty and bravery, our anxiety and fears, all that we carry in our hearts. May we meet with Jesus, who accepts us – flaws and all – with forgiveness and grace.

HYMN

443: Come, let us sing of a wonderful love.

GATHERING PRAYER

Open our eyes, Lord, our ears and our hearts. May we be quick to see where you are at work; quick to listen for your word; quick to offer love and hope, and slow to judge. Amen.

PRAYER OF CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION

Unblemished God, forgive us when we adhere to laws that are not of you, when we criticise others because their ways are not our ways.

When we have not supported one another in love, or protected those that are vulnerable.

When we have corrupted your laws and gone our own way, or when we have not nurtured those in our families and communities and let them go astray. Cleanse our hearts and make us pure.

Help us to live as one community, bound together in love and grace. Help us to live alongside each other and be there for one another. Amen.

Thank you, O God, that we are a forgiven people, cleansed and restored by you, made pure in your image. Today we are free because of the cross. Amen.

THE LORD’S PRAYER

Our Father who art in heaven,

Hallowed be thy name,

Thy kingdom come,

Thy will be done.

On earth as it is in heaven,

Give us this day our daily bread,

And forgive us our trespasses,

As we forgive those that trespass against us,

And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory,

Forever and ever Amen.

HYMN

628: Faithful one, so unchanging

COLLECTION

READING 1

Deuteronomy 4: 1-2, 6-9

So now, Israel, give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe, so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you. You must neither add anything to what I command you nor take away anything from it, but keep the commandments of the Lord your God with which I am charging you. You must observe them diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!’ For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to him? And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today?

But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children—

READING 2

Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; 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.) 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?’ He said to them, ‘Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,

“This people honours me with their lips,

but their hearts are far from me;

in vain do they worship me,

teaching human precepts as doctrines.”

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

Then he called the crowd again and said to them, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.’ For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.’

HYMN

50: Great is the Lord

SERMON

(Lord, thank you for the message of Jesus and him crucified, which is the power of God.

Thank you that I do not need eloquence or superior wisdom.

although I speak in weakness, fear and trembling, I pray that you accompany the preaching of this message with a demonstration of the Spirits power.

When we make a cup of tea, most of us have got used to teabags. Many of us dispense with using a teapot and go straight to a mug.

But sometimes, in a café, we will be brought a pot with loose tea, usually with a strainer a cup and saucer and milk in a jug.

Somehow the slow pace of waiting for a brew and using loose tea seems a generous and hospitable thing to do, it takes a little longer but one that results in a different experience. It feels a little special.

I must admit I bought a glass teapot with the built-in strainer; I wonder if you can guess how many times, I have used it?

In truth It’s actually none.

In China they have a whole ceremony for preparing tea, I’m sure its not done on a daily basis but only on special occasions.

The word “tradition” is beliefs that are passed from generation to generation.

For example, a young woman who was newly married wanted to cook a ham for dinner. She took the ham and cut the ends off it and put it in the pan and put it in the oven. Her mom called while she was doing this and she asked, “Mom, why do we cut the ends off the ham before we cook it?” Her mom said, “I don’t know. I do it because I saw your grandma do it.” So, the young lady called her grandma and asked her why she did it. She said, “The pan I had was too small for the ham so I always had to cut the ends off so it would fit.”

That is an example of a practical solution, that was misunderstood and became a tradition.

Whether it is a good tradition or a bad tradition it is simply a custom or belief passed down from one generation to another.

There are all sorts of traditions in life. Families have customs. Companies have customs. Churches have traditions and there are personal things that you do each week or every day. It doesn’t matter what you call them traditions, habits, or routines, we all have them.

In today’s passage we find a reminder that it’s possible to have lives that outwardly look like we are living godly lives but within our hearts we are far from God. We can easily find ourselves in the trap of maintaining a commitment to religious traditions, while neglecting any true love of God.

In the Gospel reading, we heard that some Pharisees and scribes accuse Jesus’ disciples of eating with unwashed hands.

