Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-november-10
Matthew 15:1-20
Clean and Unclean
1Then 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’ and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ 5 But you say that if anyone says to their father or mother, ‘Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift 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 rules taught by men.’”
10 Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand. 11 What goes into someone’s mouth does not make them ‘unclean,’ 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. 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 the mouth come from the heart, and these make a person ‘unclean.’ 19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. 20 These are what make a person ‘unclean’; but eating with unwashed hands does not make them ‘unclean.’”
Maybe it’s just me, but I find myself reacting with suspicion whenever I hear people talking about “purity.” You sometimes hear church people using the term, usually in connection with abstinence from sexual activity. For a while, it was very common for some churches to ask their teenagers to take a vow of purity. The point was to get them to refrain from sexual activity until marriage. Some churches would even get their teenagers to wear “purity rings” as a mark of that vow.
But often these churches would seem to go overboard in enforcing their vision of purity. Young people who were found to be engaging in any form of sexual activity would be aggressively shamed by the community of faith. Sometimes there were likened to ‘used Kleenex’ that no one in their right mind would want. All in the name of purity.
And I’ve also noticed the word purity is sometimes used by political or ideological groups as a way of insisting that members buy 100% into the ideology. Anyone who questions any part of the group’s program is accused of being ideologically impure.
I guess that’s what makes me suspicious — so often when the term purity is used, it seems to have a lot more to do with control and manipulation than it does with living in a way that expresses God’s love.
That’s often true of the way the idea of purity is expressed in the gospels, and our reading for today seems like a good example. In the Hebrew culture of Jesus’ day, purity practices like ritualized hand-washing were considered essential for observant Jews. Hebrew tradition understood that there was a close connection between the ideas of ‘purity’ and ‘righteousness.’ So an elaborate system of religious rituals was established to keep believers ritually pure – to protect them from the ritual impurity that came from touching blood or a dead body or a person with certain diseases like leprosy.
But when Jesus and his disciples were criticized for failing to perform the hand-washing ritual, he articulated a vision of purity that had more to do with human compassion than with washing. He pointed out that the Hebrew religious leaders were strict about purity rituals like hand-washing, but casual about enforcing the laws that protected the rights of the needy and the vulnerable. And apparently the leaders were willing to bend the laws when it was in their own interest.
For example, it seems that the religious leaders were allowing well-to-do Jews to neglect their elderly parents so they could give more of their money to the temple or the synagogue. So some old people were living in poverty while their prosperous children and the religious leaders were comfortable and well-fed.
Here’s what Jesus was talking about: According to the historians, the temple leadership was allowing people to set up what is called a “charitable remainder trust” in our time. People could keep their money to use while they were alive, but have it all given to the temple or the synagogue when they died. So these rich people could enjoy their wealth without being obligated to do anything to help needy relatives, even their parents. These prosperous Jews were apparently being encouraged to say to their parents, “Sorry, I can’t help you. All my money is promised to the temple.”
So you can see why Jesus would regard this as something other than genuine, godly purity. It’s hard to imagine that God would accept this kind of behavior as obedience to his commandment to honor your father and mother. But it seems that the religious leadership was allowing it, and maybe even encouraging it. So not surprisingly, Jesus didn’t have much patience with lectures about purity from people who were allowing such an obvious violation of one of the ten commandments.
Then Jesus goes on to make a larger point – that impurity isn’t something that comes upon us from the outside. The impurity that matters to God comes from within us. We make ourselves impure by doing and saying things that are displeasing to God. Clearly sexual immorality is one of those things, but Jesus also includes evil thoughts, murder, theft, false testimony and slander. And of course, false testimony and slander are the main ingredients of gossip.
It seems to me that in this passage, Jesus re-defines what it means to be religious. Or maybe even rejects the idea of being religious altogether. The Hebrew leadership taught people to observe a whole bunch of practices and rituals that were supposed to help them to be pure and righteous. But those rituals and practices were consistent with God’s will only if they encouraged people to love their neighbors – to extend compassion and care to others. The rituals themselves couldn’t make people pure or righteous.
Acting pure and religious wasn’t the mark of a truly godly person then, and it’s not the mark of a true follower of Jesus now. I feel pretty safe in saying that our master would be fine with his disciples eating with dirty hands, if they got those hands dirty helping the needy. On the other hand, he seems less impressed by people who strictly perform religious rituals, but seem really focused on serving their own interests.
Let’s pray. Lord, protect us from thinking that religious rituals and practices – or any form of religiosity – will make us pure and righteous in your eyes. Move us by your Spirit to serve others in Jesus’ name, as he did when he walked among us. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Henry
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