Contemporary believers certainly realize the Bible was not written to us; it was written for us. We have never lived a sacrificial temple life, few of us have grown up on a farm and none of us are from a primarily agrarian society. So, it’s no wonder we often have difficulties drawing parallels between what was spoken thousands of years ago, to what’s happening in our modern technology driven culture and society of today.

  I would like to take a moment and unpack Mark 7:1-13, our reading from February 9^th.  Jesus is talking with the Pharisees and their entourage, the skeptics in the crowd, as well as those standing in the presence of the Lord. As usual the Pharisees can’t see through their human condition, what they called the traditions of the elders. Jesus, on the other hand, sees through their world view straight to the heart of the matter. He invokes Isaiah as He warns them against putting themselves ahead of God as they teach their “human precepts” as if they were God’s doctrine. Jesus clearly tells them, “You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.” A clear result of the ‘fall’ as witnessed in His time and in the tragedy of today’s society where the priorities of God, family, community, and career has been replaced with what is simply good for me is the best there is. The parallel can be drawn from the central idea of how the first century Jews neglected their responsibilities to their parents by shifting the support to some greater good. This same example can be seen in our societies today, as parents are warehoused in facilities for their own good, as the children who are parents of children attend to more important duties. This is just one facet of a multidimensional dilemma. As Jesus said Himself, “And you do many such things.”

  Today’s consequence of this ‘me first’ world view and those who have succumb and subscribe to it, is a world where individuals have garnished for themselves huge quantities of money, their god, literally tens of billions, and in some cases hundreds of billions of dollars. They have extracted this money from our economy while others languish in sorrow and poverty. Jesus’ contemporary example of how the inconsistencies of the human condition, what He referred to as the traditions of their time, distorted and deluded the divine Word of God given to the peoples and more particularly, the Jews of the time. He was showing them how the written words of God, delivered to them through Moses as the Ten Commandments, were corrupted by man as they created the god man made. We too, in our ego driven world have created many gods for our own gain. Is it any wonder Albert Einstein made the astute observation that the most powerful force in the universe is “compound interest.” This simple logic leads me to believe, that things will get worse before they get worse. At least the pagan of biblical times put their gods before themselves, not so in our times, nothing is more important than what is convenient at the moment, not even life itself.

  Perhaps we should consider Jesus’ example of how the first century Zionist skirted the duties to their parents under the watchful and approving eye of the powers in charge. This surely is an example they could recognize since it was being lived out in their time and place. We, as twenty-first century Christians understand that Christ Jesus was not bound by time or space. The very notion that He died for our sins is not a rhetorical statement or a symbolic feel-good idea. For Him, everything which had ever happened, everything which was happening, everything that would ever happen, and everything that would never happen, was all happening at the same time. He could see in each of us, the thoughtless sins of our youth, the manipulations and ambitious jousting as we positioned ourselves for personal profits, the transgressions great and small which turned us away from right worship interrupting the free flow of His grace. We know He spoke those words to the Pharisees so long ago, but perhaps what was breaking His heart were the words written in our time. Just maybe He was seeing how we put ourselves ahead of God, just as Adam and Eve had done, just as the Pharisees were doing. Just maybe, He was reading the words of our Supreme Court, which are “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” We know He was speaking to the Pharisees in ways they could understand just as He is speaking to us in ways we can understand.