Today’s Scripture Reading (September
6, 2014): Mark 7
There is an advertisement
currently on American Television that purports to talk about a new disease apparently
sweeping through North American households – a disease called nose blindness. It
is a great term to something with which we all have experience. Nose blindness
does not just happen to us when we are in the kitchen cooking up some fish or
that great garlic dish, it happens to us everywhere we go and with every smell
imaginable. I am unabashedly a city boy, but I do not smell the city (and yes
the city does smell.) However, if I go to a friend’s farm the first thing that
I become aware of is the smell of the animals. But amazingly I don’t smell them
for very long. The oppressive smell of a farm quickly disappears, we would
simply say that we have grown accustomed to the smell, but the advertisement
says that we have become nose blind.
I know I suffer
from the disease, and it is not just my nose that suffers. I know I see what it
is that I want to see. I am totally aware of this very disturbing fact with
regard to my human nature. It is not easy for me to be objective in any way.
But what disturbs me even more is that I know the people around me are doing
the exact same thing, seeing what they want to see, and yet they seem to
believe that they are being objective. And this behavior happens more often
than I want to admit inside of the confines of the church.
And it is a
behavior that Jesus is speaking about in this passage. The religious leaders of
Jesus day held the law in very high regard, and among the law there was nothing
greater than the portion of the law known as the Ten Commandments. And within
this list of ten was an instruction to honor your father and your mother. The
meaning of honor was believed to be very rich. It included things like don’t
criticize your mom and dad but also extended to a responsibility that every
person had to care for mom and dad in their elderly years. In days before
pension plans, the plan for retirement was literally the children. And the
children were given the opportunity to show how much they honored mom and dad
(fulfilling the fifth commandment) by taking good care of their elderly
parents. For the religious leaders of the day, this kind of care for parents
was an imperative. It did not matter what your dreams were or where you wanted
to vacation, or even if you got along with your parents – or your spouse’s
parents. The law which specified your responsibility to care for your parents could
for no reason be put aside. Unless …
There was a
loophole for the religious leaders and that loophole was Corban. If a person
declared that his possessions – all of them – were Corban, therefore that they
belonged to God, then the responsibility to take care of elderly parents was
waived. After all, something that had been dedicated to God could not be used
to care for the earthly responsibilities. It made sense. Except that Jesus knew
that it didn’t. The religious leaders had become nose blind. Corban had become
a way of breaking a commandment by giving to God. And Jesus challenged the
religious leaders by insisting that you could not use God as an excuse to break
a commandment. If the highest expectation of God was the care of parents,
giving everything to God did not lessen the expectation. God desired obedience
more than sacrifice. Corban could still be declared, and it was still a great
act of faith, but if Corban was declared, it had to be after the needs of and the
responsibility to the parents – and other earthly responsibilities like debt -
had been fulfilled.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Matthew
16
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