The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for September 2, 2006

Texts: Micah 6:6-8/Mark 7:1-16

Title: “House Rules”

              Several years ago some of my buddies and I laid out a baseball diamond on an unclaimed section of a local city park.  The space we appropriated was not the most congenial to our purposes, for the park and recreation people had planted some small saplings in some very inconvenient spaces, and the ground had very poor drainage.  A summer rainstorm could suspend play for days.  We, however, were quite happy to make do with what we had.

              There are certain considerations that the facilities planner must take into account when he is laying out a new athletic facility; prominent among them are the ground rules. If you have attended a professional baseball game you may have noticed that the home plate umpire convenes a meeting of the respective team managers to go over the ground rules before the beginning of each game, pointing out the foul lines, peculiarities of a particular stadium that might impact play, and other such things.  As more and more teams play in domed stadiums a ruling on a ball hitting a portion of the roof must also be made.  Each stadium has composed a set of rules that facility manager’s hope will address every possible contingency.

              A few of us facilities planners took the issue of ground rules in hand soon after we measured and drew the base paths. Among the things we had to account for was a ball hitting one of the saplings that dotted the outfield. A rule had to be devised to cover balls and strikes.  We decided to let the hitter swing away until he hit the ball, or missed on three swings, a very rare occurrence.  We ruled that three foul balls constituted an out. Because we seldom could round up more than ten of us for any given game, we made a rule that pitcher’s hands were out.  If the fielder got the ball into the pitcher’s hands before the runner reached first base, the runner was out. Mind you, the rules we came up were never written down, but over time gained unanimous acceptance from all of us. The rules the five or six of us devised would live on as the next generation of boys built on to that foundation of rules and traditions we established.

              Rules are indispensable to our games, indispensable to the contracts we enter, indispensable to just about any activity in which you and I engage. Rules help lend predictability to life. They help us navigate through uncharted waters. We may neglect to follow the rules, but in doing so we had better be prepared to accept the consequences.               

               Our legal system, of course, is established on a body of rules.  We run our businesses and schools on a body of rules.  Rules written, and many unwritten, govern how we relate to one another in the workplace or in social settings.  Oh yes, the Bible provides a body of rules, the most established and well known, of course, being the Ten Commandments. We derive many, many rules for life from Jesus, his Sermon on the Mount and other teachings offering invaluable counsel to all who wish to live a fruitful life.

              There is another set of rules I would characterize as second tier.  In the book of Leviticus we have rules that governed just about every situation in which a Jew of the ancient world might find himself or herself.  Rules for personal hygiene are very prominent, but there are also rules governing commercial grievances between parties, rules for work, rules for leisure, and many, many rules regulating religious obligations. 

                If the Hebrew scriptures became a source book for how one should conduct oneself in the world, the people where pleased to pick up where scripture left off, adding to the body of rules in scripture with more rules, rules they believed to be consistent with those bearing scriptural authority.  Rules proliferated, the motivation supporting all that rule making supplied by hearts and minds intent on serving God with utter commitment and devotion.          

                Rules, even the best intentioned, can become counter productive. I think of a great aunt of mine, aunt Maysel.  Maysel valued a clean house, and when I say clean, I mean clean.  She enjoyed offering hospitality to the family, but there were certain rules to abide.  Visitors were expected to remove their shoes at the door before entering, this to prevent scuffs to her highly waxed linoleum.  It was an adventure for her older visitor to negotiate the house in stocking feet, the linoleum so slick that one hasty or ill-advised move could land a person on the floor. 

                Maysel had her rules, and aside from checking one’s shoes at the door, most of those rules were unspoken.  You just never dared to place a glass down on anything but a coaster.  You never used a towel without returning it to the bar in the same disposition that you found it.  You never arrived early, or stayed late.

                 The motivation behind Maysel’s rules was not to be faulted; she wanted to provide an inviting place for her friends and relatives to gather.  She failed to comprehend, however, that her rules consistently undermined her hospitality. The rules, in effect, took on a life of their own.

