To Make Things

Scripture: Mark 7.1-8, 14-15, 21-23; Psalm 8; James 1.17-18


Think of a few of your favorite things. Maybe you think summer at the beach; Friday night football. Maybe you’re thinking a walk in the woods; maybe you’re thinking Arby’s. I’m thinking pie, lots of pie.

What we don’t often think is, “What makes these things good?” What makes a blueberry pie a good thing? Well, it tastes good. But why does it taste good? Why do we have good taste? Why should anything taste good or be a pleasure?

Many people spend a lot of time asking, “Why do bad things happen to me?” Very rarely do we ever ask, “Why all this pleasure? Why the good stuff?”

Scripture and the Church have an answer for that question, both those questions really. But before I get to that let me talk about two lies.

The first lie is that the Church doesn’t know anything about evil. You know how it goes. Christians are naïve. They don’t live in the real world. They live sheltered lives and don’t understand how things work. They don’t understand the real problems ordinary people face.

Really? Occasionally I have people come to me with problems and their approach is pretty uniform. What I mean by that is they don’t usually come and say, “Pastor, I know you’ll understand because you’ve probably heard this from many people before. In fact, you’ve probably experienced it yourself.”

No. Usually, a person will come to me and say, very hesitantly and reluctantly, “I have this problem that I need to talk to someone about. I don’t know, maybe I can tell you.” Then they confess their problem or their transgression, and I say, “That’s horrible! You disgust me. Get out of my office!” Kidding.

No, they wait for me, I think, to do something like that, to express shock and outrage. When I don’t seem visibly upset, they look at me like, “Did you just hear what I said. They may even say something like, “Has anyone ever told you anything like that before?”

I assure them that I have heard worse. Remember, I’m also a priest. Remember, the Church has been around awhile. We know who the Devil is. In the years and seasons when it is fashionable in societies to say there is no objective evil or good, that it’s all perspective; the Church says, “Woe to those who call good, evil, and evil, good.” When the academic or cultural elite say that the worst sin is the sin of intolerance perpetrated by religious fanatics – the Church reminds the world of Auschwitz and Treblinka. The Church says “We battle not against flesh and blood but against the principalities and powers, against this present darkness. . .”

That’s the first lie. The second lie is like unto the first. It goes: The Church doesn’t know much about good and having a good time. The Church says food is bad, drink is bad, sex is bad. . .It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive, is it?


This is a common caricature of Church and church people to say that they don’t want anybody to enjoy themselves. It’s a stereotype that has a sliver of historical basis. The Pharisees in Jesus day were known for their passion for the Law and living out a rigorous obedience to the Law in the smallest of details. They took it not only to extreme but so out of context as to misunderstand God’s will for his people. They started with a good intent – purify yourself before God – and turned into a bad thing – most of you other people can never be pure. What started as God’s invitation to everybody to come to him was turned into a barrier so that no one could come to Him.

Jesus and his disciples lived differently. They ate and drank and lived like they actually enjoyed it. And they broke a few rules and traditions in the process. But Jesus reminded the upset Pharisees that they misunderstood God’s Law. He reminded them that everything in the Creation is good, because a good God made it.

“Hear me and understand: there is nothing outside a man by which going into him can defile him; but the things which come out of a man are what defile him.”

“Out of the heart of man come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man.”

Since this teaching, the Church has always taught that the Creation is good, but the stain on Creation, the problem, is with a human nature corrupted by sin. We are a curious mixture of good and evil. Will we rightly enjoy God’s good gifts to us or will we distort and abuse them- gifts like food, drink, sex, the natural world?

But to say the Church doesn’t know goodness and the good life is a lie.

The people of God are characterized by Joy and joyously asking the question, “Why all is the pleasure? What did we do to deserve all this good?”

“When I look at thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast established; (I ask) what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou dost care for him? Yet thou hast made him little less than God and dost crown him with glory and honor. Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands.” Psalm 8.3-6

“Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.” James 1.17-18

We are not only created by a good God but we are entrusted to be stewards of the Creation. We are invited to be in a sense, co-creators with the Spirit of God to continue bearing good fruit and doing Kingdom work.

I remember my grandfather fondly, not the least for his ability to be a creator. He created many wonderful things as a gardener, a carpenter, a maker of homemade ice cream.
As a kid, it seemed almost magical to me that my pap could produce things from the ground like potatoes and corn in such abundance. He could make things!

It is the simple things that we create with our hands, from birdhouses to blueberry pies, that remind us perhaps most directly that indeed “Why all this pleasure!”

“There is no greater thing to be said of God Himself than that He makes things.” G.K. Chesterton

We have a marvelous opportunity and potential do good things, to make good things in our lives. God has gone to great lengths, breaking the body of His own Son, so that we can make life abundantly through him. Let us come to the Table of Life together.