“God Still Loves a Cranky Teenager”

“God Still Loves a Cranky Teenager”
Mark 7:1-8, 14-23
August 30, 2009 – Proper 17
First United Church – Sermon by Micaela Wood

When I first went away to college, I took one of those “freshman seminar” kinds of classes. I think this one was on leadership development. One of the things we did that first semester was take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. I’m sure many of you have probably heard of it. This assessment tool helps you figure out what your personality is like. You may discover that you are an introvert – that you feel more energized when you are alone – or, if you’re at the other end of the spectrum, you’re an extravert – someone who gets their energy from being around other people.

When you take the test, you end up with a four-letter result that tells you about your personality. I had taken the test several times before, in high school, so I wasn’t too surprised to find out that I was an ENTJ. If you don’t know what those letters mean, don’t worry – you’ll still be able to follow the story.

Fast forward a couple of years and I’m preparing to graduate from college. I’m in the process of beginning to discern my call to ministry and I am required to complete a psychological assessment. Part of the program is completing the Myers-Briggs test again. I go about it in a ho hum kind of way, assuming I’ll be an ENTJ, just like I always have been.

Imagine my surprise when I discover I am no longer an ENTJ, but an INFJ! My personality type has somehow changed. I don’t feel like a different person. I don’t think I’m acting all that different than I always have, but the test says I am fundamentally changed.

My immediate reaction is one of pride. Although I hadn’t intentionally set out to become a different person during college, there is a part of me that suddenly realizes that was always in the back of my mind. College is a time for self-discovery. A time where you try new things and attempt to discover who you will be for the rest of your life.

College – and young adulthood in general – is about naming yourself. It’s about deciding who you will be and communicating that to the rest of the world.

There is nothing earth shattering about any of this, of course. We know that the process of growing up is about differentiation – that process by which we become our own person. We go through fits and starts as we try to sort this all out. Can you remember a time in your teenage years where you angrily thought (or maybe even yelled!), “I don’t want to be just like you!” to your parents?

Or maybe you have watched your own children go through this process. One moment they are cuddling you on the couch and the next they don’t want anything to do with you. They are off and into the world, trying to claim for themselves who they will become.

This is a painful process, right? It’s painful for everyone involved. In the process of naming ourselves, we often hurt those we love the most. And sometimes we hurt ourselves, too. Desperate to start on a new, self-defined journey, we often run too far away from the places and people who gave us life.

Sometimes we sever ties that can never be reconnected.

Differentiation – the ways that we claim ourselves as unique creatures and name ourselves – is something we all go through. Sometimes it’s graceful and sometimes it’s ugly.

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This morning, we have a front-and-center seat to a process of differentiation that has deeply affected all of us.

In the Gospel of Mark, we hear a story about “the tradition of the elders” – that is how this morning’s passage is titled in the NRSV. In this story, we see Jesus arguing with the Pharisees about whether or not you need to wash your hands before you eat a meal.

Now, on the surface, this looks like a pointless argument. After all, when we discovered germs about a hundred years ago, any real arguments about whether not you should wash your hands before you eat were pretty much shut down. Washing your hands is a good thing.

Of course, most arguments aren’t really about what they appear to be about on the surface.

Before becoming a pastor, I worked for several years in university residence halls. After sitting through about a million and one roommate mediation meetings, I can tell you that arguments that started like this – “She’s always borrowing my jeans without asking!” – were almost never about the jeans.

And so it is with Jesus’ argument with the Pharisees. There is a much deeper issue at hand here and it has to do with differentiation.

On the surface, Jesus is arguing about purity laws. The Pharisees were a group of religious leaders in the Jewish community who advocated for the renewal of Jewish commitment to the Law.
They encouraged people to follow two kinds of laws – those that were written down and those that were passed on by oral tradition. Oral laws were no less important than those that were written in the Torah.

Our gospel writers portray Jesus as someone who was constantly fighting with the Pharisees. Many scholars today, including many Jewish scholars, think this was highly unlikely because Jesus’s teachings have so many similarities to those of the Pharisees.

We know that Mark’s gospel is our earliest gospel, but it was still written about a generation after Jesus lived. What we have in today’s passage is most likely not an argument that Jesus actually had with the Pharisees.

One of the ways we know this is because other Jewish writings from the time of Jesus’s life do not indicate that laypeople were required to wash their hands. Priests were expected to stay more ritually pure than everyday people, so they were to wash their hands, but laypeople like Jesus and his disciples were exempt.

If handwashing for laypeople was a non-issue when Jesus was alive, how on earth did this story get into the Bible?

This is where the deeper meaning comes in. The reason this story is in the Bible is because it’s about an argument happening within Mark’s own community. We’re not sure where Mark wrote his gospel, but because he has to explain aspects of Jewish law, we’re fairly certain it was written to a group of Gentile Christians.

During the time that Mark was writing, the differentiation between Christians and Jews was not nearly as distinct as it is today. The history of differentiation between the two is one that unfolded over many years.

It’s not a pretty story. It’s a story of lots of deep arguments, like the one we see here.

