Saint Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-21
"Every day Mama said, You’re going to crack your head wide open, but no sir. I broke my arm instead.”1 That little gem from The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingslover that I mentioned last week perfectly sums up most of our childhoods. Except, I hope for the broken arm part.
Every child has heard a variation on these words and every adult has probably said them.
“Don’t run with scissors,” was one of the mantras.
“Be careful when you are crossing the street.” was good and helpful advise especially in Chicago where we believe that even if you are in a crosswalk, once you have stepped off the sidewalk you are fair game.”
Most of us were told that we had to wait forty-five minutes after eating before we could go swimming. According to the Mayo Clinic website, "We know now that really there is no scientific basis for that recommendation," and that “this is not a dangerous activity to routinely enjoy."2
Some warnings came with a warning. My aunt used to say whenever an activity hinted of danger: “If you hurt yourself, don’t come crying to me.”
My mother, on the other hand, had perhaps the strangest admonition of all when my friends and I were roughhousing in the pool and she would call out, “Mind your spleen.” I was never quite sure what she was getting at, but my former professor of Anatomy and Physiology partner assures me that rupturing a spleen probably would not be caused by high school guys horsing around in a swimming pool.
Perhaps the most display of impending doom came in A Christmas Movie when after a lot of coaxing little Ralphie finally remembered to tell Santa that what he really wanted was a Red Ryder Carbine Action Air Rifle and Santa said: “You’ll shoot your eye out kid.” Santa was right! He probably would have.
Not long ago, however, there was one command that all of us heeded: “Wash your hands!”
For those of us who made it through without the loss of a loved one or someone we knew it is hard to believe that it was only four years ago, in 2020, that a pandemic swept this nation and the world. In events that are probably best forgotten but seared in our memories, everything virtually shut down.
Remember how difficult those days were for the church? At first, we couldn’t gather at all, the dangers were just too great. So we all scrambled to get something, anything, online.
Then when we did come back it was only at a social distance. We sat six feet apart. We were cautious about everything and most of all about washing our hands. We washed our hands and then we washed our hands again. When we didn’t think washing would be enough, we used anti-bacterial gel by the bucketful. We spritzed it on our hands when we came in the door.
At Our Saviour in Aurora, we stationed a couple of people at the head of the aisle to give it another shot before we came forward, almost one at a time, for communion. And we didn’t follow all the rules out of some kind of blind obedience but because we loved and cared for each other. We acted like it was a matter of life and death because it was.
For neither the disciples or, for that matter, those who challenged them it was not so.
Most of us would have looked at this scene and responded at best with a “Huh? What’s got you so upset? So they didn’t wash their hands? So what?” Had my aforementioned Aunt been there she might have said, “Who cares? You have to eat a bushel of dirt before you die.”
It certainly wasn’t about germs. Nobody even knew they existed until Louis Pasteur and his colleague Joseph Lister came along in the 1860's.3
The disciples were in no danger of dying but they were rankling some feathers. As George F. Will said once: “Some people only feel half alive if they are not upset about something” Today the watchers and the holy ones are harping on hygiene.
As Dr. Thomas G. Long observed:
It gets rolling when some scribes and Pharisees notice that Jesus’ disciples eat without first washing their hands or their food, and they ask Jesus for an explanation. Admittedly, their choice of phrasing turns their question into something of a cocked revolver: “Why do your disciples eat with unwashed hands instead of following the ancient and holy traditions?” which is roughly equivalent to saying, “Why have you chosen to play golf today instead spending Sunday in church as almighty God has commanded?” This isn’t a question; it’s an accusation.
It clearly provokes Jesus’ rage, setting him off on a long, passionate, sometimes sarcastic speech aimed mainly at his inquisitors. He begins nearly at full throttle...4
In J. B. Phillips masterful paraphrase, Jesus replies:
“You hypocrites, Isaiah described you beautifully when he wrote—‘This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. And in vain they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”5
Let’s all catch our breath for a moment and try to understand where everybody is coming from in this battle of words. Maybe it would be a good idea to, instead of vilifying the Pharisees with a knee-jerk response, to try and see where they are coming from. “Their goal was to help ordinary people become more observant of the law as a way of affirming or reinforcing their Jewish identity” while living in “the Roman Empire and in the diverse culture of the Mediterranean World."6
So, “they tried to live by purity laws in their daily lives ... because they believed this honored God.”7
So the sloppy disciples, shoveling food in their faces without taking so much of a second to wash their hands were believed to be dishonouring God. The only thing the Pharisees are guilty of is exhibiting is a case of gross over generalization.
Yet is it any wonder why Jesus drove them crazy. He seemed to have a flagrant disregard for the same ritual purity they held so dear. He was always ignoring Sabbath laws by healing people – even people who did not show an immediate need – the Sabbath. He touched a leper and a woman who had suffered for years. And now his disciples were behaving like slobs.
What if everybody did this? What would become of their well-ordered lives? And, even worse for the keepers of religious traditions, what would become of their faith?
As Debbi Thomas observes and then asks:
Again, it’s easy for us to look down on the Pharisees, as if we in our enlightened modernity would never make their mistakes. But honestly, are we any different? Don’t we sometimes behave as if we’re finished products, with nothing new to discover about the Holy Spirit’s movements in the world? Don’t we cling to spiritual traditions and practices that long ago ceased to be life-giving, simply because we can’t bear to change “the way we’ve always done things?” Don’t we set up religious litmus tests for each other, and decide who’s in and who’s out based on conditions that have nothing to do with Jesus’s open-hearted love and hospitality?8
We sure do! We do it every time we, as some of my Episcopalian friends would say half in earnest and half in jest. “You worship God in your way and we in hers.”
When we think not only that we’ve got everything figured out and that our ways are the best ways we freeze time and there is no room for growth, or worse yet, understanding others who are not like us.
So folks, we live in a time where the same tensions exist that existed in Jesus’ day.
Some people think that rules are of no consequence and that rules and laws and ordinances and statues are about nothing other than restricting and restraining. You want to spoil my fun with all your rules and regulations! You want to limit what I can do when I want to do it! That is not what Jesus is talking nor the Pharisees are talking about. Neither are talking about fence building but rather living life with constant reminders – like washing hands – of the presence of God who invites us to a way of living in which life becomes all that it can be.
Yes, there are rules. Rules that prevent us from falling on our head, or breaking our arm, shooting our eye out, or even on very rare occasions, rupturing our spleen. And they all our based on the most important rule of all given to us by Jesus as a summation of all the law and the prophets. “{Y}ou shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ And ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’”9
And, if that is too much for you? Well then. At least wash your hands every once and awhile.
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1. Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 2022), 116.
2. https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-minute-should-you-wait-30-minutes-to-swim-after-eating
3. “Germ Theory,” Encyclopædia Britannica, August 16, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/science/germ-theory.
4. Thomas G. Long, “Moral Words, Evil Deeds. (Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23),” The Christian Century, August 25, 2009, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2009-08/moral-words-evil-deeds
5. St. Mark 7:6-8. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English (London, ENG: HarperCollins, 2000).
6. Cynthia Campbell, “Ordinary #22B (Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23),” The Christian Century, August 22, 2006, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2006-08
7. Sandra Hack Polaski, “Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23,” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year B, 3 (Louisville: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2021): 276–78.
8. Debie Thomas, “True Religion,” Journey with Jesus, August 22, 2021, https://journeywithjesus.net/essays/3122-true-religion.
9. St. Mark 12:30-31. (NKJV) [NKJV=The New King James Version]
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