Wash your face!
Here's today's TGBC passage, using The Message again!
Mark 7:1-13
The Message
The Source of Your Pollution
7 1-4 The Pharisees, along with some religion scholars who had come from Jerusalem, gathered around him. They noticed that some of his disciples weren’t being careful with ritual washings before meals. The Pharisees—Jews in general, in fact—would never eat a meal without going through the motions of a ritual hand-washing, with an especially vigorous scrubbing if they had just come from the market (to say nothing of the scourings they’d give jugs and pots and pans).
5 The Pharisees and religion scholars asked, “Why do your disciples brush off the rules, showing up at meals without washing their hands?”
6-8 Jesus answered, “Isaiah was right about frauds like you, hit the bull’s-eye in fact:
These people make a big show of saying the right thing,
but their heart isn’t in it.
They act like they are worshiping me,
but they don’t mean it.
They just use me as a cover
for teaching whatever suits their fancy,
Ditching God’s command
and taking up the latest fads.”
9-13 He went on, “Well, good for you. You get rid of God’s command so you won’t be inconvenienced in following the religious fashions! Moses said, ‘Respect your father and mother,’ and, ‘Anyone denouncing father or mother should be killed.’ But you weasel out of that by saying that it’s perfectly acceptable to say to father or mother, ‘Gift! What I owed you I’ve given as a gift to God,’ thus relieving yourselves of obligation to father or mother. You scratch out God’s Word and scrawl a whim in its place. You do a lot of things like this.”
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This is a good one on several fronts! For one, it's rather astonishing, isn't it! In the culture of that day, there weren't serving spoons and serving forks in the large serving bowl sitting in the middle of the table, you just reached in there with your hand (your right hand, not your left hand, which was for other personal things, ho anaginoskown noeito), and helped yourself, not onto your own plate but into your mouth, first dipping the morsel into the gravy if you wish, including with gravy dripping from your fingers. So, who wants to share the common bowl with some filthy oaf who doesn't respect others (or self) enough to bother washing his/her hands before coming to the table?! When I was a boy, you couldn't come down to breakfast unless you'd washed your face and combed your hair first, and you'd dee well better wash hands before coming to dinner or supper. And summer days and school-year weekends I worked all day in the fish house and scrubbing down trucks, don't think my parents allowed us at the supper table with unwashed hands, you may have tried that once!
For many religious practices there are sound human reasons, including sanitation. When as a priest I'm celebrating the Eucharist, I'm expected to wash my hands before handling the Bread for Communion, and it's even custom (not "tradition", be careful of using the word "tradition", because in Anglicanism "tradition" often has theological implications) - - for the acolyte bring out a bowl, towel, and cruet of water and wash the Celebrant's hands in front to the people, a ritual called Ablutions; and, frankly it's important for assurance of those in the pew that they see I've washed before touching their food, even holy food.
That ritual washing, indeed these covid days, all washing has become important, and even sacred, because with unwashed hands we may unknowingly pass infection along to others. Even my most dearly loved Beloveds won't touch me these days. All of which is to say that washing hands, whether ritual or custom or habit or just common, ordinary, courteous practice of sanitation, is important, nowadays, even a matter of life and death.
Mark 7:1-13, our passage for today, then, becomes challengeable, because we'd not want to eat with these filthy animals either!
So let's get to the heart of it, which should be obvious anyway. Jesus is being confronted by self-righteous religiosity in which people think to make themselves perfect before God, and especially before other people, by making an ostentatious show of performing certain rituals in public so others can admire them (and they can admire themselves) for how holy they are. Here's the passage from Isaiah 29 that Jesus quotes:
Isaiah 9:13-14 The Master said:
“These people make a big show of saying the right thing, but their hearts aren’t in it.
Because they act like they’re worshiping me
but don’t mean it,
I’m going to step in and shock them awake,
astonish them, stand them on their ears.
The wise ones who had it all figured out
will be exposed as fools.
The smart people who thought they knew everything will turn out to know nothing.”
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What Jesus is saying is not about sanitation but about making a show of one's piety. Sorry, but it brings to my mind something that commonly happens on Ash Wednesday, our first day of Lent: we go to church, the priest marks our foreheads with a smudge of black ashes (usually in the sign of a cross), and instead of washing it off before going outside as directed by the Matthew reading that is the gospel for Ash Wednesday, we "humbly" (yes, that's sarcastic) go outside into public showing how holy we are! Indeed, it's best of all if we can get to church early Ash Wednesday morning so we can wear the ashes on our forehead in public all day long so everyone will notice, and maybe some folks will even remark and we can modestly witness. That's my view! Listen to the gospel and "Wash your face" so as not to make a holy spectacle of yourself before others. Many will disagree with me, and have for years, but I ain't buying it!
TW+