“When No One Is Looking”

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

September 7, 2003

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John Fleming

I don’t know if you realize it or not, but you are being watched and you have been for some time now. I understand that the state police will send you a ticket in the mail. You knew that you were speeding, but you may not have known that you were caught. Here is how it works. Under an overpass, is a white van. You speed right past it. There are two cameras at work in that van. The first one takes a picture of a driver and the second one takes a picture of a license plate. There is, of course, a radar gun that captures your speed, so I guess that you could say that there are three things noticing your whereabouts. Unbeknownst to you, you receive a letter in the mail from the state police that reads, “Congratulations, you have been caught. Below is your court date.” That does not seem fair to me. Does it to you? An officer is not involved. Excuses cannot be offered. No one had the chance to say, “I was on my way to my grandmother’s funeral.” Or, “My wife is in labor!” No excuses can be offered. All you get is a ticket in the mail. This does not seem right and fair to me. You are being watched and you have been for some time, not just by cameras and radar guns. I read somewhere this week that some school districts are putting cameras on school buses so that when there is a little trouble and you protest, “No, it couldn’t have been my little angel.” The school officials will pull out a printed picture to show you your little, uh, angel. Sometimes you don’t know that you are being watched and that is the problem. Usually that means that you are the watchee and not the watcher.

Just after Annie Grace was born, we put a baby monitor in her bedroom so that if our girl woke up and cried, her parents would know about it. We hope to have a second child one day. Please understand, this is not announcement! But when child number two comes, I want to put the newest technology in baby monitoring in her room. Not only can you hear when the baby cries, but you can see her without the risk of waking her up, because of a little camera that shoots an image wherever you want it in your house. Actually, even if child number two does not come along, I might want to use such technology when Annie Grace gets a little older (a teenager maybe) and tries to sneak out of her window at the parsonage!

I hear that one of the latest things in child care centers are cameras that are strategically placed throughout the facility so that day care dads and mini-van moms can log on to the internet to see what their little angels are doing. I understand that it helps parent to have some sort of a connection with their kids while they are apart.

Hollywood has even gotten in on this trend. I do not know if you have seen it or remember the Paramount movie of a few years ago, The Truman Show, starring Jim Carrey. Maybe you remember the movie’s plot. It is the story of a man whose whole life has been watched by anyone who has access to a television. A movie studio actually adopted him, built a studio that became his world, and for thirty years, everyone watched Truman’s every move. If you have seen the movie, then you know that there are several clues that lead to Truman figuring out what his life really. There is also a great scene near the end of the movie. Truman is standing at an exit door when the producer of the show talks to him. He says, “You can’t leave. You belong here. I have been watching you your entire life. I was watching when you were born. I was watching when you took your first steps. I watched you on your first day of school. I saw the episode when you lost your first tooth. I know you better than you know yourself.” Then there is Truman’s great line. He says, “You never had a camera in my head.” It is a great line. It could have been a better line. If I were writing it, I would have had Truman say, “You never had a camera in my heart.”

Which, I think is a good lead in to our scripture lesson for this morning, taken from the seventh chapter of Mark’s gospel, this final controversy that Jesus had with the Pharisees and the scribes while he was still in Galilee, before he made his way to Jerusalem. You will know this, the Pharisees and the scribes came to where Jesus. I am sure that they were sent from the home office to check things out and to see who this carpenter was who was causing all the ruckus. They are there, with Jesus, when they notice that Jesus’ disciples were breaking one of the holiness laws. These holiness laws helped the Jewish people in every way. With them, they knew what they could eat, when they could eat it, and who they could eat it with. These laws were old, rooted in the past. I suspect that most of the Jewish people did not know why they existed in the first place.

My acting debut came when I was in the eleventh grade. I had a small part in Lambuth College’s production of Fiddler on the Roof. Incidently, my debut was also my finale. I have not been in a play since. My dad played the male lead, a dairy farmer whose name is Teyve. They needed warm bodies and so I signed up and got the part of Yussell the hat maker. I had one line. I still remember it. As the hat maker, I was asked to make a wedding hat. Here is my line, “But it will cost you.” Early in the play, in fact in the first scene, Teyve talks about tradition and says these words, “Here in Anatevka, we have traditions for everything. How to eat, how to sleep, how to wear clothes... You may ask, how did this tradition start? I’ll tell you, I don’t know. But it’s a tradition and everyone knows who he is and what God expects him to do. For the Jewish people of Jesus’ day, these laws helped identify them, perhaps even distinguish them and here was Jesus’ right hand men eating with unwashed and therefore unclean hands. I wish that I had known my Bible better when I was seven or eight years old. I wish that I could have pointed this scripture out to my mom when it was time to come to the dinner table!

