“Oho!” said the pot to the kettle;
“You are dirty and ugly and black!
Sure no one would think you were metal,
Except when you’re given a crack.”
“Not so! not so!” kettle said to the pot;
“‘Tis your own dirty image you see;
For I am so clean – without blemish or blot –
That your blackness is mirrored in me.”[8
“Pot, meet Kettle. Kettle, Pot.” That’s about all you need to understand the Gospel lesson for this week.
Jesus is being criticized by the Pharisees today. They have observed that his disciples are not keeping to the tradition of the elders in terms of ritual hand washing.
It’s not, by the way, a comment about the disciples’ actions.
It’s really more of a comment about the Master, because if your students, your followers, your disciples aren’t doing what they are supposed to do, well that’s really more about what kind of teacher YOU are, isn’t it!
No wonder therefore, Jesus leaps back at them with the Kettle and Pot kind of comment!
The Lectionary Committee leaves out the detail of Jesus’ response, where he talks about how the Pharisees have conveniently re-interpreted the commandment to “honor your father and mother” in order to get themselves off the hook for caring for aging parents.
They leave off as well Jesus rather crude illustration about eating and what goes into the sewer.
“It’s not what goes in that defiles, but what comes out…
However, even left out you get a quick sense of what is going on here because it mirrors very much our own experience in these charged political and social times.
You can’t point out someone else’s shortcomings without finding yourself very quickly accused of that same thing, or something worse.
This is the weariness of our times, is it not?
We justify our own actions, as if our own excrement doesn’t smell.
We criticize the actions of others in an unrelenting loop of finger pointing and accusations hurled back and forth like a tennis ball across the net, and all of this is done without there ever being any pronouncement by a referee of “love.”
How is Jesus’ rebuke of the Pharisees any different from the “he did/she did” “he said/she said” action that engulfs our own news cycles, social media exchanges and our everyday conversations?
I think there are at least two important differences that are worth noting.
The first is that when Jesus responds to the Pharisees, he does not do so to them as a group.
It’s not “you Pharisees…”
It’s “This people…”
It’s a not so subtle change of direction.
This is not about a political or religious party, it’s not about a cultural norm, it’s not even about the established practices or ritual actions.
It’s about all of us, what the Prophet Isaiah had to say about all of us!
“This people” throws the observation into the realm of introspection. “This people? Who is he talking about when he says “this people?”
Is that us?
Is that me?
This is a critical move, because so long as the Kettle and Pot, back and forth goes on, we can all hurl observations and accusations at one another non-stop, can we not?
We (in fact) see that happen every day in the twitter and social media threads.
Those things usually get nastier and more personal along the way, because “amplification of offense” is the way that you try to score the fatal blow.
I have to say something that finally dumbfounds you.
I have to come up with something that you can’t come back against.
That is how one wins an escalating “war of words” or “stream of accusations.”
But Jesus isn’t interested in scoring points or winning an argument over the ritual practices with the Pharisees.
He’s more interested in getting those who are making such casual and judgmental observations about his followers and his teachings do some self-reflection.
That is the second noteworthy move here.
The fact that we are all hypocrites is a given. That’s just who we are as people.
“This people” invites you into a consideration of your own actions, instead of a defense of them.
Then, once Jesus has you in a self-reflective posture, he can deliver the message that needs to come to break the cycle of accusations.
“There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”
This is a re-iteration of that observation that we are all hypocrites, at least to a certain extent.
We don’t live up to our external aspirations.
We don’t behave in consistent fashion all that time.
We are fond of pointing out the offenses of others with whom we disagree, or whom we perceive as “other,” or those who we value differently than ourselves.
We call the kettle “black.”
All the while, we tend to pass over our own offenses, or the offenses of those who are “our own” or who are “like us.”
We do that, and fail to see how some of what we object to and point out is in fact our own reflection of what we think we see.
This is who we are, we really can’t help but make observations of others when they don’t quite jibe with our own expectations of the way things ought to be.
The Pharisees can’t help but make the observation, notice what the disciples are doing, and the question is legitimate, “Why?”
The answer however, is not found in getting the ritual right.
The answer as to why Jesus doesn’t insist on strictly adhering to the ritual actions is not found in external things.
It is found in matters of the heart.
It is found in what comes from within.
Let me tell you of a couple of incredibly proud moments that I have had through the years, moments when I observed that people “got” this.
I took a youth group to Arizona once and we stayed at the Navajo Lutheran Mission doing a service project of cleaning and working there. As part of the experience we were invited out to one of the members of that community’s Hogan for dinner and an experience in their life.
We arrived, and this was a very different world from the one my suburban youth lived. The Hogan is an 8 sided wood and mud structure, with a center fire pit and hole for the smoke to ascend. Furnishings are built into or along the walls. The floor is swept dirt, over which rugs are placed. The walls were variously decorated with traditional Navajo textile work, interspersed with 1960’s vintage pictures of Presiden John F. Kennedy.
They had invited us to share in a traditional meal of fry bread and mutton stew, which as a special treat just for us had some frozen mixed vegetables cooked in with the mutton neck bones.
Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever had mutton stew, but I have to tell you that it is not found on the menus of many 4 star restaurants.
This group of Jr. High an high school kids from Nebraska had never encountered a thin broth of sheep neck bones with a few meager vegetables here and there.
It would have been so easy for them to enter the game of “Kettle and Pot,” to criticize the host’s ability to provide, to make faces and make fun of the thin yellow broth.
But those kids sensed the holiness of this event, and they ate that perfectly awful stuff as if it was grandma’s home cooking… which is exactly what it was to those who had invited us.
I was so proud of this moment when they understood that the intention of the heart was what was most important, not the outside things, and they responded with their own hearts.
I had a similar moment here at St. James. A couple of years ago on our Wednesday Night Soup Suppers, we started to invite those who come to be served by our food pantry to come and eat with us.
Now normally we have an embarrassment of variety of soups, but for a number of reasons, this particular night there was only one pot of soup that someone had brought. There was bread, crackers, and a big tossed salad.
We prayed, and invited our guests, and I watched as each and every member of St. James bypassed the soup (tasty as it looked) and just “felt like a salad” tonight so that our guests could have the soup.
It would have been so easy to fall into complaining about how folks were really slipping up around here, or to criticize the planning committee, or to complain about things.
I was so proud watching as each and every one of us got the matter of the heart that night, and what was important, and how reflecting on how blessed you were made skipping a meal, (which is, after all, a Lenten discipline!) possible.
I give you those examples because I think they reveal to us what Jesus is up to in this Gospel.
This is about what comes from the heart, and valuing that over all the other stuff.
This is about being able to be self-reflective enough to recognize what is truly important.
If you cannot do that, then people suffer.
“This people” suffers, because whenever peoples’ hearts are far from God, the result is always suffering in some measure.
So today, Jesus does indeed sound a little sharp, but not to do what this world would try to do, win any arguments.
Today Jesus is sharp to make us reflect and think, that “this people”… God’s people… may not have to suffer any more.
RevMerle 