Hand washing for the Pharisees went far beyond washing their hands.

For the Pharisees “hand washing before eating” had nothing to do with hygiene, to them it was an act of worship toward God. You had to follow certain steps: The hands had to be held out, palms up, hands cupped slightly, and water poured over them. Then the fist of one hand was used to scrub the other, and then the other fist would scrub the first hand. Finally, the hands again were held out, with palms down, and water was poured over them a second time to cleanse away the dirty water the defiled hands had been scrubbed with. Only then would a person’s hands be ceremonially clean.

For us washing our hands became an important part of our lives during the pandemic and beyond. We were encouraged to sing a song or a verse of a hymn to make sure we wash for a full 20 seconds.

What I find amazing is to think that God instructed the people about hygiene several centuries before we even knew about germs and how they are transmitted, this knowledge was given to the chosen people to ensure they remained healthy.

But as usual people got involved with the process and elaborated on what God had instructed the people to do.

You see we, can sometimes be more dedicated to the ritual than to its practice its intention for our well being just like the Pharisees with their rituals.

things can become rituals very quickly, and we cease to notice what we are doing and why we are doing them.

The late David Watson once said ninety percent of what is happening in the church can continue to happen without the Holy Spirit. And that’s frightening.

In This morning’s reading after the Pharisees challenging Jesus over the Disciples not washing their hands in the prescribed way. Jesus came back with a stinging reply to the Pharisees and tells them that it’s what’s on the inside that is important. quoting Isiah, he says “that they honour God with their lips but not their hearts.”

It is not what goes into a person’s body that defiles a person, but rather the words and actions that can come out from the inside.

In other words, the choices we make and the words we speak reflect what is important to us, the values that we hold.

As a song writer I think Sting is extremely creative there is a line in “an Englishman in New York” he says the Mask I wear is one.

What do you see when you look in a mirror? Is the reflection an honest one, or is there more to see than the outward appearance?

In the Gospel reading, Jesus is defending his disciples against the Pharisees. He counters their attack with his own accusation that they are hypocrites who find fault in others but ignore those in their own lives.

Jesus holds a mirror up to the way they observe their faith.

Being called ‘religious’ or doing something ‘religiously’ – often has negative connotations, reminding us that for some, religious practice is more important than authentic faith.

We need to ask ourselves, how do the choices we make reflect the values we hold?

Lots of people these days say that having principles, political views, or a spirituality, counts for nothing if it doesn’t make a difference to the way we live our lives.

Jesus often clashed with the Pharisees on this very issue: what we say versus what we do.

And we often think that the Pharisees were all talk and no walk.

But was that fair?

They genuinely believed they were following God, obeying everything they held as true. The issue was they spent most of the time correcting and accusing others.

The Sunday papers thrive on this catching a celebrity or politician doing something in private that they have condemned in public.

‘Hypocrite!’ is the word printed as a headline, and the story unfolds with smug satisfaction that someone has been caught out.

We live in a world where it seems that there are many in our society willing to point the finger at the failings of others and sadly, some of those attitudes rear their heads in our churches too.

Does anything in this story help us navigate the often-murky moral landscape of our neighbourhoods and churches?

How do we unpack this story to see what it is that Jesus expects us to do in order to live consistently?

The Pharisees were obeying the rituals as they understood them The story in Mark 7 is really a clash between two ways of following God.

The question is who and what influences our values?

The Jewish leaders are trying to comply with their beliefs, the laws set down by Moses, following rules handed down through the generations so can you blame them.

Keep in mind that Mark is writing to help us understand what it means to follow Jesus and what it doesn’t mean.

Following Jesus is not about keeping a bunch of religious rituals, it’s all about a relationship with God.

To help us understand this, Mark decided to tell us about this encounter Jesus had with the Pharisees and this “hand washing” issue. Mark is using this as a lesson for us to understand what following Jesus really looks like.

