The Elephant in The Room

If a tree falls in the forest, should we blame the tree?

The blame game.
I'm sure we've all been there.
It has to be somebody's fault and it's so easy to pin it on somebody else.

Playing the blame game can create a gulf, an unspoken middle, an area of confusion and misunderstanding that truly never gets addressed because we are spending too much time quarreling about issues and things around the outside of the problem and never truly getting to the center of it. 

The Pharisees and teachers of the law seem to have a problem and whose fault is it?
Why...their favorite blame game person. It's Jesus, again.

Matthew 15:1-20

New International Version (NIV)

That Which Defiles

15 Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, ² “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”

³ Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? ⁴ For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’^[a] and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’^{[b] 5} But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’ ⁶ they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. ⁷ You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:

⁸ “‘These people honor me with their lips,
    but their hearts are far from me.
⁹ They worship me in vain;
    their teachings are merely human rules.’^[c]”

¹⁰ Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand. ¹¹ What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.”

¹² Then the disciples came to him and asked, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?”
¹³ He replied, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. ¹⁴ Leave them; they are blind guides.^[d] If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.”
¹⁵ Peter said, “Explain the parable to us.”
¹⁶ “Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them. ¹⁷ “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? ¹⁸ But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. ¹⁹ For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. ²⁰ These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.”

The elephant in the room.
Sometimes it's there all by itself, without an argument. More likely, it is there because of a disagreement. Why is it there? What is it? To whom does the elephant belong? Who let this ginormous monstrosity into the room in the first place? How do we get rid of it?

The first way to address the elephant is to ask the proper questions.
The blame game never accomplishes this. 
As hard as it may be to get a grip on the actual problem, attacking the other participant never gets them to take ownership of it. There has to be a way to get the party in ownership of the elephant to take it by it's lead and escort it from the room. Otherwise, they leave and the elephant remains.

Lets look closer at the conversation between these two parties.

First, the Pharisees come in and have a problem on their minds, but is it actually the real problem?
The problem they have is that people aren't washing their hands before they eat.
It seems like a legitimate problem. "Cleanliness before godliness" is real truth, isn't it?
It's a "tradition" they suggest and it should be upheld.

In addressing the elephant, you'd think Jesus would walk right up to it, punch it in the nose and make it clear that it has no reason to be here in the first place. But he doesn't do that.

If they aren't going to actually come out and say what their problem is then he isn't going to come out and address it either. Jesus decides to take a side route and hit a nerve with them while not actually addressing the elephant.

“And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?

It seems the Pharisees and teachers of the law had a little law they made up for themselves where if they had something valuable they wanted to devote to God, they could do so and consecrate it for that purpose, but if their own mother or father was in need and maybe that item could be of used to honor them they decided that the item didn't have to be used for that purpose. God comes first.

In doing so they were, essentially, breaking a commandment. "Honor your father and mother".
They nullified the word of God for the sake of their own "tradition".
He even had Scripture to drive his point home. Jesus quotes Isaiah with boldness.

⁸ “‘These people honor me with their lips,
    but their hearts are far from me.
⁹ They worship me in vain;
    their teachings are merely human rules.’^[c]”

Ok. Jesus hit the point here and they should have gotten it.
But, was the problem actually addressed? And what in the world does any of this have to do with the blessed subject of evangelism that we have been talking about this summer?

Lets rewind.
They come to Jesus complaining about the "washing of hands".
The uncleanness. The filthy. What's their real problem? Well, just take a stroll through the gospels and see. They have never liked the company that Jesus has kept. He eats with "sinners and tax collectors". The downtrodden of society. Those who are destitute and poor. The sick. The needy.
These religious leaders think that if Jesus is the Messiah, then he should be hanging around with those who keep the covenant, the laws, the ones working in the temple and upholding the ways of God as they have traditionally been presented for the generations. Themselves.

Without hitting it on the head, Jesus skirt the issues directly and hits them where they live.
Their traditions.

Listen to Jesus again. Go back up and read it.
If I am hearing this properly, I see Jesus saying to them...
"You complain and gripe because I'm hanging around with the poor and sinners. You think I should be hanging around with you. What makes you special? You are no better than these folks out here and these are the folks who are truly in need!"

To top it off, Jesus turns to the crowd and addresses them also.

¹⁰ Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand. ¹¹ What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them."

Not only does he put the Pharisees and leaders on the spot, he trumps their authority and tell the crowd that what these people have been teaching is null and void. 

And his disciples ask him...
“Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?”

NO! Geez...really?? You think I offended them? Really? That's like asking a preacher on fire on a Sunday morning if he really gets what he's doing when he's stepping on people's toes. "Hey, pastor, I think somebody might not like that...." NO! Really????

The elephant in the room might just be true for us in 2013 as well.

Do we want to socialize with those outside of here? Do we want to welcome in those that we are not familiar with and have never met? Are there people in need around us? Do we see the need? or, instead of approaching the need, we create a prickly point to ponder, hang back, point the prickly thing at somebody else, creating a buffer and a wall and then separating ourselves so as to not have actual contact with the issue in the first place.

The word "pharisee" literally means "separated one".
How 'separated' are we from our world?
Is there an unspoken 'elephant' in our rooms?

How can we be used of God to lead the elephant out of the room?