15th Sunday after Pentecost
Mark 7:14-23
Then [Jesus] called the crowd again and said to them, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.’
When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. He said to them, ‘Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?’ (Thus, he declared all foods clean.) And, he said, ‘It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.’
Sticks and Stones
It doesn’t take a lot for someone to hurt you. One of my earliest memories is of riding in a car with my mom; I couldn’t have been more than six or seven. As we rounded the corner of our block, there were these two girls standing there, maybe a few years older than me. They looked at us through the window, then pulled at the corners of their eyes, the way people do when they’re pretending to be Asian, and they screamed, “Chinese!” and then they burst out laughing. Even at that young age, I knew that what they had done was wrong. I knew it somehow in my gut, in my heart, even if I didn’t really fully understand it in my head.
Growing up in the 80s and 90s in Southern California, I didn’t really have to deal with a ton of racism, but racism just kind of floats around in the air. My parents never sat us down and told us that we were different from everyone around us, but somehow I knew it anyway. At least where I grew up, I was usually not the only Asian kid, and there were always plenty of Latino kids around, and sometimes even black kids. But, by the time I went to seminary, I would often realize that I was the only person of color in the room. And, if I’m being honest, it always felt a little strange. I was still in California, after all, the San Francisco Bay Area, no less.
People love labels; we love labeling things, especially other people. I’m guilty of it; we’re all guilty of it. We separate ourselves according to height and weight, skin, eye, and hair color, popularity and social standing, how pretty we think people are…worthy and unworthy…clean and unclean…those who we’re willing to be at the table with and those we are not. Our gospel reading today is about a group of people trying to dictate who should be in the club and who shouldn’t.
“Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” If they don’t conform to our tradition, then they shouldn’t be here, and you shouldn’t be hanging out with them! In our modern day, in our time of cold and flu and covid, it’s common sense to wash our hands before meals, and honestly, we probably should be washing our hands more often than that. But, despite this question coming from the Pharisees, who you would assume would know their scriptures, God never actually commands that we wash our hands before meals. Yes, I agree, it’s a good idea, but God never actually commands it. This was just a part of their tradition, something they decided was necessary.
Jesus chastises them, saying that they are more worried about human traditions than what God is telling them to do. Then he declares to the crowd, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”
And then, because he is always having to give more explanation to the disciples, he has a private discussion with them, giving them more details about what he means, “It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come.” The pharisees were worried about people eating with unwashed hands; they were worried about unclean hands making their food unclean. But, they weren’t worried about excluding people from the table. They weren’t worried about the words coming out of their mouths and the way those words could disrupt or even destroy their community.
Human beings have a tendency to form tribes. If you want to look at it in evolutionary terms, the people that were the most tribalistic were the ones who survived. They looked out for each other, gathered together for protection, made sure that everyone had enough to eat, even if it meant that anyone outside of the tribe wasn’t going to make it. The people in the tribes, the successful ones, they were the ones who passed down their genes. Every single one of us in this room here today is here because our ancestors survived. They were part of the tribe, and we are their legacy. Tribalism is part of our genetic structure, part of who we are, and as much as we try to fight it, as much as we try to tell ourselves that it’s wrong, that we’re above such petty thoughts like tribalism, it’s something that we all do, even if only a little…even if we try to hide it deep down inside.
It almost seems like the whole of human history can be boiled down to us vs. them. We have Christians fighting Muslims, Israelis fighting Palestinians, even Catholics fighting Protestants. Republicans and Democrats. Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, lines being drawn around geographic and ethnic differences. Male and female, queer and straight, the 1% and the 99. A lot of people really don’t like the idea of original sin, but, if there is such a thing, then I think this is it, or at least a part of it. We have this deep, ingrained need to point out the differences in other people, to turn them into “others”, if only to prove that we belong, so that we don’t get pushed out ourselves.
Like I said earlier, being born and raised in Southern California, I didn’t have to deal with too much name-calling, at least in terms of my ethnicity. The story I told about the girls on the corner is really the only incident that comes to mind, if you leave out the silly schoolyard stuff that most kids unfortunately have to deal with. If you think about it “Chinese” is technically a neutral term; it’s not positive or negative. It wasn’t the word itself that was the problem. It was the intention behind it that made it so hurtful.
The girls that pulled back the corners of their eyes and screamed “Chinese” at me weren’t making a neutral observation about my ethnicity. They were reducing me to it, as if that’s all I was, and mocking it, because they believed being Chinese was somehow beneath them and that people of Chinese descent should be ridiculed. You don’t have to use slurs to hurt someone. You just have to let them know that who they are is “less than”, and the simple descriptor of “Chinese” accompanied with some childish laughter is all it takes to do that. They felt entitled to this behavior because I wasn’t a part of their tribe. And, the tribe that I did belong to was so far beneath theirs, that it didn’t matter what happened to me. That is the nature of tribalism, of othering. When someone is an “other,” they are suspect, they are dangerous, they don’t deserve resources, and it’s okay to look down on them.
Tribalism, othering, name-calling, the raising up of oneself by putting down someone else, these are all things that come out of a person that defiles them. “Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?… It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come.”
We are all children of God, all deserving of love, all worthy to come to the table together. The Holy Spirit has descended upon each one of us in equal measure; no one can claim that anyone else is not a part of God’s family. No matter who we are, or where we come from, or how much money we have, or how we vote, or even what faith we profess, God loves us. We all belong to the human tribe, and God’s grace is big enough for everyone. So, come to the table, invite everyone to the table, and be a part of the tribe. Amen.
~ Rev. Charles Wei
