Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
September 3, 2006
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Preached at Kingston Road United Church
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Good morning!
It is good to be here as Minister of Word, Sacrament, and Pastoral Care at the Kingston Road United Church community. I am grateful to be here and am looking forward to journeying with you for many meaningful years to come.
Let us pray.
“Loving God, let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight. Amen.”
Rules, etiquettes, manners, …
Rules, rules, rules...
My brothers and my Mom had to learn how to use a knife and fork from my Dad before we came to Canada. My Dad felt that we would need to learn the table manners of Canadians before we came to Canada. We grew up using a spoon and chop sticks for meals. I still maintain that food tastes more delicious when I use chop sticks.
My Dad studied in the US in the early 1950s and knew the ways of Americans. Being a detailed person, he not only taught us how to use a knife and fork but how to use all the knives and forks and spoons and dishes in a banquet setting. We learned that we were to pick up utensils from the outside in. He also set all the glasses and dishes the way they were set at a British royal banquet and showed us where the wine glass was in relation to the water glass. He even drew pictures of the banquet setting and tested us to make sure that we knew proper etiquette before we came to Canada. I remember thinking out loud that if it is so complicated to eat, I would end up very thin. Well, look at me now.
During one of the gruelling table manner sessions, my Dad told us of a faux pas around the table when Mahatma Ghandi visited England. Ghandi was invited by Queen Victoria to a royal dinner. It was one of those grand occasions where the cream of the British society was invited to dine with Ghandi. During the dinner when Ghandi saw a bowl of water in front of him, he picked it up and drank the water in it. There was a stunned silence around the table. Queen Victoria, being a gracious host, picked up her finger bowl and drank the water. The guests around table, then, also picked up their finger bowl and followed the queen. What could have been a major embarrassment for Ghandi and everyone else around the table was avoided by Queen Victoria’s hospitality and quick wit.
My Dad told us that etiquette is important when we socialise with people in Canada; however, he reminded us to be generous and not to embarrass people if they make mistakes around the table. I learned from my Dad that etiquette is important in social functions but the most important thing is the “Spirit of Generosity” when engaging with people.
My family arrived in Toronto on August 29, 1975. We came here full of excitement and hopes in starting a new life in the Great White North – a land of Maple trees and huge cars. Our family was severely tested on being family and being human once we began to encounter people in Canada.
We did not need to worry about committing a social blunder at a royal gala. My Dad had to hide his academic record so he could get a job at a factory when he realised that his academic credentials were invalid in Canada and that his “higher education” was actually preventing him from a getting job in a factory. My Mom did not have a chance to use the fancy gloves she brought from South Korea for a banquet, at least during the first 10 years of arriving in Canada. She had to find a job in a factory as well.
Each one of us three boys was plunged into an academic system where everything was so confusing to us. English language was one of the most difficult challenges for us all. I remember watching Monty Pythons’ “Holy Grail” at a high school movie night. I missed half of the movie because of the English accents. I missed the other half of the movie because of the British humour. I had no idea why everyone was laughing when limbs were being cut off and obviously fake blood was spewing from dismembered bodies. Being new to Canada, we felt so isolated in Toronto – a city of three million people.
We, each one of us, felt so alone for so many years.
How do you live with others who are isolated?
How do you discern right from wrong? Proper from improper?
What are the norms?
What do we do when there are conflicting norms due to cultural differences?
I grew up in South Korea where looking directly at a teacher during conversation was considered disrespectful and impolite but here in Canada not looking at a person while speaking was considered as not being confident or even untruthful. My time of transition in Canada was not an easy one as a teenager. It was time of so much hope and excitement. And yet it was also a time of feeling so much isolation. Church, for me, was one of the places that provided hospitality and community. Church provided a place of belonging – a place of hospitality for a boy feeling alone and lost in Toronto.
Labour Day weekend for many of us is a time of hope and excitement. It is a time of transition for many of us. Heidi is in Guelph with her son, Evan, as he is about to start university. Phyllis sent me an e-mail last week welcoming me into KRU and telling me how excited she was to be back at school. I am here as your new minister. I have been busy already. Bessie and I met two weeks ago to plan our pastoral care visits. Jane, DeeAnn, and I met last Friday to go over the plan for Rally Sunday, which is next Sunday, and another possible intergenerational Sunday worship on the first Sunday of October. We are back to Church after a long summer break – back full of excitement, hopes, and expectations of what lies ahead of us.
I was thinking about the following questions when I accepted a Call from Kingston Road United.
What are the written and unwritten rules of engagement at KRU?
How will I know what is proper and what is improper?
How will I know when I step on someone’s foot?
Today’s story in Mark helped me to think about another way of looking at those questions. What is the fundamental principle for all those rules of engagement in human interactions?
When we hear the Mark story for the first time, Jesus comes across as an angry young man. Someone just asked a question – “How come your disciples don’t wash their hands before they eat?” And Jesus seems to come up with a harsh rebuttal, citing a passage from the Book of Isaiah. You could sense that there must be a “history” between the Pharisees and Jesus. Greek Testament scholars say that the passage also indicates an uneasy tension between early Christianity and Judaism, a religious community where Christians came from. In the Greek Testament, the Pharisees come across as uptight people who do not seem to have any common sense. But they were not bad people.
