Pentecost 14

Pentecost 14 (Mark 7:1-23) “For from within….”

Moses and the Prophets are very clear. The Law has no power to save.

The Apostle Paul clarifies that the Law is holy and good. It is in fact so holy and so good it can only reveal to us our own separation from God and rebellion against God. It can only help us understand that we need a savior.

Jesus, and only Jesus, can fulfill the Law. Because only Jesus can fulfill the Law only Jesus can save us from the condemnation embedded in the Law. The condemnation emerges in the function of the Law to serve as a perfect mirror to the soul. The holiness of the Law reveals to us our own willful rejection of the law.

No one in Jesus’ day believed this. Everyone believed that God gave the Law through Moses so that people could exercise their free will to earn God’s favor and avoid God’s wrath. They taught that right behavior plus right belief produced a spiritual state of righteousness that God was obligated to reward.

Of course, once you buy into this belief system you need to know exactly what the right behaviors and right beliefs are. And, therein lies the problem. No one then and no one since then have ever been able to agree on the right lists of beliefs and behaviors. People then and now are left with a Gordian Knot of religious, non-religious and anti-religious teachings that are mutually exclusive and mutually hostile.

The great problem in the ancient world as in our world is how do we know and what must we do?

The various sects within ancient Judaism developed a detailed and complex set of lists. Those lists, unlike the Law of Moses, attempted to define every aspect of our daily lives. These lists spiritualized the mundane and made even simple ordinary acts like washing your hands a matter of supreme importance, a test of loyalty, and a condition for salvation. Jesus fulfilled the Law of  Moses but he frequently ignored the religious, cultural and political lists of belief and behavior that the religious elites of his time called the sacred tradition.

Jesus pointed out that the commentaries on the scriptures had taken the place of the scriptures. Jesus taught that human created traditions are not necessarily bad unless they take the place of a personal transforming relationship with God.

Of course, by and large people did not listen to what Jesus was saying. In their pride they could not accept a different understanding of righteousness. In their will to power they refused to change their beliefs and behaviors. In their fear they decided Jesus was a false prophet, an agent of Satan, who had come to lead people away from the Law and into rebellion against God.

Jesus understood all of this. Jesus knew the source of these fear based accusations and slanders. The source is separation from God. That separation lies at the core of the human soul. Jesus revealed to all who would listen to him that sin is a result of separation. The solution to separation is reunification.  More law cannot accomplish this. Less Law cannot accomplish this. People then and now were trapped in a false belief that it is up to us to earn God’s favor through righteous acts and righteous deeds.

When Jesus taught that God is love the people were confused. When Jesus invoked the message of the prophets that our relationship to God is similar to a marriage the people were scandalized. When Jesus defined grace as universal unconditional love people would not and could not hear him. It made no sense to them. They all knew that God demanded unquestioning belief and unconditional submission to the Law as administered by the religious courts and enforced by the religious police.

Jesus reminded them, as he reminds us, that who we are, what we are becoming and where we are going proceeds from within the depths of own souls. Jesus clarifies the choice before us: choose reunification with the Father through the Son. Choose inner transformation of the soul by the real presence of the Holy Spirit. Or, choose to remain separate. You can remain separate in list based religion. You can remain separate in self-indulgent entitlement secularism.

Jesus is the unification of humanity and divinity, Salvation is an organic union. Salvation first touches the depth of the soul and then slowly and meticulously works its way outward to change our perceptions, our beliefs and our behaviors.

If you start with the Law you will fail. You will fail to earn salvation. You will fail to change your innermost nature.

If you start with Jesus you will succeed. You will receive salvation as a gift of universal unconditional love. You will begin to grow in grace from the inside out. One day in that process you will wake up and no longer desire that sin of belief or behavior you held onto so tightly. The Holy Spirit will have given you a new desire. He will have given you a vision of how a particular sin is merely a distorted and diminished version of a pure and perfect virtue. He will help you to delight in the way of right relationship that eventually changes our desires and transforms particular sin into original virtue.

A list based righteousness perpetuates pride, self-will and fear. A list based righteousness maintains separation. A list based righteous kills.

A Jesus based righteousness gives new life. A Jesus based righteousness is a new and personal relationship with universal unconditional love. A Jesus based right relationship gradually and incrementally changes our desires so we can delight in the beauty of holiness the law invites us to experience in Jesus Christ. In Jesus, you lose nothing. In Jesus you gain everything.