Text: Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 Revised Standard Version (RSV)
7 Now when the Pharisees gathered together to him, with some of the scribes, who had come from Jerusalem, 2 they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands defiled, that is, unwashed. 3 (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they wash their hands,[a] observing the tradition of the elders; 4 and when they come from the market place, they do not eat unless they purify[b] themselves;[c] and there are many other traditions which they observe, the washing of cups and pots and vessels of bronze.[d]) 5 And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live[e] according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with hands defiled?” 6 And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,
‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me;
7 in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.’
8 You leave the commandment of God, and hold fast the tradition of men.”
14 And he called the people to him again, and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: 15 there is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him; but the things which come out of a man are what defile him.”
21 For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, 22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man.”
James 1:17-27 Revised Standard Version (RSV)
17 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.[a] 18 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.
Hearing and Doing the Word
19 Know this, my beloved brethren. Let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, 20 for the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God. 21 Therefore put away all filthiness and rank growth of wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if any one is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who observes his natural face in a mirror; 24 for he observes himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. 25 But he who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer that forgets but a doer that acts, he shall be blessed in his doing.
26 If any one thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this man’s religion is vain. 27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
The child runs into the kitchen for dinner.
“Did you wash your hands?” you ask.
“Uh-huh!” says the child.
You check the child’s hands. They are bone dry. “Go back and wash your hands!” you order the child.
Anyone who has ever had children or has ever dealt with kids knows that struggle. It seems to be one of those odd laws of nature – every small child I have ever seen seems to have an absolutely magnetic attraction to water – if, that is, it’s in the form of a mud puddle, or a sink full of water, or even the cat’s or the dog’s water bowl. We have pictures of our kids when they were small, holding the hose in one of their little hands, covered head to toe in mud, and beaming like the Cheshire Cat, having the time of their lives – but ask them to wash their hands before a meal, and they act like water’s some kind of acid!
But of course, this passage is not really about washing hands. It is actually about tradition. Actually, it’s really more about the misuse of tradition.
The traditions that Jesus’ disciples were abusing in the eyes of the Pharisees were rooted in ancient Jewish law, which originally meant just two things – first, the Ten Commandments, and second, the first five books of the Old Testament, known as the Pentateuch. And although the Pentateuch contains a lot of detailed regulations and instructions, in the matter of moral questions, it simply paints the canvas in broad strokes, providing basically an outline of great moral principles, and individuals were left to interpret and apply these broad principles as best as they could.
For centuries, this approach worked just fine. But somewhere around 500 years Christ, there arose a class of people we have come to know as the scribes, who became the legal experts of Israel. They were not happy with broad strokes and great moral principles; they liked everything defined and nailed down. And in the end, they wound up with thousands and thousands of little rules and regulations governing every possible action and every possible situation in life. Problem was, for all their meticulousness, nobody had bothered to write these rules down! I can’t even imagine how frustrating this had to be for everybody in those days – at any given moment, you could basically just assume that you’d just broken one or more of these rules, without ever really even knowing which ones you were breaking!
These rules were known as the oral law and made up what was referred to in today’s Gospel lesson as the tradition of the elders – the “Ancient Ones,” in other words. The particular rule at issue here, of course, had to do with the washing of hands. But it had nothing at all to do with actual hygiene, but rather, it had to ceremonial cleanliness. Before meals as well as between each of the courses, the hands had to be washed, and that in a certain way, with a specific amount of water which had also been set aside in a large stone jar to make sure it was clean…and on it went. We don’t need to go through the entire ritual.
The point here is that to fail to perform this ritual was not just to be guilty of bad manners, but to be unclean in the sight of God. Anyone who ate with unclean hands opened himself or herself to the attacks of a demon called Shibta, and even became liable to suffer poverty and destruction. A rabbi who once didn’t wash properly was buried in excommunication; another rabbi who was imprisoned by the Romans, instead of drinking the water his jailers gave him, used it for hand washing – and nearly died of thirst because of it!
This was “religion” in the eyes of the Pharisees and the scribes – full of ceremonial practices, rituals, superstition, and thousands upon thousands of regulations. It makes you wonder how they found time to do anything else!
It just seems insane, doesn’t it?
But, well – don’t we, too, have traditions? Don’t we also love our traditions? I know I do! What is Christmas without a Christmas tree? When I was growing up, and when we were raising our kids, we always had a real, live Christmas tree. And our family tradition, like yours, was to go get the tree, bring it home, set it up, and decorate it – in our case, while watching “Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol” on video. But after the kids pretty much left home, Katie and I started setting up an artificial tree; and now, we don’t even do that. Except when Madelaine’s going to be home for Christmas, in which case, there will be a Christmas tree, and it will be a live one!
And that’s just one tradition. There are so many others! Every family, every club, every company, every nation, and of course every church – every human group has a set of traditions. These traditions are so much a part of us that we often don’t even recognize them.
The structure of our Sunday services, too, is a tradition which goes back ‘way farther than you might think. It has its roots in the order of worship in the synagogues! I once found a Jewish book of worship on the shelves of our seminary library – when I looked through it, I found that what they do in their worship services was almost identical to what we do!
Traditions! They make us what we are. Traditions help us to fit into our world and to understand it. Traditions help us to know who we are.
But there’s a trap with traditions that we all too easily fall into. Our traditions can also become a cage. And because we have created that cage, we often don’t even know we’re trapped in it. We get so used to peering between the bars that we don’t even see those bars anymore.
One of the basic beliefs of Christian faith is summed up in the statement you’ve all heard: Jesus came to fulfill the Law. In other words, with his coming, the Law ceased to have its power and effect. It was null and void. Jesus demonstrated his new reality with everything he taught and every miracle he performed.
This could not help but put Jesus directly at odds with those scribes and Pharisees who saw their carefully-constructed house of cards falling down around their ears. For them, there was no such things as superseding the Law, for it was the very essence of religion. It didn’t matter to them what was in your heart. It didn’t matter if you loved your neighbor as yourself. It didn’t matter if you cared for and about others. All that mattered was that you correctly followed the rules. Their rules. Not God’s rules.
But Jesus was never squeamish about going toe to toe with these people. They spoke in the language of their own near-sightedness, their deep-seated conceit and high-handed arrogance. Jesus spoke in the language of a loving God. The split between Jesus and these adversaries was total and irreconcilable.
Jesus calls the crowd together and says: “Be careful! Being clean, being righteous, being pure, is not about a bunch of rules, rules that exist outside of you, rules you can follow without paying any attention at all to what’s going on inside of you. Righteousness is not about how you behave when people are watching. You need to pay attention to the condition of your heart!”
“There is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him; but the things which come out of a man are what defile him…For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts…”
The Epistle Lesson for this morning echoes Jesus’ words when we read about “the law of liberty” which is seen in loving acts, and which reflect God’s true, pure, and undefiled religion, which is: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. In other words, it is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
You don’t need to do a lot of memorization of rules when you live like that.
Traditions are great, as long as they don’t become a tool we use to exclude others, or even worse, a trap for ourselves. Hearts that strive to love others and do the right thing in the same way that Jesus did are better than all the rules of the world put together!
That’s the way Jesus calls us to live!
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.