August 29, 2021: Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
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 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 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.”
So many of us get so bent out of shape about following the external rules of religion and pay less attention to what is in our hearts. We put our faith in the practices of religion that have less to do with how we treat our neighbor, and more to do with making us feel good about ourselves. I suspect this is true for every denomination because we are human, and we need to feel security.
Jesus condemns the prioritization of superficial practices with the Pharisees and scribes in today’s reading, who notice the disciples breaking a rule: eating food without first washing their hands. He comes down hard on them and calls them hypocrites. This is because the Pharisees and scribes were more interested in the letter of the law than in caring for others.
Perhaps another reason Jesus criticized the Pharisees so mightily is because they thought they were better than everyone else. This did not sit well with humble Jesus, who mixed with all sorts of people, even (and especially) with those the Pharisees would have called “sinners” (tax collectors, prostitutes, Samaritans).
It is easy to distract ourselves by focusing on the trivialities of our faith, and not what is truly important: whether we love God and love our neighbor. It takes a lot more emotional energy, for example, to forgive someone who has harmed us than it does to not eat meat on Fridays in Lent.
God is concerned about what is in our hearts and whether we are in right relationship with others. When we spend too much time or energy on the external practices of our religion, we do not allow God’s grace to seep into our beings and change who we are. And that is what we are meant to do: allow God to form us into the persons we are called to be, so that we can make a difference in our own small corner of the world.