The Christian Mandate

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday August 30, 2009, the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Song of Solomon 2:8-13
Psalm 45:1-2, 6-9
James 1:17-27
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

On Wednesday evening when we got together for our reading of Mark’s gospel, a lot of thoughts started running through my mind. One of the things on my mind had to do with how things tend to run downhill. There is the polite example where we know that water runs downhill. One trip to the manse in a downpour shows that. Another way to look at this downhill flow is political. The word comes from above and those of us who live below have to deal with the follow through. The unfunded mandate, a requirement imposed by Congress on state or local governments with no funding to pay for it,[1] is a wonderful example of what government rules and regulations running downhill means.

There is something that I think I need to make clear about this first; many of these mandates are well intentioned, like the Clean Water and Clean Air acts. When many of America’s most polluting industries were getting started, there was so little efficiency that there was often considerable waste and pollution. The effects of this pollution were so far down the pike that they meant little at the time. Unfortunately, sometimes these inefficient ways became SOP, standard operating procedure. So today, the culture of many industries is to not change not simply because of the expense, but also because of red ink in the profit column too. In the meantime, air, ground, and water become polluted creating a whole new industry, the super-fund clean-up industry.

So yes, many mandates are well intentioned but at the same time, profits are lost to pay for them. Because they aren’t funded any other way, investors become leery and move their money out of these formerly more profitable industries. This creates twists and turns to the economy which can be felt at every level of society. President Reagan talked about “trickle-down economics” and how a rising tide lifts all boats. From what I have seen in life and in ministry, I am more familiar with the “trickle-down” that means the poor get poorer.

So, how does this relate to scripture? In Mark 7:3-4 we learn that the Pharisees and all of the Jews do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands observing the tradition of the elders and do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it and there are many other traditions that they observe including the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles. What this scripture only alludes to is that it isn’t just the Pharisees and all of the Jews who observe these rituals; they insisted that those they did business with also followed these rituals.

While the “they” of “they wash it” meant the washing performed by the temple kitchen patrol, it also included handling long before it ever reached their kitchen. The long-drawn-out laws of hand washing extended far beyond the hands of the Pharisees. This ritual cleanliness had to include all of the planting, harvesting, and preparation from the field. It also included the artisans, workers, and merchants who created and sold the cups, pots, and bronze kettles. The rules created its own little closed system to serve the temple; and the Pharisees ruled over it all.

It’s sort of like a small business getting a government contract. But before you sign the contract, you had better be aware of all of its terms and conditions. You had better be aware of every little provision and clause in the contract, every jot and tittle. You had better be careful because violating any piece of the contract makes the whole thing voidable. If your contract gets voided, there goes your investment, your profit, and the wages you owe your employees, and from there it just keeps running down hill. So beware of all of the terms of the contract. Beware of all of the terms in the law.

In Judaism, traditionally there are 613 commands, the Taryag Mitzvot. The Mitzvot are separated into two categories. There are 248 mitzvot aseh, or positive commands; one for each bone and significant organ in the human body. These are the things we are to do. There are also 365 mitzvot lo taaseh, or negative commands; one for every day of the year. These are the things we are never to do.[2]

Some of these rules make perfect sense to us today, things like, “Know there is a God,” “Know God is One,” and “Entertain thoughts of no other god except for the One True God.” We’re familiar with these rules from the Old Testament. These are lessons Jesus teaches us in the gospels.

Then again, there are others we do not follow. For example, the mitzvot includes prohibitions against eating non-kosher fish. Sorry, but I enjoy shrimp. They’re not kosher, but they’re tasty. Pork isn’t kosher either, but bacon makes everything better. In fact, a note to anyone who brings shrimp wrapped with bacon in two weeks for potluck Sunday: I will make it my purpose in life to make sure you don’t have to worry about leftovers.

On top of the mitzvot, human rules and traditions designed to protect the law created barriers to the law. It literally became impossible to follow the law because there were so many barriers to it. These barriers are bad enough when they create unintended consequences, but the step that is even worse is when people intend to take advantage of others using the barriers and the law.

One of the best examples in the last twenty years of people taking advantage of the law deals with home ownership. As long ago as the Clinton presidency, the government policy was to encourage and enable people to get mortgages so they could own their own homes. Home ownership is the greatest source of personal wealth for the majority of Americans, so encouraging home ownership is as American as apple pie. People own their own homes, they gain equity, personal wealth increases, and the American dream starts to become true for people who never imagined the dream could be theirs. Unfortunately, this is where the dream ran amok.

The Christian Century recently ran the story of an elderly woman named Mabel[3] who was a client of the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago. She needed just a little more money than her social security and house cleaning job provided. Between Mabel’s niece April and the loan salesman “Bill Sykes,” Mabel and her house went from the frying pan into the fire.

Bill Sykes knew that Mabel wouldn’t be able to handle the new level of debt, especially since Mabel owed back taxes and back water bills on the house. There were also a couple of judgments against the property so this new level of debt would soon become impossible to repay.

To quote the article:

The day before the signing, Sykes had not been happy. Two deals had tanked already that morning when a stubborn appraiser had refused to bring him high enough home values. He wouldn't use that bozo again. And now with Mabel's loan in doubt, he'd be lucky to gross $5,000 for the week—half his usual. He'd have to call the car dealer and tell him to put the Jaguar on hold.