And, in the end, two groups of people who worship the same God ended up parting ways permanently – claiming allegiance to two separate religions and, in many instances, warring against each other.

When we see anti-Jewish language in our Christian Scriptures – when we see Jesus calling the scribes and Pharisees “hypocrites” – what we are really seeing are the birthing pangs of our own religion.
We are seeing a teenage girl screaming at her mother and slamming the door to her bedroom. We are watching a young man go away to college and refuse to come home for Christmas.

It’s not pretty. But it’s our own history, so we have to find a way to look at it and claim it as our own.

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Our Jewish and Christian sisters and brothers living in the first century of the common era were living in desperate times. Under the rule of the Roman Empire, they were unable to practice their faith openly. Around the time that Mark wrote, the entire capital city of Jerusalem was completely destroyed. Wiped out. It was a time of great fear.

One of the things we do when we are scared is try to buckle down and create boundaries.

Boundaries have a way of keeping us safe – or at least making us feel safer.

Jewish identity markers, like the purity laws and dietary laws, were one way of helping Jews feel safe in the midst of the Roman Empire. By naming themselves, claiming their own identity, they could isolate themselves just a bit from the larger culture and pass down their values and heritage to their children.

As more and more Gentiles – that is, non-Jews – joined the movement to follow Jesus within Judaism, conflicts arose over the nature of this new group of Christ-followers.

What initially began as a group of Jewish people following the Way of Christ was becoming less-and-less Jewish. Arguments sprung up about whether or not Gentiles needed to become Jewish – did they need to be circumcised? What about following the dietary laws?

It is into this context, that the writer of Mark tries to speak.

For Mark, this story settles it once and for all. He says that Jesus declares that all foods are clean. Interestingly, Matthew’s version of this story doesn’t have that particular line. But Mark is clear – the battle is over – Gentile Christians have won and all of those silly Jewish customs don’t matter anymore.

But of course, the argument wasn’t over at all. This was just the beginning of Christianity’s young adulthood.
As early Christians sought to name themselves and differentiate, they usually did a terrible job of it. In seeking to define themselves, they almost always did so by defining themselves over and against the Jewish people.

Christianity – a religion started by Jewish people who wanted to follow in the ways of a Jew from Galilee – became more and more defined by being nothing like Judaism.

I know, I know – it doesn’t seem to make any sense. But it’s not all that different than an 18 year old registering to vote and deciding he’s going to register as a Republican because his parents were both Democrats. Or the 20 year old daughter of staunch pacifists who decides to register for the Army because she’s sick and tired of everyone assuming she’s a pacifist like her parents.

We do some crazy things when we’re trying to name ourselves. Trapped and flailing, we often don’t know how to put into words who it is we are or want to become. Sometimes the only words that come out of our mouths are, “Well, I’m not sure how I feel about that issue, but I know that I don’t agree with so-and-so.”

Or how about this one? “Yes, I’m a Christian, but I’m not like all those other Christians. I don’t hate gays and I don’t believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God and I don’t think everyone who isn’t Christian is going to hell and I don’t….”

I don’t.

I’m not like those other people. I’m different. Look at me. See me!

Who am I? Well, I’m not sure yet, but I know I’m not like them.

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Naming ourselves is hard work. When we’re first starting out, we get it wrong about as often as we get it right.

Like the early Christians, we often try to differentiate by defining ourselves against other groups of people. In the end, we end up running so far away from home that we often can’t find our way back.

It hurts and it’s no fun to watch.

Which leaves me wondering – of course – if there is a better way.
I sure hope so. I definitely don’t think I have all the answers on how to get there….but I do have one idea that might help us.

What if we begin by noticing all the ways we define ourselves as “not like that”?

When we say, “I’m not some bleeding-heart liberal who thinks that socializing our healthcare system in the solution.”

When we say, “I’m not like all those crazy conservatives who think Obama is trying to kill granny and take away her medicare.”

When we hear ourselves saying, “The great thing about Jesus is that he came to free us from the Law. So now we don’t have to be like those Pharisees who follow every tiny rule – we can just believe in Jesus and be saved through grace.”

When someone asks us what our church is like and we say, “Well, it’s not closed-minded like a lot of other churches.”
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I’m pretty sure that if I start to notice the ways I define myself as “not like that” I’ll notice that I do it more than I’d like.

And then I’ll run into a problem…if I’m not going to define myself as what I’m NOT, I’m going to have to figure out what I am.

That’s a scary idea. And it’s going to take some definite work.

But here’s the good news – we don’t have to go it alone. God rejoices in journeying with us.
The God who created us all to be different types of creatures – who told Adam to name the great diversity within creation – that God goes with us as we journey towards naming ourselves.

We are created in God’s image – and we are emboldened to name ourselves by claiming our own connection to God.

God lures us out of our safety zone, daring us to find ways to differentiate without harming others. When we are tempted to take the easy way out and say, “I’m not like this or that” God goes before us, setting a model of who we can really be and whispering words of encouragement as we struggle to say our names aloud.