Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-february-3-2025
Mark 7:1-23
Clean and Unclean
1The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus 2 and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were “unclean,” that is, unwashed. 3 (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders.4 When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.)
5 So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?”
6 He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:
“‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
7 They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.’
8 You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.”
9 And he continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! 10 For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and, ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ 11 But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is Corban (that is, devoted to God)— 12 then you no longer let them do anything for their father or mother. 13 Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.”
14 Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. 15 Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that makes them unclean.”
17 After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. 18 “Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can make them ‘unclean’? 19 For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods “clean.”)
20 He went on: “What comes out of a person is what makes them ‘unclean.’ 21 For from within, out of a person’s heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, 22 adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. 23 All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”
This is a long and complicated reading. It’s a reading that makes us try to see things from the point of view of the ancient Hebrew faithful. But it’s one that has an important lesson for us, so it’s worth the effort it takes to follow the argument Jesus is making.
A good place to start is to think about how the Hebrews thought about the idea of righteousness. In their minds, purity and righteousness sort of merged. That’s not really a problem – being righteous can be understood as doing things that are ethically pure.
The problem was that over the centuries, the Hebrews lost sight of the fact that their religious practices around the idea of purity – as it was symbolized by cleanliness – were meant to be a metaphor for righteousness. The Jews had lost sight of the fact that their purity rituals were meant to be symbolic. They had fallen into the habit of thinking that these rituals actually made them pure and holy. And once you get to that point, it’s a pretty short step to thinking that if you didn’t do the rituals, then you were impure and unholy on God’s eyes.
So by Jesus’ day, people had lost perspective and were thinking that the practices themselves had the power to make a person righteous – to make them pure. But some of the Jews – even some of the religious leaders – were living scandalously sinful lives, and thinking that these purity rituals had a kind of magical power to put them right with God.
And in Jesus’ eyes, it got even worse. In this passage, he says that some of the religious leaders were actually teaching people to do things that violated the heart of God’s law. For example, some people were being persuaded to draw up what we would call a “charitable remainder trust.” That said they could keep all their money and use it for their own purposes, but the temple would get it all when they died. And then once they made out that document, those people would stop supporting their elderly parents. They’d say, “Sorry, Mom and Dad, all my money belongs to the temple now.”
So that was obviously good for the temple and its religious leadership, but anyone who gave it a moment’s thought could see that it violated God’s commandment to honor our father and mother. It was a policy that humans thought up, but one that was being promoted by the religious leadership.
And today’s reading seems to say that corrupt practices like that affected how Jesus thought about the whole concept of “ritual purity,” with all its rules and regulations about hand-washing and such.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with religious rituals, as long as they meet a couple of conditions. First of all, they ought to remind us of something important that God has said or done. And second, people shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking the ritual itself makes a person righteous.
The best example I know of is one you might remember me mentioning before. It concerns a kosher slaughterhouse in the Midwest. In keeping with Jewish practice, the slaughterhouse had a rabbi on-site to supervise their practices so their products could be certified as kosher. But the rabbi discovered that the slaughterhouse was employing illegal immigrants and underpaying them. And if the workers complained, the company would call Immigration and have them deported. So the rabbi withdrew the company’s kosher certification. He said that there’s more to being kosher than just washing your knives correctly. Being kosher means being committed to doing things as God would have them done.
I think that’s exactly the point Jesus is getting at in today’s passage. Our actions, our words and even our thoughts make can us impure in ways that really matter to God – in ways that all the ritual hand-washings in the world can’t wash away. And Jesus lists a number of sins that can make us impure. I’m sure he could have listed many more.
The fact is that since we’re always going to be unclean in God’s eyes because of our sins, we depend for our salvation on God’s grace – on the undeserved favor we get as followers of Jesus. And since we’re dependent on God’s grace, it’s incumbent on us to extend grace to others who might sin against us or let us down.
Grace, and not purity, is really the central aspect of our relationship with God. It’s only that grace that allows God to overlook our impurity and embrace us as adopted children and to invite us to call him Abba – ‘Papa’ – just as Jesus does.
Let’s pray. Lord, protect us from thinking that because we take part in ‘religious activities,’ we are somehow more acceptable in your eyes than others. Remind us that although you call us to strive for greater faithfulness to your law, we will never succeed in making ourselves clean in your eyes. So let us cling to the grace that comes to us through Jesus, and extend that grace to others in his name. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Henry
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