August 25, 2024 Text: Mark 7:1-13
Dear Friends in Christ,
You have heard the expression “lip service,” and you probably know what it means. You probably do not know that the expression was inspired by our text for this morning where Jesus quotes from Isaiah. Paying lip service is saying one thing and doing another. Remember during Covid when politicians told us we couldn’t get haircuts and then they were sneaking underground for a clip and a perm? Made you mad, didn’t it?
Let’s welcome the Pharisees to the party this morning. They would like you to wash your hands. And if you don’t, well, you can’t really be a follower of God, because you are not keeping his law. Throughout Scripture, these men are known for . . .
“PAYING LIP SERVICE”
Are you a regular hand washer? Are you as anal about it, as I am? Every Sunday, after all the handshakes. Soap and water in the vestry. Get to the office, wash. Go home, wash. Shoot baskets, wash. In a hospital or nursing home, wash. I am not trying to keep up with the Pharisees, but I do believe my hand washing is a reason for my many years now of not being sick.
Ok, you are going to a private audience with Jesus. What are you going to ask him? Anybody here going to ask him how to wash before a meal? Didn’t think so. You’ll never make it as a Pharisee. Look what they do. “The Pharisees and the scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands.’” (v. 5). Jesus’ opponents have completely lost sight of what matters to God. They have put human concerns before and above what is important in God’s eyes.
Does Jesus play nice with this question? No, he calls them “hypocrites” and then he quotes from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, “’This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’” (v. 6-7) The Pharisees are more concerned about whether people’s hands are clean than whether their bodies have been cleansed of disease by the words of Jesus and whether their hearts have been filled with the peace that Jesus is proclaiming. That is exactly the sort of thing that happens when we stop asking what is important to God.
For the Pharisees their lips are close, but their hearts are distant. They are paying lip service to Jesus. If Isaiah’s words are prophesied about us, and if Jesus’ warnings speak to us, we had better examine our own lips and hearts and heads and hands to see how we are doing. How have we lost sight of what’s really important? What traditions of men, what traditions of our own, have we let crowd out God’s Word from its proper place as the Word that demands our total obedience?
If we say we are followers of the Word but call out our neighbor for dirty hands, what are we doing? We are paying lip service to our beliefs. Don’t miss the dirt behind your ears or the dirt in your eyes or the dirt that clogs your heart. God doesn’t just tell us we are dirty, rather our Lord calls us from human tradition to God’s Word and His priorities. His voice declares us clean. He forgives our lip service.
We pray that the Holy Spirit will help us live this way. Even young children pick up on telling them one thing and doing another. Jesus tells us from the cross, “Come to me and I will make you clean.” Our hypocritical behavior was washed away at Calvary. We can come into His presence with clean hands and clean hearts.
When I have gone to neo-natal intensive care units, I must wash my hands like a doctor. Hot water, soap and do it for at least a minute. Then you glove and gown up to go in. Those hands are pretty clean, but put them under a microscope and what are we going to see? A least a few germs. The cleansing that Jesus gives takes the tiniest microbe away. His cleansing lasts for an eternity. He didn’t just pay us lip service, He was obedient to the Father and finished the plan of salvation. You can walk away clean . . . hands and heart.
Amen.