Six years ago this summer, it changed the face of America. It was an event unlike any other: unexpected, bewildering, and addictive. Eight women and eight men were stranded on a Malaysian island and were forced to fight each other as well as monkeys, sea snakes, and camera crews. To what end? Food, shelter, and a million dollars.[1] That’s right. Six years ago, Reality TV was born to the networks with the first season of Survivor. 

For those of you who don’t know, the gist of Survivor would have made Darwin proud. Teams battling it out against each other with difficult field day type of challenges: like navigating standing on a raft while lighting floating woks with tiki torches. They survive on a diet of rats and bugs. In this “reality,” they gather weekly for a tribal council on a set resembling a “Holiday Inn Polynesian” lounge to vote the weakest member off the island. Every minute of their lives from sleeping to tooth-brushing is recorded, of course, completely naturally and without prompting. This is the grande cup of premium blend of “reality” and game show that has millions of Americans hooked (by the way, the next season begins Sept. 14).

Now, we’re obsessed with Reality TV. It began on cable, moved to the Networks, and now we have “reality” TV shows about achieving very “real” and practical things like becoming a rock star or a famous billionaire tycoon corporate executive. We love standing on the outside looking in on these contrived reality shows where contestants have to jump through all the rule hoops to win. If we’re honest too, more than the competition, we really love the drama of watching people twist and turn the rules to their own advantage and watching people argue, fight, gossip, and cry. After all, with “reality” TV, at the end of the day winning, using the rules to your advantage, and looking out for number one matter; friendship, matters of the heart, and compassion all come second.

In Mark’s gospel today, the Pharisees are very much using the rules to their advantage to vote Jesus off the island, so to speak. Matters of the heart are an afterthought to the Pharisees, and Jesus calls them on it. For you see, in Jewish tradition, cleanliness is next to Godliness. Cleanliness isn’t about simply being clean. That which is clean reflects that which is pure and holy; purity and holiness reflect the very essence of who God is and how God desires the world to be. It’s like putting on glasses, lenses of God, through which everything seen is ordered to be pure and holy. From the growing of food, to the cutting of meat, to the washing of hands, everything must be ordered and done to reflect not ourselves, but God. It’s beautiful when you think about it—embracing and imitating God at every level of human life so that even mundane tasks help people see with God’s eyes and with God’s heart. And this is not a Sabbath-day-only kind-of thing, it’s a way of life. Levitical laws and kosher customs aren’t rules just for the sake of having hoops to jump through and drama as a result, but they are rules for ordering life around God’s reality.

So when the Pharisees ask Jesus why his disciples don’t follow the rules, why aren’t they honoring God with the purity of their hands, Jesus says, in reality, the heart of the matter isn’t dirty hands but dirty hearts.   [v. 6] “He said to them, ‘Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites: this people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” Jesus doesn’t use the word hypocrite lightly. For what is the Greek root of the word hypocrite? The word defines an actor, a performer. Someone who creates a pretend reality for the sake of entertainment. And before the day of elaborate costume and set changes, what did Actors wear to change characters? Masks.  

Jesus wants the Pharisees to take off the masks, to stop looking at the rightness of their actions and to start looking at the wrongness within their hearts, for one cannot exist without the other. Jesus wants them to stop hiding behind their contrived reality—while their words tell Jesus the Pharisees are honoring God’s tradition and law by wanting clean hands, Jesus stands on the outside looking in at them and says, you might want to consider also cleansing your heart. For in God’s reality, it is what’s on the inside that defiles. It’s not about Softsoap; it’s about making room for the love of God within you.

Perhaps many of you are curious as to why I’ve included the Song of Solomon, which, by the way, only shows up twice in a three-year lectionary cycle. I mean after all, what on earth do the Pharisees and the Fairy Tale love language of the Song of Solomon have in common? Well, to an extent, they both show images of God standing on the outside looking in. This beautiful, (if not mushy) love poetry of the Song of Solomon can be interpreted to illustrate two loves: the love between a woman and a man and the love between God and God’s people.

The image that captured my heart as I read this text was not so much the romantic aspect of it, but it was the image of standing on the outside, pausing to look in. The pursuing beloved (who apparently is as attractive as a gazelle) pauses, stands at a distance on the outside, looking in on that which he most loves. We all know beautiful things make us take pause…the ocean, the mountains, fields of blue bonnets, our family, our friends, a kind act…but do we take pause to notice, to be impacted? Do we notice the beauty around us or within us? What else do we see here? After the Beloved takes pause, and in a very Fairy Tale type way, he speaks to the woman, or God speaks to Israel, and says, “Stand up from where you are, come be with me; winter is over, spring is here—we have a new beginning, together.”