Let’s look at what this “hand washing” is all about and then connect it to something in our lives today.

This encounter starts with the “Pharisees.” These people know the Torah. They read it, memorised it, discussed it, protect it, and enforce it. They study the Torah. They go to the synagogue all the time. They observe religious holidays. They fast. They pray.

They dress right. They talk right. From their perspective they believe they are obeying God. But the issue is they want everyone else to follow them, they want other people to obeying God in the same way as them, trying to make others bow to their knowledge.

Have you ever visited an art gallery? If you go very close to a painting you can see every brush strokes, but it’s not until you step back that the whole picture comes into view.

I think that’s how the Pharisees where, they tied themselves up with laws and traditions, that they couldn’t see the truth that the long-awaited Messiah was right in front of them.

Not only that they wanted to force their standards on to other people. And that was the thing the Christ riled against.

They are rather like the group that Paul encounters in Galatians 2:4 who he says, “[they] sneaked in to spy on us and take away the freedom we have in Christ Jesus. They wanted to enslave us and force us to follow their Jewish regulations”. Mark tells us the Pharisees “noticed” that some of His disciples did not observe the ceremonial “hand washing” before they ate and as a result, they found fault with them and wanted them to follow their religious “regulations.”

It is important to understand that a lot of these “traditions” were not Scripture, but rather various applications of Scripture interpreted by the spiritual leaders.

That’s why in verse 5, The Pharisees asked [Jesus], “Why don’t your disciples follow our age-old tradition? They are eating without performing the hand-washing ceremony.

What’s the problem here? The Pharisees were condemning the disciples according to this “age-old tradition,” rather than “God’s Word.”

There was nothing wrong with the Pharisees washing their hands before eating as an act of worship or wanting to be pleasing to God in some way. As we too may pray over our food.

You see the problem happens when we begin to judge others for not keeping a religious tradition that we hold too. When you do that, you are a Pharisee, and you are following tradition rather than Jesus.

The problem with traditions is if we are not careful it can lead to hypocrisy. Mark says in verse 6, “Jesus replied, “You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, for he wrote, ‘These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” Jesus used strong language here.

His response to them is by calling them “hypocrites.” The word “hypocrite” was taken from the theatre. It referred to a stage actor. During Jesus’ day one actor may play several roles.

He would wear a mask to be one person and another mask to be someone else. He would pretend to be different people. As a result, the word “hypocrite” came to refer to someone who pretends to have morals, beliefs. They pretend to be something they are not.

You may think these ideas are from the past but Just in the past 100 years, some of the more suspicious Christians and churches have developed religious traditions and proclaimed them as if they were a command of God. For example…

o You shouldn’t have playing cards in your house

o You shouldn’t go to movies

o Women shouldn’t wear makeup or jeans

o Men should not cut their beards

o Should only sing hymns in church

o Don’t have a TV in your house

o Don’t shop on Sundays

I know these things may seem almost laughable, but they were enforced by some Christian communities.

And maybe none of these things were practised within our own Churches, but there may be somethings we hold onto.

And these things can have the effect of pushing people away Unhealthy religious traditions can kill a church, a ministry, and drive people away from Jesus.

We can all at times if we are not careful be tempted to think our own attempts can attain righteousness. We may use religious tradition in an attempt to earn God’s favour.

Let’s not be like the girl who cut the ends of the ham, because it’s a custom in the family.

Mark is reminding us, and we must remember that our righteousness is in Christ alone.

It is through Christ we are redeemed no traditions should come before his gift to us.

We can rest in Him and know that we are saved by grace through faith in His finished work.

Amen

HYMN

508: Purify my Heart.

PRAYERS OF INTERCESSION

Thank you, Lord, for our communities. Thank you that you have set us where you want us to be. Thank you for those who support us. Thank you that you give us strength to help each other. Thank you that you can turn us inside out as we work together to make our communities the places you want them to be. Thank you for the strength to be doers and hearers of the word. Thank you that every perfect gift is from you. Amen.