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The Rev. Dr. Dennis E. Morey, Pastor
Scripture: Mark 7:1-16, 20-23
Hand Washing Won’t Do It!
It was rehearsal the Saturday morning before the Christmas program.
With more than forty Kindergarten through fourth graders lined up in the front of the sanctuary, in a space that required them to stand pretty close, there broke out a shoving match. I soon discovered the shoving was to prove which team was better, the Hawkeyes or the Cyclones, and of course those team supporters had the appropriate sweatshirt to prove their loyalty. Add to that someone with a Green Bay Packers shirt and one with the Kansas City Chiefs.
I walked to the front of the sanctuary and with my biggest, deepest voice, I said, “This is the rule!” Suddenly there was silence and those forty little faces looked at me. “Tomorrow night there are no shirts with any kind of letters allowed. No words on your shirts. That is the rule!”
Everyone was quiet and the rehearsal went on. The next evening a mom told me her first grader came home with the news, “Dr. Morey said no words on shirts at the program. It is the rule.” His mom asked, “Why did he say that?” The first grader said, “It is just the rule. Don’t wear a shirt with letters on it.”
Another little guy came up to me before the program with his fingers on the tag inside the collar of his shirt, asking, “What about this? It has words on it, but I don’t think anyone can see them. Is that O.K.?” No one dared to break the rule!
That is what is happening in today’s scripture. Someone made a rule and no one dared question its authority. It was the rule! Washing your hands in a certain way was required if you wanted to be clean in the sight of God. One of the many rules that said, “Do this to please God.”
These days we hear about washing our hands to help prevent the spread of the H1N1 flu. That rule has a practical reason. The hand washing in today’s scripture was supposed to be to create an absence of evil spirits, making the person ready to communicate with God.
It began as a rule for the priests to wash their entire bodies by submerging themselves in water before entering the temple as a matter of making themselves clean and holy and acceptable before entering the temple to do God’s work. Since every Jew is in a sense a priest in his own home, and that would have taken a lot of water in that arid climate, the rule was reduced to the practice of every Jew washing his hands before eating a meal that included bread.
Hand washing started first thing in the morning. It was believed that an evil spirit rested upon a person’s body during sleep and disappeared when that person woke, except that the evil spirit left a residue on the fingernails.
The hands had to be washed before rising from bed to make sure the evil residue was not accidentally taken into the body during breakfast. The water for hand washing was poured over one hand and then the other so each was washed three times.
Whatever a person touched during the day may be ritually unclean, so washing before the meal was required to be holy in God’s sight.
One hand took the cup that held at least an eggshell full of water, and poured the water over the other hand, letting the water drip down to the elbow. Another cup of water was used to pour on the elbow, allowing the water to drip down to the fingertips.
With that clean hand the process was repeated on the other hand, and when both hands were clean the fist was rubbed in the palm, the clean water poured again on the finger tips, dripped down to the elbow and then the hands were dried on a towel.
The prayer that goes with the hand washing is “Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe who has sanctified us with thy commandments and has commanded us concerning the washing of the hands.”
Many religious Jews also carry out hand washing not just at mealtime but also before prayers and always on returning from the cemetery after a burial.
Jesus’ followers were obviously violating the rule! They were eating a meal that included bread and they were not going through the ceremonial hand washing. The Pharisees, the keepers of the Law, were saying “Jesus… Jesus… hand washing… where are the hand washing facilities? Your disciples aren’t observing the hand washing ceremony.”
We can only imagine the reaction of Jesus. He had given up being part of the Godhead in command of the universe and beyond and all the glories of heaven, to come to earth.
He came particularly to these hardheaded, the hardhearted, confused, and misled Jews to call them back to their job of being God’s people ready to tell the world about the Lord God. Now they are telling Jesus he is not doing his job by insisting that his disciples ceremonially wash their hands before eating?
This was like a drunk driver who just caused a train wreck criticizing the EMT picking up the injured for not having shiny shoes.
Jesus had to be God in the flesh who desired to love them even past their stupidity. He could have used his power to fry every one of them into a puddle of grease.
Jesus said, “You want to talk about being unclean, ceremonially unacceptable in the sight of God? Open your eyes. Don’t you see that there is nothing outside a person that can condemn him in the eyes of God? It is what is on the inside that keeps you from knowing God. Hand washing won’t do it.”
“In your religion you say one thing and do another. In fact you have created many so-called ‘commandments’ that release you from obeying God’s word.
“Even though God’s commandment is clear, ‘Respect your parents,’ you have a rule that even if you have enough to help them in their old age you don’t have to give them anything if you have willed everything you have to the temple. Yet you retain life-time use of your wealth.
“You say, ‘I can’t help you Dad. Sorry your landlord raised the rent, but I don’t have a penny to spare. Sorry Mom, I can’t help you out with those groceries. Everything I have belongs to the temple.’
“You have canceled out God’s commandment with a rule made by man. You do lots of those kinds of things while maintaining your religious status in the community. Hand washing won’t do it for your kind of unclean.”
Jesus was calling them to a new idea. They had to stop obsessing about how they washed pots and pans, and vegetables from the market, the cups and bowls that made them ceremonially clean, and look at what it was that directed their hearts.
Jesus challenged them to look on the inside and see just how far they had gotten from the people God called them to be.