The Jesus in Mark’s gospel wants us to know that he came not just for one group of people, but for all people, including the Gentiles, folks not born into Jewish heritage. It is Mark’s message and that is why he spends a lot of his gospel explaining certain behaviors and customs. He spends two of the first four verses in our lesson this morning, explaining customs. Why? Because this gospel is for everyone, even those who don’t understand the customs. So the Pharisees and the scribes notice this and log their complaint, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders?” The tradition of the elders, that is a great biblical line, isn’t it? Now none of us could be accused of doing things the way that they’ve always been done, can we? Families have traditions of the elders. Join one at their houses on Thanksgiving or Christmas and you’ll notice them. Husband and wives have traditions of the elders. For instance, Susie grew up practicing that you could not leave your house without turning off the washing machine. The fear, I guess was that a hose would split and the Simpkins would come home with a floor full of water. But at my house, the tradition, or the practice, was that you could leave the washing machine on, but the dryer had to be off when you left the house. My mother believed that the dryer could burn down the house. Churches have traditions of the elders, don’t they? If you ever run up against this line, then you know that you are standing right next to such a tradition, “Well, we have never done it that way before!” I am sorry. I am meddling. I will save that line for another sermon.

Here is the truth. The first part of our lesson informs the second part of it. These traditions of the elders gave the people a sense of identity and belonging. Maybe that is what this passage is all about. And if it is laws that distinguish the Jewish people, then maybe what Jesus is really getting at in the second part of the lesson and what he is really asking is this, “What distinguishes Christian people?” Jesus says that it is not the food that you put in your mouth, but our relationships with other people that distinguish us. He says that to the Pharisees and the scribes who could not get past the laws to see another group of people. And he says it to everyone else, including us, by saying the things that we do, and the sins that we commit, affect people other than ourselves. To tell you the truth, I did not notice this until I was reading a commentary this week, but these sins that Jesus says come out of the heart, are not individual sins. All of them, every one of them, if we do them, affects other people. Listen again to the list, “For it is within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: theft, murder, adultery, deceit, envy, slander...” When you steal, you take something from someone else. When you commit adultery, there is more than two persons involved. When you slander someone, you are talking bad about their good names. Jesus says that the sins are in our hearts. It is the unclean stuff, in here, that causes all kinds of trouble when it gets out.

Well, what should we do with these words of Jesus this morning? Maybe we should do a little thinking for a few minutes about the source of these things that Jesus mentions, our hearts.

Perhaps we should ask the question that wants to be asked this morning, how is the condition of your heart? Listen to a line or two from the 4^th Proverb: “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil out of the evil stored in his heart. For out of the overflow of the heart his mouth speaks.” You may already know this, but in the days of Jesus, the heart was considered the center of the spiritual life. It was the center of the will and the emotion and the place where decisions were made. So what came out of the heart is the real you. So if there are heart problems, there are problems. If the fruit of a tree is bad, you do not try to fix the fruit, you work on the roots. And if there is evil around, then just changing your habits won’t do the trick. You have to go deeper. You have to go the heart of the problem, which is the problem of the heart. Is it any wonder, then, that in all of the Bible, the word heart is mentioned 592 times, 105 in the most personal of biblical books, a prayer book, the one we know as Psalms. So what do you do with your hearts? The state police might be watching. Video cameras may be on school buses and in day care centers, but when you know that no one is watching, when you let your guard done, and when you are just yourself, what are you like? That is what you call character, who you are when no one else is looking. Others may be watching and paying attention to us, but who are we, really when no one is looking. You might be able to mislead some people, but you cannot mislead God, who looks at the heart. Here is what I think. I think that we want changed hearts. I know I do, so much right now, especially for myself. But I can’t do it. I can do a little work on my behaviors, but changing my heart, I just can’t do it. But I know someone who can. And I know that he would be happy to speak with you this morning at our altar. Let us pray.