September 3

Psalm 15, James 1:17-27, Mark 7:1-23

This week is unusual in that all three of these readings speak to similar themes. The Psalm was probably part of an entrance ritual during some worship event at the Temple. It seems to set forth requirements for entry into the holy space for worship. What is particularly striking about this list is how different it is from the list that evolved to be followed during Jesus' time. Then the requirements for entry to worship at the Temple or a synogogue involved following the "purity code." We're probably most familiar with the kosher food laws as reflections of this code, but it was much more extensive than that. These are the laws that kept eunuchs, lepers, non-Jews, the mentally ill, menstruating women and others away from worship for fear of contaminating others. These restrictions were almost always based on something physical.
This Psalm, however, indicates that the requirements for joining the worshipping community had more to do with the way one lives one's life outside the Temple rather than anything to do with the body's physical nature. To paraphrase MLK, Jr., it's about the content of the character rather than the color (or health) of the skin.
This Psalm reminded me of a practice in John Calvin's Geneva, where "fencing the table" was standard for Holy Communion. What that meant is that before someone could come to church to receive the sacrament, they had to be examined by elders of the church as to how they had been living their lives since the last time Holy Communion had been taken. Approaching the table depended on the faithful quality of their lives. A practice we have since changed, for good reasons.
This Psalm connects, then, with Jesus' long discussion about purity with the Pharisees and scribes and his own disciples. A nice summary of Jesus' interaction with the purity code can be found in Marcus Borg's little book Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time. The general summary is that Jesus again and again defied the purity code by whom he healed, with whom he ate and spoke and in his teachings. Here he takes on the notion that one can be pure (read faithful, Godly, righteous) by eating the right things. While kosher food laws may make a good deal of nutritional sense (and the washing of hands a good health practice), Jesus says it does not make one a righteous or good or faithful person. It's the same with other ritual observances that were created by human tradition, not commanded by God. It's not what we eat or how we worship that separates us from God, but what comes out of us in word and deed.
The James reading continues this same theme, with the kind of frank directness that is indicative of this treatise (not really a letter, though it seems to begin like one. More a manual for Christian life). Martin Luther hated James because he thought it could lead people to think that you can earn your way to heaven by your actions on earth. That's what he thought the Catholic Church was urging people to do by buying indulgences or masses, etc. One could read James that way, but one could also see James as continuing Jesus' insistence that true faithfulness has to do with how you live in the world, not just with what you say, in worship or elsewhere. His summation in verse 27 that pure religion is not about worship or ritual practice at all, but caring for the "widows and orphans" (shorthand for those with the least power, possessions and respect in his world) and not taking on the values of the world in how one lives one's daily life seems to reflect what both Jesus and the Psalmist had in mind.

More tomorrow. And from you? shelly