Love Unites
Proper 17B
Jesus’s followers, which includes more than just the twelve, are a mixed crowd, which we have seen elsewhere includes Gentiles, non-Judeans, non-Israelites. Some Pharisees see them sharing a meal, and take note that some of them, not all of them, are “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…). 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?” [i]
Storyteller Mark attempts to help the reader/listener to understand that the Pharisees go beyond the commandments of God as outlined in Torah in an effort to make all of Israel holy and righteous, in the hope that YWHW will once again deliver them, this time from the empire of Rome. They also observe the “traditions of the elders,” traditions accumulated over centuries that in effect erect a fence around the Torah. In this case, where Torah lays out certain dietary restriction known commonly as kosher, the elders and the Pharisees go beyond kosher by requiring that hands be washed, made undefiled, before eating at all. This is not a kosher law, and contrary to Mark’s description, not all Jews at the time of Jesus washed their hands before meals, a practice prescribed specifically for the Temple priesthood, not for your average Israelite.
Jesus calls them hypocrites, which in Greek theatrical culture means one who plays a part, and suggests that perhaps they are posers claiming to be more pious and righteous than Moses, who, when addressing those delivered from Pharaoh’s Egypt about to leave the wilderness to enter the land of promise, reviews what they have learned of God’s commands for them and says, “You must neither add anything to what I command you nor take away anything from it, but keep the commandments of the Lord your God with which I am charging you.” [ii]
Jesus then reminds them of what the prophet Isaiah had to say about these “traditions” you speak of, “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.” [iii] To which he adds, “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”
Jesus goes on to remind them how another “tradition of the elders” leads one to violate the command to Honor one’s father and mother. Then Jesus transcends the written tradition as well as those of the elders when he, in effect, abrogates the kosher dietary laws altogether: “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.” [iv]
Understandably, the Pharisees disappear from the narrative altogether! Jesus does not claim to return to a strict practice of the written tradition. Nor does he call for a reform of traditions of the elders. He does not reform the old order to make it more serviceable in the present circumstances, as the elders had done throughout the centuries. Jesus inaugurates something entirely new. The Pharisees disappear from the text presumably because there is nothing in their traditions, as sincere as their desire for holiness is, that they might say in return. What Jesus does is simply incomprehensible over against their deeply and faithfully held traditions.
Like the Pharisees, we too might misconstrue what is being said here. Jesus does not say that religion is a matter of inward piety rather than external behavior; that one’s private spirituality is valued more highly than one’s physical actions in the world. Rather, Jesus warns that sin arises from within and leads to destructive behaviors such as fornication, theft, murder, and the like. The lack of holiness is marked not by breaches in the cultic code, nor by a lack of belief, but in bad behaviors that spring from evil intentions in our hearts often rooted in hate and division.
This was the observation some decades later by the author of the Letter of James who writes, “But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act-they will be blessed in their doing… Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” [v]
Simply put, love of God and love of neighbor is the liberating essence of Torah. We are blessed in our doing, our doing for others. For love is the highest good that goes out to the other, for the sake of the other, not for our own sake – and it is in the “doing for the other” that we are blessed. Jesus is says that the Holiness and Righteousness which the Pharisees seek is not found by what we do or do not eat, or whether or not we wash our hands before meals, but in the simple reaching out to others in need. It is significant that this episode is preceded by the feeding of a mixed crowd of Gentiles and Jews, and followed by healing the daughter of a Gentile woman – who, by the way, teaches Jesus something about God’s love. When he says sharing his gifts with Gentiles is like throwing the children’s food to the dogs, she replies, “Yes, but even the dogs get the crumbs under the table.” He is astonished by her faith and remembers that doing God’s work is meant to unite us to one another rather than divide us. That all people are deserving of God’s healing love, mercy and forgiveness. In that moment, Jesus realizes we often have important things to learn from those who are most unlike ourselves.
Jesus inaugurates a new age of God’s love. As Ilia Delio writes, “love [is] an irresistible ocean of attraction whose infinite goodness leads into the heart of God…For every act of love is a personalization of God and when God is born through our lives, heaven unfolds on earth. All that we long for and anticipate becomes a reality in this moment, in the here and now, in every particular act of love.” [vi] Table fellowship with those unlike ourselves transcends washing one’s hands and is a blessing in itself. In welcoming strangers like the Gentile woman and all those different from us and our culture, we are transformed and blessed because love unites; love does not divide. When we act in love on behalf of the other, we are truly blessed. This is holiness, this is righteousness, for we finally become the image of God in this world that we are created to be!
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