What Defiles? Devotional

February 16, 2020

Devotional

“What Defiles?”

Mark 7: 1-23

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Monday: “Defiled Hands” - Mark 7: 1-5

  Jesus in a conversation between his disciples and the religious leaders of the day. The topic before them - cleanliness. In ancient times, religious leaders had two things that they held in balance. The first was the written word of Scripture. In order to be a religious leader, you had to go through years of studying the Scriptures. But they also had the oral tradition. For quite a length of time, the Scripture wasn’t written down like it is today, and certainly folks didn’t have Scripture lying around their homes, like we do today. Instead, you got to know the word of God as it was handed down - hearing the stories of the faith about Noah, Abraham, Moses and so many others in homes and around campfires. It was how faith was taught - not by reading but by hearing. 

  Something that emerged through holding oral tradition and written Scripture together was a tradition - practical applications of what had been taught. We see a great example of this in today’s scripture lesson  - as the religious leaders were talking about throughly washing hands before eating, washing food items from the market before you eat them, and washing the things you eat from and with. How this probably emerged was from the scripture around ritual cleaning, which often existed to prevent the spread of disease, and traditions emerged to help keep people clean around things like food. 

Often the religious leaders get a bad rap for forming traditions, but we’ve done it as well. Traditions often are reflections of what we value as congregations and individuals. 

What are some traditions you have? Where did they come from? Why are they important to you?

Prayer: God, we confess that sometimes we honor traditions more than the movement of your Spirit. Tune our hearts, O God, to follow wherever you may be leading, even if it means we need to leave behind that which is familiar to us. Amen. 

Tuesday: “Hearts are Far” - Mark 7: 6-8

Jesus’s problem today is not with tradition itself. The problem emerges when we forget a.) where our traditions come from and b.) try to make traditions as important as scripture. 

  One of the questions I ask the most when arriving at a new church is “why?” Why can be very informative because it helps me understand what each church does for special services, but it also gets to the root of why we do the things we do. What our traditions are and what they mean to us. 

Jesus skips right past the why question with the religious leaders, but I think the intent is the same. He wants them to think through why they have so many traditions around washing and cleanliness. But he also wants to point out a much deeper heart issue in their life - they have made the tradition as important as the Scripture. They focused so much on the rules around how to do something, they had forgotten the why.

How do we sometimes put traditions above Scripture?

Prayer: Lord, help us to examine our hearts and see where we have put our own preferences above your Word. Help us to examine our hearts and see the ways we may be far from you, we pray. Amen. 

Wednesday: “Commandments vs. Traditions” - Mark 7: 9-13

This scripture passage is found right between two massive feeding events that happen in the Gospel of Mark - on the one side the feeding of the 5,000 and on the other the feeding of the 4,000. Who you ate with really mattered in ancient culture, and we can assume that the religious leaders aren’t happy. So they are trying to catch the disciples slipping up so they can start to get the disciples (and Jesus) to act the way they want them to act. But Jesus sees right through that and calls they hypocrites - actors or pretenders, those who are going through the motions but have forgotten the intention.

I believe that most traditions grow out of good intentions. It’s a human expression of an important value. But we cannot let our human traditions become more important to us then God! Sometimes our social customs become barriers to God’s intentions and then we have a real problem. In the Church world I call this the issue of “we’ve always done it that way.” Powerful words that we sometimes use as a barrier when God is calling us to do something new or we don’t particularly want to live into the Word of God. It becomes a lot easier to fall back on tradition then to ask the hard questions about why we have the tradition in the first place and if our tradition still honors God the best way we know how. 

In what ways do we sometimes go through the motions while forgetting the intention behind what we are doing?

Prayer: Almighty God, help us to recognize why we do what we do. Help us to see beyond our actions to the heart that sustains them. Open our eyes we pray. Amen. 

Thursday: “Listen to Me” - Mark 7: 14-16

Jesus is taking this idea of clean and unclean and uses to it to teach those around him that it isn’t what’s outside that can make us unclean so much as what is inside - our heart and our intentions. He is essentially asking is your heart more focused on keeping the status quo or honoring God, because sometimes you can’t do both. 

  The same question can be asked of us - are we more focused on not changing and keeping our traditions or honoring God? Sometimes there are wonderful moments when we can do both, but sometimes God is calling us to set our traditions aside in order to live into the mission of the Kingdom of God in our current context. Is the intention of our heart to truly follow God wherever God is leading? Or are we so caught up in the way that we do things, that we are missing the very presence of God?

How do you respond when God calls you to do something uncomfortable?

Prayer: God of Grace, thank you for calling us beyond our comfort zones to the places you want your Word to spread. Give us obedience - both in heart and in action - to follow your will and your way, we pray. Amen. 

Friday: “Comes Out” - Mark 7: 17-23

  Traditions can be good things. But when we pour more time and energy into keeping our traditions than spreading the Word of God we are missing the point. When more of our resources go into maintaining the way we like things than listening to to the voice of God, we miss the point. When it is more about the way we’ve always done things then honoring God, right here and now, we are missing the point. Let us be known as people who the follows the Spirit and listens to God’s promptings. Let us be known, above, all as people who honor God.

How do we honor God with what comes out of our hearts?

Prayer: God, free us to be people who honor you - not just through appearances but deep within. Transform those areas where we are far from you and tune our hearts to sing your song of praise. Amen. 

Saturday: Preparing for the Word

You are invited to read and pray this week’s text and topic to prepare for worship: “Transfiguration - Mark 8: 27-9:8”