They were to be the shining examples to the world around them of people who knew God. Instead they were spending their efforts shining their pots and pans and washing their hands.
God had purposely picked the Jews, and put them in a place in the world where they could best serve God. God did not choose the rich and powerful nations but a small weak one so his power could be shown to all the nations. Their lives were to make knowing God attractive to others around them.
God had put them where they were for a purpose, and all they did was to keep themselves so isolated with their petty rules that most of the rest of the population thought they served a mean, petty god who demanded attention in every minute part of life, even the way they washed their hands and which kinds of food they could eat from which kind of dishes.
They were depending on what they could do to make themselves worthy and thus gain God’s favor.
Such a danger still lurks in the shadows of our lives. We, too, fall into the trap of trying to be “good enough” so we can get from God what we want.
The Jews in Jesus’ day should have been trying to keep themselves pure because God loved them. Because God valued them, they were to be careful how they made decisions and remember God’s faith in them understanding that others were watching. They had great influence concerning what other people thought of the Lord God.
Instead they put their faith in themselves and in ceremonial hand washing that said they could earn a way and thus obligate God to give them what they wanted.
“God I have been careful how I washed my hands,
How I cleaned and shined the pots and pans,
And now you can see that I my hands are clean
So now its time, you know what I want, give it to me….”
“God I have been careful how I have lived my life. I have paid my bills on time and been a good neighbor. Now you can see that I deserve your blessings, so give me what I want”
Sound familiar? Who among us has not approached God with that idea?
Jesus told the Pharisees, “It is not what you have kept yourselves from doing that makes you fit to get God’s attention. What condemns you is the way you use your righteousness to try to manipulate God. That shows what is in your heart. You don’t get it. God’s favor is not gained by your rule keeping. That would put you in command. Hand washing won’t do it. Living a pure and spotless life won’t do it.
Friends, this lesson is here for our consideration today. Jesus gave up being part of the Godhead and all the glories of heaven to come to earth, to us.
He came particularly to us the hardheaded, and hardhearted, confused, and misled Christians, to call us back to our job of being God’s people ready to tell the world about the Lord God.
Jesus had to be God in the flesh, who desires to love us even past our stupidity. He could use his power at any moment to fry every one of us into a puddle of grease. But instead he calls us back to what is real.
Friends, the truth is, even though we are good people you and I have done nothing to obtain the love of God. There is nothing we can do to get God’s love. I don’t care if you give everything you have to the poor, sit alone and read the Bible for 24 hours, fast until your body wastes away and then you are burned at the stake for being a believer. You cannot claim you have done anything to earn God’s love.
We have done nothing to earn our salvation. We can do nothing to earn God’s love and we can do nothing to scare it away. God’s love is.
God has chosen you to be his child. He has given you the way, his Son, Jesus, to have a relationship with God forever.
When we finally get that, and accept God’s gift, we understand those words of Isaiah 64:6. “Behold our righteousness is as filthy rags.”
In Isaiah’s day there was no Kleenex for people’s pockets. The rags he refers to were the clean rags townspeople would take outside the city gates and nail to a post so one leper after another could come by and wipe their oozing sores. You might imagine after those rags had hung there for several weeks just how utterly filthy they would become.
Isaiah was saying that our goodness cannot be counted toward our salvation. Even at best we live an unsightly mess of a life in the eyes of God. If it weren’t for God’s grace, God reaching out to us, God believing in us, we would have no hope.
Because of that grace, we respond by living a life close to God.
At your job do you work hard because you want more money and a promotion? If that’s the case, I bet there are days you really hate that job and wish you had a better one. If you work only to get a better paycheck, and a promotion, chances are you will never be satisfied with that job. When you finally arrive at the top you won’t like it there either.
Or do you work hard because you feel you are being paid fairly and treated fairly by your company? If so, then you are most likely satisfied with your job, will find advancement, and will work there a long time. If you work at your job because you think it is a good place to work and you are being paid a good wage, you will always be happy to go to work.
So it is with our faith-life. If we think we can earn God’s favor, we will never have enough blessings; we will always feel cheated. We follow the rules. We live the good life in hopes that God will pay attention to us and give us what we think we deserve. The truth is, in such a religion, in such a faith system we will never be satisfied and will always feel like we didn’t get what should have been ours. We miss out on God’s grace.
If we understand that God chose to reach out to us, that it is not because of who we are but because of who God is that we are called to be the child of God, then we feel privileged to know God.
We understand: hand washing won’t do it. Keeping rules cannot be a means of trying to earn God’s favor, God’s love and attention. If we can see this, then you want to believe in God’s Son, Jesus. If you want to live the way Jesus set forth, then you will always be happy in your relationship to God and always secure in his love.
We are not depending on our own righteousness but upon what God has provided in Christ Jesus.
The words of that old hymn by Robert Lowry are true.
What can wash away my sins?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
What can me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
O precious is the flow
That makes me white as snow;
No other fount I know.
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
(CCL12224297)
Amen.
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Mark 7:1-16, 20-23 ‘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.’ You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” Then he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban’ (that is, an offering to God)— then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.” 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.” And he said, “It is what comes out of a person that defiles. 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.” (From the
New Revised Standard Version of the
Bible) |
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