                 Some would argue that rules have taken on a life of their own in the Presbyterian Church.  Virtually every year new rules are added to our constitution, our book of church order steadily increasing in size. The genesis for most of those rules can be found in our inability to agree theologically.  Instead of working through our differences in debate and dialogue, we creature overtures to amend the constitution by adding additional rules to govern our conduct.  We find it more expedient to resort to the church constitution with rules in arbitrating our differences than to appeal to God’s word.

                 There is a precedent, of course, for the way we do things that leads us into our morning’s gospel lesson.  The controversy addressed there is one that arose time and time again between those who commanded religious authority in first century Judaism and our Lord Jesus. In virtually every circumstance where “Pharisees and scribes” enter the picture we see conflict arise.  Jesus, the uncredentialed itinerant preacher, “who does he think he is” became crosswise with the fully credentialed, fully vested, religious leaders. 

                 Wash your hands before eating.  Not bad advice, however, there are many, many occasions, when we ignore than matter of hygiene and go about our business.  It appears that Jesus’ disciples went about their business without a visit to the wash basin, and this fact disturbed the good folks, the Pharisees and scribes come down from Jerusalem. The disciples broke the rules, failing to “observe the tradition of the elders.”  The tradition of the elders loomed large for the Pharisees and scribes, and they meticulously followed those traditions.

                 Raised in the tradition, an observant Jew, Jesus really didn’t fault the tradition per se.  He didn’t object to the Pharisees and scribes washing their hands, washing their utensils and pots and pans in the manner tradition prescribed.  None of that stuff really registered with him as good or bad.  What did register, however, was the willingness of the Pharisees and scribes to allow tradition to supersede the most basic allegiance they owed to God. In sum, Jesus accused his critics of “majoring in the minors.” 

                  The storm has given this church a rare opportunity to sort out the majors from the minors.  We have been shorn of our traditions as represented in such things as air conditioning, pews, pulpit, good lighting, and a comfortable meeting space for fellowship.  The rules that governed dress in this space have been set aside.  Services are in a word, more “casual” than tradition would otherwise dictate they be. In a traditional service we could expect one hundred and thirty or forty at worship, with at least a dozen children in attendance.  Tradition has been set aside in that domain as well. 

                  Tradition, many of those things that made the worship experience here what it was, have been washed away.  Rules have been suspended, and we have been challenged to adapt.

                  Adaptation was not a word the tradition laden Jew would have understood, and Jesus represented, if anything, adaptation.  He challenged the rules and traditions of the Jewish elders, issuing this stinging indictment, “You have abandoned the commandment of God in favor of your own rules and traditions.” 

                   There is something to be said for owing no obligation to anything except our own rules and traditions. How easy it is to show up well when we define what “well” means. As authorities on the rules and traditions that governed the Jewish religious life the Pharisees and scribes had nothing to fear from the sanctions the rules and traditions imposed. When you run the game you needn’t worry about outcomes.

                    House rules were maintained by the Pharisees.  I have never been into gaming.  I have never visited Las Vegas.  I do know, however, that the house never loses money. Certain players may win some money, but at the end of the day the house always comes out on top. The house sets the rules.

                   There was a time in America when racism consigned the African American to a second class citizenship.  Deprived of property and voting rights, and the basic freedoms guaranteed under the Constitution, the house rules of the day kept the black man’s progress in check.  Tradition played to the white man’s strength.

                  Tradition played to the Pharisees’ strength.  They were, to use the Apostle Paul’s terminology, “justified under the law.”  Their adherence to the law, to their minds at least, equated to righteousness. So long as they presided over the rules of the house, who stood to contradict them?  There was one, wasn’t there?

                   Jesus challenged those champions of tradition and rules to adapt, adaptation not requiring accepting a new set of rules and tradition, but rather a reappropriation of what already existed within the tradition. Jesus advocated for the house rules that God set, rules that the Pharisee had set aside. Anticipating that the Pharisee might not comprehend the point he was attempting to make, he gave a little example.  “Moses said, ‘Honor your father and mother; and, whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ But you say that if anyone tells father or mother , ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban (that is, an offering to God)—then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, thus making void the word of God through your tradition [the house rules] that you have handed on.  And [and] you do many things like this.”

