Gospel: Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
A reading from the Gospel of Mark.
Glory to you, O Lord.
Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around [Jesus], they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, O Christ.
Now let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you O Lord, our strength and Redeemer
INTRO
Everyone knows it is a good idea to wash your hands before eating. Still, in our Gospel lesson it seems as though the Pharisees are taking things a bit too far and being real sticklers about this whole hand-washing thing. That is, of course, until we realize that the issue here is not hygiene. Rather, it’s about priorities in faith and what is important to God.
Central to our understanding is the word translated in v. 2 and elsewhere as “defile.” Strictly speaking, the original Greek word does not refer so much to defiling or being unclean. Rather, it describes what is common and ordinary. At stake here is the Pharisees’ belief that food should be eaten with hands that have been sanctified and readied for the task of eating, so that mealtime becomes a religious observance. But, Jesus says the most significant part of living faith is not our observance of rituals but the ways faith shapes our character and enables us to live authentically. Order and doctrine exist to guide our faith, but we do not worship these things. Instead, they are useful only when they help us draw closer to God and the values God intends for us to live by.
TEXT
Let’s take a closer look at our Gospel text. Both Mark 6 and 8 record miracle feedings, at least 5,000 satisfied appetites, followed by another 4,000. Between these two narratives, Mark records another eating dilemma, this time not about the availability of food, but about strict group boundaries related to eating. At first glance the passage immediately raises questions about exclusivity: who may eat and who may not eat; who is rightly prepared for the meal and who is not. The implicit question is not how to feed those who are gathered, but rather, why are the disciples not appropriately prepared to eat? More specifically, why has Jesus not required adherence to the “traditions of the elders”?
An ongoing framing for those who sought to undermine Jesus was to situate him as a lawbreaker. Not only does Jesus allow the disciples to eat without the ceremonial washing of hands, but he also touches those who are sick, interacts with a woman with a hemorrhage, and drives out unclean spirits. He challenges readers to rethink the contexts of laws and traditions, with real people in mind.
In Mark’s telling, those who are presumed to be among the most religious attend to their customs and traditions with little regard for those who are hungry. Notice, Jesus does not condemn the Jewish washing practice, one of many rituals common to their faith identity. Jewish food practices helped build community and reminded Jewish people of their commitment to live according to God’s values. The issue is not with traditions—it is the promoting of human traditions over the commands of God.
The missing section of the lectionary reading is Jesus’ commentary on selective following of the oral traditions and circumventing them when it is convenient. In other words, Jesus critiques the leaders for inconsistency in their religious practices, while they hold others to the letter of the law.
LIFE
This is a great text to explore as September begins, the programmatic year in church kicks off, and many people return to the routine that comes with fall. It causes us to ask how we can be good stewards of faith, the instruction we receive at church, and the rituals that sustain us in faith. Here are some questions we might ask ourselves and try to answer:
- How is our inner character being molded and expanded by our faith? How does our participation in worship prepare us for the other six days of the week and how do we live our faith once we have left the church building?
- Rather than gauging our religious devoutness by how many times we set foot in a sanctuary, we can ask how what we receive in worship is feeding us in our everyday lives.
- What matters to God and what should matter to us? Is it important how many church activities we are involved in if they are not helping our faith to grow and draw closer to God?
Human rules sometimes get in the way of sharing the goodness and grace of the kingdom of heaven. We may know all the rules, but are we following Jesus to make sure everyone is fed?
I’m so happy to be back in the Gospel of Mark and to read this week’s passage. Pharisees and scribes had come from Jerusalem to gather around Jesus. Now, we need the context: Jesus was in the neighborhood of the Gennesaret, a small plain on the west side of the Sea of Galilee. This isn’t far from Capernaum and Jesus’ home base. The crowds all knew of Jesus’ and his disciples’ healing ministry, so they had gathered all who were sick and brought them to the marketplaces. Jesus and his disciples were there, touching and being touched by sick people wanting to be healed. This is the essential context of the conversation between Jesus and the people challenging him.
Mark’s references here—that when the Pharisees come from the marketplace they don’t eat unless they wash their hands—makes more sense, given that context. Is washing your hands before you eat, especially if you’ve been around sick people, a good idea? Of course! But what the Pharisees were trying to understand—and I think they were asking good-faith questions here—was how the disciples could eat with their ministry hands. After all, they had just been supporting Jesus’ healings in the marketplace!
Jesus is incensed by the direction of the question. After healing people, how could the disciples eat? Why not ask instead, “Before they ate, how did Jesus and his disciples heal?” Jesus was explaining that the rules of hand-washing were being used to deprive the people of something that they were owed, based on relationships.
Jesus wades through the waters of tradition to get to his more significant point. It is not the external that matters—nothing on the outside defiles. The behaviors and actions that flow from within are what matter.
Jesus’ words disrupt the clean/unclean, pure/impure, defiled/undefiled dichotomies that characterized Jewish-Gentile interactions during this time. Jesus calls the leaders and the crowd to consider the internal communing of the heart and the actions and behaviors that flow from an evil heart.
CONC
If the disciples must become ritually pure after healing others before they are allowed to eat, at least one of two things would suffer. There would be less time for eating or less time for healing. Jesus was concerned that enforcing hand-washing rules—though a good idea—would get in the way of the provision of food or health. God’s commandments are to love our neighbor as ourselves. Every Pharisee there that day knew this. But by focusing on the “common” hands that the disciples were eating with, the critics missed out on how uncommon the hands were that healed and grasped out to be healed!
It’s not enough to have memorized commandments (or catechisms) if they don’t lead us to action, as James tells us. Instead, if we really gaze at and contemplate God’s perfect law of freedom, we will become not idle questioners and critics but people who do the work and words of Jesus.
So, whatever the state of our hands, we are called to participate in healing, in the power and name of Jesus. And we are called to serve food—again, whatever the state of our hands. Jesus warns that we should not let human traditions get in the way of healing or meals.