The Pharisees were grumbling -- doesn't it seem like they were always grumbling? Of all the things they could be concerned about, they were upset that Jesus' disciples weren't washing their hands before they ate. As I read this passage over earlier in the week I could hear my mom asking me and my brother and sisters before a meal, "Did you wash your hands?" This was an appropriate question for parents trying to teach their children good hygiene. But, at first glance, a strange concern for a religious leader, don't you think? It wasn't like they were afraid that these guys would get their food all germy, they were concerned that the disciples were breaking one of their rules; one of the traditions of their elders.
It was a good way to take a pot-shot at Jesus. See, he couldn't possibly be who people say he is because either he doesn't know the rules of the game, or he chooses to ignore them. These religious powers that be were claiming that everyone had to follow human precepts in order to be acceptable to God. The Pharisees were preaching that, like computer programmers of today, "Garbage in, garbage out." Or, in the words of nutritionists, "You are what you eat." Jesus uses their rigid interpretation of these human rules to teach the crowd that "there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile" (Mark 7:15).
Then he recites a list of nasty sins that can come out of a person's heart and defile a person. Even if this is true, what goes into a person does not define what comes out of a person in terms of their behavior, I think it's still safe to say, we ought to hedge our bets and make certain that good things go into a person, so we can expect that good things are going to come out.
I'd be the last person to give anyone dietary advice; what foods are good, and will produce good health, and what foods are bad for you. A friend once said to me, pardon the expression, we shouldn't eat crap, and we all know what crap is. Likewise, we need to be careful about what we hear and see, what values we're exposed to, what values are crap, lest the wrong things come bursting out of our hearts.
Over the years I've belonged to a couple of different service organizations, primarily the Kiwanis Club and the Lions Club. Both of them have core values that they expect their members to live by.
Six permanent Objects of Kiwanis International were approved by Kiwanis club delegates at the 1924 Kiwanis International Convention in Denver, Colorado. Through the decades, they have remained unchanged.
- To give primacy to the human and spiritual rather than to the material values of life.
- To encourage the daily living of the golden rule in all human relationships.
- To promote the adoption and the application of higher social, business, and professional standards.
- To develop, by precept and example, a more intelligent, aggressive, and serviceable citizenship.
- To provide, through Kiwanis clubs, a practical means to form enduring friendships, to render altruistic service, and to build better communities.
- To cooperate in creating and maintaining that sound public opinion and high idealism which make possible the increase of righteousness, justice, patriotism, and goodwill.[1]
The Lions Club holds as its core values that of integrity, accountability, teamwork, and excellence.[2] Along with their motto, We Serve, these values become a part of every aspect of the club and all members are expected to adhere to them.
I must have learned the Boy Scout law when I was eleven or twelve years old. And I can still recite it pretty much word for word. In fact, I do not even have to look it up! A scout is loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. These, along with the Boy Scout slogan, "Do a good turn daily" do much to form the moral lives of young men.[3]
When I began working in a hospital some time ago I was encouraged to read all of the so-called positive thinking books. The idea was that there was nothing I couldn't accomplish if I kept a positive attitude. I learned to repeat over and over, positive affirmations. And I did... over and over and over. I suppose that was more helpful than repeating negative statements like, I'm too stupid, too slow, I'm too inexperienced. Over time I stopped using these affirmations. I'm not sure why, I just stopped thinking about them. However, I did begin to pick up some different ones that have become increasingly helpful and very much a part of my spiritual disciplines. These mantras are often verses of scripture, most often from one of the psalms.
One I turn to most often is from Psalm 51: "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me" (v. 10). Those words, repeated over and over, often put my mind and my heart back where they belong. In some way I believe this mantra helps to protect me from expressing negative or bad thoughts that I am exposed to day after day.
Lately I have become quite fond of a quote from Julian of Norwich, a very important Christian mystic. She is famously quoted as saying, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well." On days when I have lost my grip on hope I find myself repeating this mantra throughout the day and even falling asleep to the words. Because I hold those words to be true I am comfortable offering them to people going through difficult times.
Maybe it's my age (seems like I'm saying that more often these days), but I've been thinking about the years of child rearing gone by and the years of grandparenting in my future. I think about what values we tried to instill in our children, and what values we tried not to teach. An example of a bad value, in my mind, that I didn't want my kids to acquire, was that they were to win at any cost. Hopefully we don't see much of that in our schools, but in professional sports it's there all the time. Bonuses paid to players who injure an opposing team member are just one example. We sometimes see that "value" lived out in business (remember the movie Wall Street?). We often see that "value" expressed in politics... enough said.
A friend confided in me the other day that he lost his job due to corporate downsizing. He had gone through a long period of unemployment before landing this one and I thought he would be devastated to realize that he might have to walk through that desert again. While he was sad and a little scared he didn't seem as crushed as I had expected. I learned why a couple of days later when I spoke with his wife. She said that the core values of the company were the very antithesis of the values that their family lived by and that they were both relieved that the tension between the two value systems was over, even at the cost of his job.
Garbage in, garbage out. You are what you eat. Whatever value software is running in your heart will likely come out in your behavior. So what values do we want to have a place in our children's hearts, or, for that matter, in our own?
Let's just take one and look at how we can instill, or install that value in our young people.
Service to others. Every time we do some act of outreach through our church I am thrilled to see that you bring your children along. Yes, perhaps we're trying to remind our kids how fortunate they are, but on a much deeper level, we are teaching them that true meaning in life is found when we serve others and leave behind our me, me, me nature. Remember the Boy Scout slogan: Do a good turn daily. I've said it until I'm blue in the face that what we do here as a church is not about you, and it's not about me, it's about carrying on the mission of Christ and a big chunk of that is service to others.
Well, that's enough for now. I hope though, that we'll all give this a bit of thought today and this week. What values are we doing our best to instill in our kids and grandkids, and in ourselves, so that what comes out of our hearts is loyalty, helpfulness, faithfulness, kindness? You get the idea. No matter what we choose, let's always remember to choose wisely. Amen.
1. http://sites.kiwanis.org/Kiwanis/en/discover/ourvalues.aspx.
2. http://www.lionsclubs.org/EN/common/pdfs/lg414.pdf
3. http://usscouts.org/advance/boyscout/bsoathlaw.asp