“Past lip service, Past tradition, Past purity, Past piety”
August 29, 2021
Mark 7:1–8, 14–15, 21–23
Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were 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; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) 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?’ He said to them, ‘Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,
“This people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.”
You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.’
Then he called the crowd again and said to them, ‘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.’
If you’ve traveled in Europe you have likely visited some of the amazing places that offer insight into the depth of religious and human history. The immensity of the creative genius of ancient cultures and their fervent pursuit of the sacred comes alive when you visit places like
the Acropolis and Areopagus in Greece or the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. Many places expand the mind even as they reflect centuries of history, from classical Greece to the Roman Empire.
Many times while visiting places of religious history I’ve been struck at how people of faith throughout the centuries, in the name of the Divine, have created some of the most breathtaking art, music, architecture, literature, liturgy, ritual, and rite imaginable. In the name of the Divine, we have healed, educated, fed and housed each other.
But there’s another side where actions of religious people aren’t memorialized in gothic cathedrals or sprawling museums. They are the times in history when we have conquered, colonized, enslaved, and decimated each other.
The truth is religious has always had the power to build and enrich, tear down and destroy. In human history religion has provided us peace and stirred us to war. It has made us creative and generous, closed-minded and stingy, even violent. Which is to say that those who pursue God should not take it lightly. What we profess and practice when it comes to religion really matters.
In the Gospel of Mark today, the practice of religion is front and center. Jesus confronts a group of religious people of Jewish persuasion, called the Pharisees who accuse his disciples of getting religion wrong. They ask why his disciples eat with “defiled hands” — that is, why they eat without performing the ritual hand washing expected of observant Jewish people before meals.
For the religious community of the Jews at that time, a “holiness code” regulated every aspect of personal and community life based on the 631 commands in the Torah — the first five Old Testament books. The purity laws of Leviticus 11–26, for example, describe clean and unclean foods, purity rituals after childbirth or a menstrual cycle, regulations for skin infections and contaminated clothing or furniture, prohibitions against contact with a human corpse or dead animal, agricultural guidelines about planting seeds, decrees about keeping the sabbath, forsaking idols, and even tattoos.
Why so many rules? Some of these purity laws guided common sense or moral ideals that we still follow today, like prohibitions against incest. Others regulated hygiene and sanitation. Still others symbolized Israel’s unique identity — they helped differentiated from pagan nations.
Ultimately, though, and at their best, the purity laws ritualized the exhortation from: “You shall be holy for I, the Lord your God, am holy.” (Leviticus 19:2)
While the clash between Jesus and the Pharisees over food purity might sound trivial, they ask an important question, one which gets to the heart of what authentic religion is.
But to understand it some context is needed. First century Jewish people among whom Jesus ministers is an oppressed minority, living in an occupied land. Keeping their faith viable in this setting was important to them. In the midst of religious and cultural diversity, maintaining their identity, integrity and heritage presented challenge. Sound familiar?
The solution of the Pharisees is similar to what any of us do when what we believe or hold dear is threatened by religious or cultural change. They attempted to contain and codify the sacred. Amidst people who didn’t believe, they created and maintained a purity culture — one that delineates who is “in” and who is “out,” who is clean and who is unclean, who deserves God’s favor and who doesn’t. The practice of the rituals and keeping rules to the “t” was their gateway to holiness. Thus, they could refuse table fellowship with the “unwashed” — the tax collectors, prostitutes and other morally compromised sinners. They could set themselves apart as God’s righteous and holy people.
Do you see what this is? Can you see how this occurs still today? This is religion as fence-building. Religion as separation. Jesus — never one to mince words — calls it what it is. Quoting the prophet Isaiah, he rebukes the Pharisees, saying, “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.” (vv 6–7)
Notice that Jesus doesn’t condemn ritual hand washing. He doesn’t disparage all religious traditions. What he indicts is the legalism, self-righteousness, and exclusivism that keeps the Pharisees from freely loving God and loving their neighbors. What he calls out is their elevation of rite over mercy, heritage over hospitality, ritual over compassion. Jesus is dismayed over the Pharisees’ need to police the boundaries of their religion, based on their own narrow definitions of purity and piety.
Three centuries later, these issues continue to impact us. We still hold 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. We still struggle with love of neighbor.
The legalism that gets infused into religion takes many forms. In some churches, it centers around the authority of scripture, or the liturgy and who’s welcome at the Lord’s Table. In some faith communities, the lines in the sand have to do with women clergy, or gay marriage, abortion, divorce, and the list goes on. The guises vary, but in the end, legalism in any guise deadens us towards God and neighbors. It codifies our hearts and guarantees what we hold dear will be irrelevant to the generations that come after us. It makes us stingy and small-minded, cowardly and anxious. It strips away our joy and robs us of peace. It causes us, in Jesus’s cutting words today, to “honor God with our lips” but to “worship him in vain.”
How then do we discern whether our way of doing religion is life-giving or not? After those cutting words, Jesus gives his listeners this advice: notice what comes out of you. Notice what fruit your adherence to religious tradition and purity bears. Does your version of holiness lead to hospitality? To inclusion? To joy? To forgiving others? Does it cause your heart to open wide with compassion? Does it lead other people to feel loved and welcomed in your church, or at God’s table? Does it open your mind and attitude for a God who is always doing something fresh and new?
Or does it make you rigid, anxious, small, and stingy? Fearful, suspicious, and judgmental?
In this passage today, Jesus offers an invitation through the confrontation with the Pharisees. It is to consider what is really sacred and holy in our spiritual lives. It is to go deeper — past lip service, past tradition, past purity, past piety. It’s an invitation to practice a religion where the God of heritage and history, is also the God of a surprising, innovating, ever-living, new now.
