Like Unmarked Graves

The travel book said “Blink and you’ll miss it!” and we did. We continued on until we were sure we had passed it, turned back around and turned down a road that mostly served as a driveway for a ranch and a couple of houses. Why were we interested? We were looking for Elizabethtown, the first incorporated village in New Mexico. Gold was discovered there in 1866, and the town boomed to over 7,000 residents. I wanted to see the stone ruins of the Mutz Hotel, the center of the community until the early 1900’s, when the town began to dwindle. A real, true ghost town, the travel guide promised that “The only signs of life are, ironically, in the cemetery, which is still used by residents in the surrounding county and contains graves dating as far back as 1880.” I wanted to walk around that cemetery. So, we found our way down the gravel road to the entrance with a large rod iron sign “Elizabethtown Cemetery” over the double pasture gate, locked. Undeterred, I walked along the fence, up the hill, and found a gate for pedestrians unlocked.

There were newer graves there, with headstones declaring allegiance to the Colts or the Cowboys and white rocks lined up on the mound of dirt. And there were many graves with plants at the headstone that had long since been neglected. And there were these index card sized metal markers everywhere. Someone had tried to find and identify all the graves at some point, but now the markers had blown out or been knocked out of their holders and littered the ground. I was aware, as I looked for the oldest section for the graves from the 1800’s, of being cautious not to step on a grave. But, there were graves everywhere, unmarked, not in nice, neat lines. I grew up in a church beside a cemetery, and while we were allowed to go into the cemetery, we were not allowed to step on the graves.

Jesus told the Pharisees that they were like unmarked graves, that people walked over without knowing it. Numbers 19:16 says, “Anyone out in the open who touches someone who has been killed with a sword or someone who has died a natural death, or anyone who touches a human bone or a grave, will be unclean for seven days.”

Jesus is the dinner guest in the home of a Pharisee, and he tells them that they, these men who are trying to make rules for everyday life to help people live God’s law in their lives perfectly so that God’s kingdom will come, that they are instead causing people to be unclean. They are instead like graves that the people walk on not even realizing they are there. I just imagine the host took
offense.

So, what is going on?

A Pharisee invited Jesus to dinner. He was among the crowd that day as Jesus drove an unclean spirit from a man who had been mute, and the man was able to speak. He had heard the crowd after that cheering for a sign from Jesus. And he heard Jesus reply, “’The only sign you will get is the sign of Jonah’ – the call to repentance. God commanded Jonah, ‘Go to the great city of Nineveh and tell them to end their wicked ways.’ That’s all the sign you will get,” says Jesus. “Blessed are those who hear the word of God and obey it.”

Let’s review who the Pharisees were. The Pharisees were the keepers of the law. Their goal was to help Jewish people make sure that they were saved. All of their rules were designed to try to help people know the right thing to do in every situation so that they would be holy. They were the guardians of public morality. And they weren’t just involved privately at the synagogues, they were a political force as well. They had a tendency, New Testament scholar NT Wright explains, to “load heavy burdens on to people’s backs” but not lift a finger to shift them, to “shriek in mock-horror at all kind of offenses” and finger-point at respectable people, while at the same time failing to be shining examples of morality themselves.

We don’t know why the Pharisee invited Jesus to dinner: maybe he was hoping to raise his social status a bit by hosting the popular healer and teacher, maybe he wanted to know more, maybe he wants to ask Jesus questions, maybe to trip him up or maybe to get more details about how to hear the word of God and obey it.

Whatever the reason for the invitation, Jesus accepts, goes to the Pharisee’s house, and sits down without washing his hands. Now, for someone who is a keeper of the law, this is shocking. The law is clear. Before you sit down at the table, and between courses, you are to wash your hands. They had stone water jars that each held 20-30 gallons of water that was ritually clean, to use for the ceremony. Water was to be poured over the hands beginning at the fingertips and running to the wrist, then the palms were washed by rubbing the fist of the other hand into them, then water was poured again, this time from the wrists to the fingertips. Jesus skips it. He comes in and makes himself comfortable at the table, ready to eat.

Shocking! I just imagine everyone there looked at the host to gauge his reaction. Before he is able to weigh his options for how to confront his guest and still be polite and not break the law himself. He can’t have someone just brazenly breaking the rules at his dinner party, but Jesus is so popular….

Jesus says, “You Pharisees, you clean the outside of your vessels, but the inside are full of violence and wickedness. Fools! Didn’t the One who made the outside make the inside as well? You should give to God wheat is inside; then everything will be clean for you.”

Then he addresses 3 things that are unclean on the inside, 3 “Woes.”

The first “woe” is: “Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone.” They manage to give their ten-percent tithes of their crops, but they don’t offer God justice or love God over all else. Woe to you, Pharisees, because you think that it is possible to figure out mathematically what you owe God. Over the years, I have been asked whether the tithe of ten percent is supposed to be on the net or the gross, pre-tax or post-tax, does it apply to bonuses too? It’s not about that. In fact, Jesus says, woe to you if you think it is. Giving 10 percent of your income to God is a starting place for YOU, not for God. The tithe is to be our first fruits – the first thing we take out of our income before we pay the bills. Not for God. Not for the church. For US. It reminds us that everything we have is from God. It’s like the warm-up in an exercise routine. It warms up our generosity. It gets us ready to do the hard work of justice…and the cool down is that when we have tithed and done the hard work of justice, we reach that joy of loving God with all we have. Woe to you if you just do the warm-up, if you just stretch a bit, and think you’ve worked out.

The second woe is related to the first by irony. : “Woe to you Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and respectful greetings in the marketplaces.” The chief seats were the front seats, looking out. Then the best seats were the front rows, with the congregation sitting in order of decreasing honor. Jesus says, woe to you for relishing being greeted with awe in the marketplace because you sat up front at the synagogue. Woe to you because your very enjoyment of being placed on a pedestal and idolized reveals your love of prestige and your high social standing, and your disdain of justice. The hard work of justice would undercut prejudice and ranking people by social status.

And when you don’t do that hard work, you become hidden contaminants within the church. “Woe to you,” says Jesus, “because you are like unmarked graves, which people walk over without knowing it.” The Pharisees, good church people, who wanted to be sure everyone did what they needed to do to be saved, who figured out their tithe to the penny and were then exempt from any other needs that were brought to their attention because they had already done their part, who came to church in their Sunday best and sat up straight in the front with their heads held high, who tipped their chin in greeting to the children as they passed and the visitors…who knows who their people are, who took attendance in Sunday School and gave certificates and pins for those with perfect attendance, who read their devotion every morning thinking of all those people who really needed this word without struggling with what it might be saying to them,…”Woe,” says Jesus, “you look good on the outside. But what about the inside?”

You go to church.
You follow the rituals.
You give your tithe.
But, you aren’t addressing the systems of injustice. In fact, you are enjoying being on the top of the social ladder.
And because you won’t address the systems of injustice, everybody who you are influencing ends up unknowingly unclean. Because they think it is enough to go to church, and follow the rituals, and give their tithe…and not do the hard work of addressing the systems of injustice.

I walked around that cemetery in Elizabethtown, New Mexico, aware that each grave told a story. A story of a life with a beginning and an ending and the impact that life had on others in between. We, too, have a beginning and an ending, and we have an impact on others in between. May we stretch our generosity, do the hard work of justice, and not be like unmarked graves. Amen.