Pharisees and Fairy Tales…assigned together in today’s lectionary passages; how do they work together? What we see here is layers of scripture working together so that the words of God remind us to pay attention to what is in our hearts—the good, the bad, the ugly. Are we pausing to pay attention to the beautiful people and opportunities God gives us, or are we too busy or too distracted or too scared to notice? Are we paying attention to the ways we are use the rules as excuses for holding on to the dirty things in our hearts? So what if I cheated a little bit or lied a little bit or was too busy to notice my hurting friend or my child wanting to play with me? I’m at church today, I can ask God for forgiveness, I’ll do better next time. I’m a Christian, but the reality is I have a family to feed and care for and a business to run so at the end of the day, winning matters—living life, doing the best I can, and being on top matters; being inconvenienced by friendship, matters of the heart, and loyalty to God all come second. Purity, holiness, good intentions? Overrated.

Yet, in God’s reality, God stands on the outside looking in on that which God most loves…you, and every other child of God. God wants us to see ourselves and see each other as God sees, with God’s glasses. I know you’ve heard some about Kenya from George, but I hope you won’t mind hearing a story about Kenya from me. And for that matter, I hope you won’t mind always hearing stories and the various layers of meaning all the mission trips from this summer held for the people who went. Invite us to your Sunday School classes, to lunch, we have stories, disappointments, and joys to share with you all—we saw with God’s eyes, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and we want you to see too.

I have an image from Kenya that has been seared on my heart…and honestly, I’m not sure what to do with it, except to share it. The group was arriving back at our hotel after a long day of working at the Medical Clinic and with the orphan children. The medical clinic van arrived first and as we were being handed our nights’ supply of bottled drinking water, a large, cold bottle of Dasani, we were discussing how and where we should take a group picture, certainly a reasonable thing to do. To be honest, I was tired, wasn’t feeling good, and honestly didn’t feel like helping organize the group picture, so I sat down a bit away from the conversation…and that’s when I saw him.  The man who was disfigured and literally covered in dirt. I knew I shouldn’t stare but I couldn’t help it. Not to be mean, but as a point of simply being honest, he was literally the dirtiest human being I had ever seen. Not just a little dusty, but dirt was literally caked on him as if he had slept on the ground with only a puddle of mud as his blanket.

He was obviously poor, hungry, and was outside the gate around our hotel quietly and apologetically begging, standing there with his hands out while hotel staff quietly tried to shoo him away from us. He was standing there on the outside looking in while we drank our clean, cold, water, played with our digital cameras, and discussed taking a picture. His most immediate concern was surviving a harsh life one more day; our most immediate concern was organizing a picture.   The irony slapped me in the face. I stood up to go give him my bottle of Dasani and that’s when I saw the others. Other women and men standing outside the gate looking in at us, looking at the man covered in dirt, looking at me walking towards him. And I stopped. I knew I couldn’t give the man my American bottle of Dasani water—because even had we all given away our water, there would have been even more who would have to go without. My heart shattered and I knew in that moment, I was seeing with my eyes and my heart what God sees on a daily basis—the heartbreaking reality of seeing how some of God’s children have much and how many of God’s children have little.   

And I’m sorry, I really am. I know this isn’t a happy, Fairy Tale, snapshot of Kenya I’m sharing. I know that it’s hard to hear and hard to see and I know life is hard enough as it is. I know being paralyzed by guilt isn’t the answer and I know it’s not anyone’s fault for being born in one country or another. And I don’t know how to fix it. But I also know that at night, the reality is, I have a pillow to cry into and that man doesn’t. I know I saw a beautiful child of God begging me, another child of God, for help and I couldn’t. And the reason I felt dirtier than the man covered in dirt was because the only reason I saw with God’s eyes that day is because problem-solver, organizer, Pastoral Resident Amy decided not to be problem-solver or organizer in that moment; I selfishly and accidentally decided to be still, to take pause, and that is what I saw. God told my heart in that moment, you can’t fix it alone, but you can stop to see it, to feel it, and to know poverty as an ugly reality that needs to be changed. Because my friends, if we aren’t able to see the dirt, both within ourselves and within the world, how will we ever be able to bring ourselves or the world to know the cleansing love of Christ?    

It’s Labor Day weekend. It’s not a church calendar holiday, but it’s an extra day off, a reprieve—for some, not all people get Labor Day off. Regardless, what I think stories about Pharisees and Fairy Tales are telling us all, is to stop. Put down the paint brushes and grocery lists and party supplies, if even for a moment. Be still. Take a look around you and within you. Is there hurt within us that we need to process with God? Is there hurt around us, in our families, in our church, in our communities near and far, that needs paying attention to? Do we know, do we see, God standing on the outside of our hearts, looking in on our lives and wanting to be a part of that which God most loves? Are we tuning in to God’s reality or are we hooked on the world’s contrived reality? This day, begin again. Know that you are loved, know that the world is loved, and know that if we stop to pay attention, God can begin to lead us all out of the dark winter and into a new spring. Thanks be to God. Amen.   

 

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