A year ago Sykes would've given up. But that was before the big lunch he'd had with a representative of a subprime lender. The rep had displayed his employer's array of aggressive loan products: no doc, low doc, doc lite. All Sykes needed was a cooperative appraiser and a friendly closer, and he would be set: with these new products he'd be able to finance anybody. A year later, Sykes could see that the rep wasn't far wrong.

The vulnerable and overly trusting homeowner sitting on a ton of equity, the nice mortgage broker worming into the homeowner’s life, the greedy family member helping things along, the high up-front fees, the cash payment to cushion the deal, the risky mortgage products and the broker schooled by a lender's rep on how to push them. All this story needs is an out of tune piano to sound like a Dudley Do-Right cartoon. Unfortunately, this story doesn’t have an out of tune piano. Even more unfortunately it doesn’t have a Mountie.

The article ends like this:

Many have asked who is to blame. Some would blame the homeowners themselves. It is true that some borrowers bought homes they couldn't afford, but this happened mostly at the end of the lending spree and especially in certain highly publicized markets. The majority of borrowers sucked into bad subprime loans were long-term homeowners like Mabel who had equity that could be stripped and were on the receiving end of relentless marketing.

Some also point a finger at the Community Reinvestment Act, arguing that it forced banks to extend overly risky loans to unworthy borrowers. But the CRA was passed way back in 1977, some 25 years before the boom in subprime lending, and the biggest subprime lenders were nonbank entities not regulated by the CRA.

The chief culprits in the subprime lending crisis are the brokers, lenders, ratings agencies and investment banks that set up the system and pushed it beyond its breaking point, together with the policy makers and regulators who ignored warning signs and failed to apply the brakes.

As for Sykes, he's doing well these days. The meltdown has been good for the many entrepreneurs in the business who are now engaged in the mortgage-rescue industry that sprang up overnight. Just as before, Sykes sends out mailers by the thousands to homeowners in foreclosure. But now, instead of offering refinancing, he presents himself as an expert in foreclosure prevention and loan modification. He says he knows how to help homeowners get good results with their lender. He says he can gain a sympathetic hearing if he discovers that the homeowners were duped when they got their loan. He should know.

There are some people who would say that I as a pastor have no business talking about this from the pulpit. Some people would tell me to be quiet about political things; about law and government and clean air and talk about Jesus. Friends, the plain truth is that the gospel is political. In a time when church and state were completely interconnected, the gospel preached by Jesus was for the leaders of the synagogue and the political leaders because the synagogue leaders were political leaders. Separating church and state is not a biblical concept; it has only been around for about 240 years. So when we talk about the mandates that are a burden on the people, those mandates come from every seat of power and are put upon those who are subject to the power and the powerful.

So what we must do as Christians, as followers of the one true Triune God is to find the mandate of the faith. First and foremost, our mandate is our Lord Jesus Christ, in his person, his words, and his work. It is found in his life, and his death, and his resurrection.

This is perhaps the most difficult, the most scandalous part of the gospel. By emptying himself of his Godly status, taking earthly form, and joining with us, Jesus teaches that it is in weakness and in poverty that real strength is found and exercised. Our society teaches us that we are to gain and exert power in strength. Our culture teaches that it is better to be Bill Sykes; make a ton of cash and get the Jag. Jesus teaches from the mitzvot not to withhold charity to the poor.[4]

Our mandate is found in the word of God. To find God’s will, we need to go to the best source of information about God, scripture opened by the Holy Spirit. The testimony of the testaments brings us words thousands of years old; words as important today as when they were written. Some will say the Bible is out of touch with our lives, but I say that words about the human condition and the one who created humanity are never out of vogue. This reading from Mark is a fine example. The injunctions from 1James are another.

Our mandate is found in the sacraments, the water of our baptism, and in the plate and cup of the table. At the font, we join with Jesus as members of his church. In the plate and cup we are nourished by the food of his body and blood. These symbols instituted by the Lord our God are what we use to define who we are in community with Christ and how he continues to feed us.
Our mandate is found in the church, the body of Christ. It is found in the worship and the fellowship we share together. It is found worshipping Christ, even with people we do not agree with, as long as we can all agree that Jesus is Lord.

There are all sorts of mandates in our world and in our lives. As a mandate, the law, the mitzvot, is important. Yet first we are called to follow Jesus, and the advice Jesus gave the Pharisees. To rephrase verse seven, worship Jesus, worship him, not the concepts and precepts we put in his path. We don’t have to protect Jesus from one another. We don’t have to build barriers to protect him. He proved he could take on death and hell. Let us follow Him, do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God protecting the sick, the orphan, the widow and the oppressed. Doing these things, not following selfish human traditions and evil intentions, God’s good will comes from us and we will not be defiled.

[1] Unfunded Mandate, http://www.c-span.org/guide/congress/glossary/unfunded.htm, retrieved August 29, 2009.
[2] 613 Mitzvot, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/613_Mitzvot, accessed July 2, 2007.
[3] Lindsey, Daniel P. “Foreclosing on Mabel.” The Christian Century, August 11, 2009, pages 30-33.
[4] Deuteronomy 15:7