[Propertalk] Sermon quotes for August 30 - Mark 7 - Part 4

[Joe Parrish]

Gregory Peck, not long before he died, said that if you're going to play the part of the devil you have to look for the angel in him, and if you're going to play an angel you have to look for the devil in him -- a kind of actor's "hermeneutic of charity." 
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There is a self-righteousness in me that does not want to die. There is something inside me that is not bothered when others are excluded, that wants others to be excluded, that feels more special when I'm on the inside and somebody else is not.  
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We will look for substitute ways of distinguishing ourselves from those on the outside. The boundary markers change from century to century, but they all reinforce a false sense of superiority, fed by the intent to exclude others.

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2898

John Ortberg, 2003
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The phrase "hardness of heart" is used not only for God's people's enemies, like Pharaoh in Egypt, but also for God's people, Israel. In the New Testament it describes not only the scribes and Pharisees but also the disciples (Mark 6:52). A hardhearted person is self-centered, impervious to spiritual things, resistant or closed off to God and what God wants to do in that person's life. 
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Mary Ann Tolbert says in Sowing the Gospel, "if the heart is God's ground, nothing else is required; and if the heart is not God's ground, nothing else will suffice." 

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1983

Heidi Husted, 2000 
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Ironically, even as the Christian church was suffering brutal persecution at the hands of the Roman Empire and evolving to become the religion of that empire, Christianity was creating forms of ritualistic legalism that were as out of phase with the teachings of Jesus as the legalisms of the Pharisees and scribes.

It would be hard to deny that historically, the majority of Christians have advocated ethics closer to those of the ancient catholic church and the Pharisees than to those of Jesus. 
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Given that we are rich when the world is poor, that we cling to our nuclear arms as if world extermination were a noble risk, destroy ancient forests, gouge the landscape, pollute the soil, water and air, that we copulate and abort with unrestrained abandon -- how then are we to interpret Jesus' words, "It is what comes out of a person that defiles," so as to come up smelling like roses?

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=659

Ronald Goetz, 1997
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 "No outcasts," writes Garry Wills in What Jesus Meant, "were cast out far enough in Jesus' world to make him shun them-not Roman collaborators, not lepers, not prostitutes, not the crazed, not the possessed. Are there people now who could possibly be outside his encompassing love?" In a tragic irony, of course, some Christians have considered Jews accursed, not to mention gays. I've found it a humbling exercise to ask what categories of "outcasts" do I sanctimoniously spurn as impure, unclean, dirty, contaminated, and, in my mind, far from God. The mentally ill, people who have married three or four times, wealthy executives, welfare recipients, people who hold conservative political opinions, or maybe people with AIDS? How have I distorted the self-sacrificing, egalitarian love of God into self-serving, exclusionary elitism? What boundaries do I wrongly build or might I bravely shatter?

http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20060828JJ.shtml

Dan Clendenin, 2006
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The precise difference between Jesus and the Pharisees was that they looked at the external activity whereas Jesus looked at the heart, the source of activity. They looked to the fulfillment of law and tradition while he looked to love and commitment. They looked at the letter of the law while he looked at it's spirit.

         We can also find the same tendency in our selves. If we are honest enough to look into our hearts we will discover elements of the childishness of Ahab and the rootlessness of his wife Jezebel as we subtly make events work out for our own benefit. We can find people who are very careful about their devotions and have no problem in treating their maids worse than their pets. Where are those who will travel hundreds of kilometers to see a dancing sun but who make very little effort to live the words of the gospels in their lives.

http://www.bible.claret.org/liturgy/daily/sundays_pierse/cycleB/B_22ndSunOT.htm
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Their question about why Jesus and his disciples do not  observe the practice of washing their hands is, therefore, fairly straightforward. It is, in fact, Jesus who puts the cat among the pigeons by calling them hypocrites and quoting Isaiah's condemnation of those who honour God only with lip-service - seeming to denounce them and their religious practices.

http://www.wellsprings.org.uk/weekly_wellsprings/year_b/sunday_22.htm

Catherine McElhinney and Kathryn Turner, 2006
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I don't know where the expression 'cleanliness is next to godliness' comes from, but some significant godliness I've experienced out in life's margins has been in the person of people none too clean in soap & water terms. 'The Great Unwashed'! Not the kind of person we want sitting near us in the pews! But maybe just the one to rescue us in some hour of need out there somewhere. I doubt any of us would want Jesus on his way to Golgotha reeking of his own sweat & blood, or hanging up there on the cross without deodorant, aftershave, or even fly-spray, too close to us either. 

http://www.angelfire.com/journal2/marginallymark/MMK7123P12.html

Brian McGowan, Anglican priest in Western Australia.
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We can eat with family and friends. But, what would we do to prepare to eat a meal with God? This simple question cut to the heart of one's relationship with God. Do we prepare by removing ourselves from the dirt of the world? Or do we prepare ourselves by removing the dirt of the heart? 

http://www.word-sunday.com/Files/b/22-b/A-22-b.html

Larry Broding 
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Why is it, when the heart is not renewed, that a religious person often becomes consumed by their religiosity? 

http://www.lectionarystudies.com/studyg/sunday22bg.html

Bryan Findlayson
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