They were the law-abiding citizens of the day. They gave 10% of their income to the poor. They studied Torah, Hebrew Scriptures, each day as part of their devotion. In many ways they were like us, trying their best to live out God’s commandment by following the guidelines set by the religious authorities. They were trying their best.
The question on washing before the meal is more than differences in understanding or interpretation of the “purity law” that governed and guided lives of the Jews during the time of Jesus. The laws were very detailed. The purity law stated whom one can marry, what to eat and not to eat, and even when to release bodily gas in the evening, and so on. People took those laws seriously during the time of Jesus. The laws were integral parts of their daily lives.
What took place in Mark’s passage is not a mere disagreement on whether one should or should not wash before the meal. From the perspective of the Pharisees, those who obeyed and followed the “purity Laws” seriously, Jesus and his followers were already “unclean.” The question raised was not a question but a judgement and a condemnation being delivered to Jesus and his disciples. There were no exceptions to the rule and no one was exempt. For the Pharisees, the world was divided into two groups of people– those who followed the purity law (the clean) and those who did not (the unclean and condemned).
Jesus raised a question that went beyond separating people into two camps.
“What is the purpose of the purity law?” he asked. Is it about blindly following the rules or is it about living the principles for which the laws were written? He challenged the purity law by stating that “there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile people.”
For Jesus, what was important was not blindly following the rules and using the rules to judge some and isolate others. He saw that the Pharisees were using the purity laws to exclude and dehumanise those who did not keep up with the laws as they did. What was important to Jesus was actually living out the compassion of God that binds people into community rather than the laws that segregate and isolates individuals from the community.
If the Pharisees were present at the dinner table with Gandhi and Queen Victoria, they would have simply put their fingers into a finger bowl regardless of how Ghandi or anyone else around the table would have felt. “Rules before hospitality!” would have been their slogan.
It is not just Pharisees who alienate and isolate people from community. Each one of us also has rules and regulations written in our head that we constantly struggle with. Who is in and who is out in our society? We talk about how 9/11 affected the “civil rights” of so many in the US and yet we turn a blind eye to what is happening to Canadian society. Muslim Canadian homes were recently raided and people incarcerated by police without specific charges. Not many of us raise questions about the kind of security laws we have in place now that could incarcerate Canadians without specific charges. I wonder about the decline of civil rights in Canada since 9/11. Our soldiers are actively engaged in war in Afghanistan. 28 of our soldiers died in Afghanistan last time I counted. And yet our government tells us that our troops are there for peace keeping.
What seems to be our norm is not always the norm. Over the past ten years as national staff of our Church, I travelled across Canada and the global village and met people in various contexts. One of the things I discovered is that my norms are not always the norms in my neighbour’s community.
Having a meal with a Congolese American pastor in New York meant using my right hand to pick up food and eat. A Congolese American pastor at a meeting in New York invited three of us to his place for dinner. It took forever to get to his place. After close to a two-hour ride to his place, we were welcomed to his apartment by his family. The pastor had a small apartment unit in an “unsafe” neighbourhood in New York. The reason why he drove around New York for two hours was to give his wife enough time to prepare a feast for us. We were first given a bowl to wash our hands. The most honoured guest washed first, and then others followed.
Sharing a bowl to wash hands or touching food with your hands, was a taboo in my family of origin. My Mom felt that it was not hygienic. But the generosity of the Congolese pastor and his family and the feast prepared with love is etched in my memory as a prime example of hospitality and generosity. A poor pastor living in a small apartment with his wife and four children showed us what God’s hospitality and generosity could be.
Whether it is about food or greeting one another, I believe the underlying principle is that we enjoy one another’s company and express our spirit of generosity with one another. Our relationship is not about keeping up with the rules and regulations but about providing hospitality for one another to create peace in our relationship.
Frances, my eldest daughter, and I saw Monty Python’s SPAMALOT in July. There is a scene in SPAMALOT that expresses the kind of bravado we tend to express in our lives that leads us to a “life of quiet desperation.”
King Arthur is standing with Patsy, his squire, singing,
“I’m all alone
All by myself
There is no one here beside me
I’m all alone
No one to comfort me or guide me”
Patsy is looking puzzled but King Arthur continues to sing,
“Each one of us is all alone
So what are we to do
In order to get through?
We must be lonely side by side
It’s a perfect way to hide.”
Then the knights chime in singing,
“We are all alone.”
“He is all alone.”
Arthur ends the song by singing,
“So all alone
Each by ourselves
We are all alone.”
When the Pharisees were too caught up with following the laws, Jesus challenged them to take their blinders off and see the broader picture. I am sure that we may unintentionally step on one another’s feet as we learn to live together as community. What I commit to you is that it is the Spirit of Generosity that I seek in this community and that it is the Spirit of Generosity that I hope to share with you as we sojourn together and live out our faith through participating in the ministry of Jesus Christ.
There is a poem by Maya Angelou that expresses my hopes for our KRU community. It is called Alone.
Alone
Lying, thinkingLast nightHow to find my soul a homeWhere water is not thirstyAnd bread loaf is not stoneI came up with one thingAnd I don't believe I'm wrongThat nobody,But nobodyCan make it out here alone.
Alone, all aloneNobody, but nobodyCan make it out here alone.
May we live out our faith in such a way that no one will be alone in our community and that nobody, but nobody in our society will have to make it alone if we can help it.
Amen.
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