                  What are the rules of the house?  When my buddies and I lined out our ball field we preserved a certain amount of liberty in deciding what rules would apply, however, we were accountable to another set of rules more basic.  If we presumed to play a game recognizable to any bystander as baseball we were accountable to the basic rules of the game. We had latitude to improvise with some rules of our own, but only within certain limits.

Humanity has done a good bit of improvising on the rules of the game.  We want rules that show us off in the most favorable light. Disdaining the offerings the people were bringing to God, the prophet Micah stated, in so many words, “Sorry, you don’t make the rules.”  “What does the Lord require?” Micah asked.  He didn’t wait for an answer.  “What does the Lord require, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”           

                  God’s house---God’s rules. Such a simple formula, but so difficult for us to accept, so difficult that Jesus Christ was the only one who could really pull it off.  Yet even as we struggle with God’s rules, attempting to prove to ourselves and others that we can be righteous by other means, Jesus does not abandon us.

No, there are no shortcuts along the road to spiritual health, only a God who through Christ beckons us to see the extraordinary possibilities that exist for those who live by God’s rules. We are not there yet, but if today we can be honest with God in one aspect of our lives where we have been dishonest, be assured we will make progress in our life under God.

PRAYER

                  Of eternal things we know but what thou, O God, has taught us. Yet what we have learned is sufficient to keep us searching to know more. As students we have come, the Bible our textbook, the confessions, the communion, the prayers, the hymns of the church, the supporting pieces of the curriculum. Increase, O Lord, our capacity to comprehend that which you place before us today, that in comprehending we may expand our capacity to believe, and believing to faithfully serve.

                  Deliver us from all those things that occupy our time but yield little in return. Forgive those dispositions of the mind and habits of the heart that make us incapable of accepting the truths you would have us to see. Forgive the stubborn, know-it-all attitude we effect when confronting opinions with which we disagree. Forgive us for using Holy Scripture to defend positions already taken, rather than submitting to its counsel. Forgive our willingness to let our prejudices rule our conduct. Forgive our willingness to spread rumors and innuendo.  Forgive us when we smile on the misfortune of others.  Forgive our arrogance in dismissing others as inferior to ours. Forgive us for our failure to speak out when others are maligned or slandered. Forgive us, we pray, for the unworthy thoughts that linger on our minds, the jealousies and pettiness that pervert and demean us. Forgive us the piety that places self rather than God at the center.

                 O master of this house, you make the rules but instead we subscribe to other rules, rules of our own devising.  We judge others as derelict, smugly claiming that our actions are above reproach.  Keenly aware of injustice perpetrated on us, we turn a blind eye to the plight of others.  O God, we would align ourselves with you, ignoring the fact that you have aligned yourself with those we have chosen to ignore. We reverently speak your name, but do little to honor it in matters that count.  We can recite the commandments but we are incapable of doing what the commandments require.  In your mercy forgive and heal us.

                Our opponents in Iraq, O God, are being characterized as the Nazis and Communists of this century, the battle in which we are engaged in that land characterized as being as formidable as this nation has faced since the Second World War. O God, grant us wisdom to see reality for what it is, if indeed we face a watershed moment in history steel us with resolve, and if our analysis is incorrect grant us courage to admit our mistakes and chart another course. Even as the war is debated, be with our service men and women who serve in hostile lands, and the innocent of those lands who are preyed upon by the terrorist and murderer.  Be with those who seek to unite nations, peacemakers who have committed their talents to the work of reconciliation.

                 A weekend to celebrate our attainments in the work place, we thank you Lord for our creative abilities, and the will and determination we summon to our efforts.  Be with all women and men in the work force that each may draw satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment from what they do. Be with those who employ and manage the workforce that they may responsibly and fairly treat those under their supervision.

                We gather, O God, around the table to remember Christ’s gift of life.  Suffering death for the sins of the world, Christ covenanted to be with us in the breaking of bread, and so we recognize his presence with us at the table, assured of his abiding grace onto the end of the age. In the assurance that you are with us always, a light to guide, a brother to share our journey, we offer these our prayers in your blessed name.  AMEN.