(Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23)
‘Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?’
Given the events of the early 2020s, many of us may have some sympathy with these words of the Pharisees and scribes. After all, it isn’t a bad idea to wash your hands before eating at the best of times, let alone when we had the Covid-19 pandemic. Something we in the Community have been reminded of this week when some people we know have again tested positive for the virus. In fact, isn’t it also a very good idea in general to wash anything you buy from the market? Even the pre-packed stuff we got from supermarkets today, or for that matter to make sure your cooking utensils are clean. So, while this may be sensible hygienic advice, we perhaps instead should be asking, are our hands actually defiled by this? Or is Jesus talking about something significantly more than just being unhygienic, or a potential health hazard to our neighbours?
Our Lord’s words here are not meant to be taken as a public service announcement about health and safety, instead he is telling us something about our relationship with God. While these words of Jesus’s have for centuries been used to criticise our Jewish neighbours for their continued adherence to the Law of Moses, the quotation from Isaiah illustrates that Jesus is also continuing in the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament. Most contemporary Jews would not accept that the Law of Moses was simply human precepts, but as heirs to the prophets as well, they would recognise that sometimes other moral considerations outweigh adhering to the minutiae of ritual observance.
What Jesus is talking about here is what truly defiles our relationship with God. It may help to wash your hands, it may be a neighbourly thing to do, especially now we know about germs and viruses, but does this necessarily make you a better person? Isn’t our relationship with God something more than following rules for our external behaviour, no matter how sensible they may or may not be. Jesus’s point seems to be that if you obsess over things like this, which appears to be the crux of his difference with the Pharisees as they are presented in the Gospels, then you have really missed the point. You have, in his words, abandoned the commandment of God.
This is because there is ‘nothing outside a person that by going in’ can really defile, that can really affect our relationship with God. Instead, the priority should be the recognition that it is what comes out of us that defiles – that it is, as Jesus says, from the human heart that evil intentions come. Unlike in the ancient world, we now know why it isn’t a good idea to prepare food without washing one’s hands, if not considerably more, after one has been in contact with germs or a virus. One should know these days that not washing your hands in such circumstances is probably a sign of evil intention, as well as being quite problematic for your own health. So what Jesus is saying here, what his disagreement with the Pharisees seems to be about, is what is more important in our behaviour? Is it the punctiliousness of ritual actions for their own sake, or is it rejecting wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly? In this way, Jesus’s words can be seen as being as much a criticism of what we do in the churches, as they are of the Jewish Law. A criticism of the way in which we can obsess over how we perform our worship, yet not really give a thought for the envy, intolerance, indifference or contempt we have for our fellow Christians, or for our non-Christian neighbours outside the church.
What is important may not be how well the music at a Mass is performed, or in other traditions, how well the preacher’s sermon is received, or how many speak in tongues. All of these things can become a façade behind which we can fall prey to all kinds of evil intentions unless we are mindful of what God is calling us to be. Unless we are in the words of the Letter of James, quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger. I’m sure we all know these words, and God knows I’m still far too quick to be angry, but what I hadn’t noticed was the words that follow. Your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. If my short-temperedness does have one vaguely redeeming feature it is that I don’t think that God shares in it, in fact quite the opposite. Yet we all know times when we ourselves, and other Christians, do seem to think that our anger must be reflected in God’s righteousness. One only need to think about how angry some Christians get about the sexual activities of others, yet they don’t seem to give a thought to the greed of corporations, or employers who cheat their workers out of a decent wage, as though that isn’t also sinful.
Another thing I hadn’t noticed in the Letter of James till mulling over today’s readings was his insistence that in all our actions, we should accept with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save our souls. It is by always returning to this word, to Jesus, by listening to and for him, that we will become doers, and not just hearers, that we will become those who can purify our hearts from those intentions that really can defile us. I especially had not noticed that curious metaphor that James uses about those who are only hearers of the word – that ‘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.’ This cryptic saying is made even more so when you see that the words translated ‘look at themselves’ apparently literally mean ‘look at the face of his birth’. Perhaps there is something to be said here for not using the inclusive language of the New Revised Standard Version, as it seems the old Authorised Version may be better expressing James’s intention. ‘For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.’
If we are to be a doer of the word, to really follow the commandments of God, then we need to remember not just our ‘natural face’, the face that shows our sin and weakness and evil intentions, but that we are called through the grace of God revealed in Christ to be something else. We have something more than a ‘natural face’ as children of God, we have the faces that God meant us to have when he created us. The faces we will know when his Kingdom comes, and the redemption Jesus brought into the world by his cross and resurrection, has been fulfilled. Until then as James says, we need to be like those who look into the perfect law – Jesus Christ – and persevere. We need to persevere, be quick to listen, slow to anger, and care for those in distress. In this way, we can witness to what Jesus said, that nothing outside by going in can defile us. Instead, in the words of today’s collect, by persevering and returning to the Word that is Christ, we will have a new and living way into God’s presence, and with meekness, allow that Word to give us pure hearts and steadfast wills, so that we can worship Him in spirit and in truth.