DEUTERONOMY 4: 1-2, 6-9
So now, Israel, give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe, so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you. You must neither add anything to what I command you nor take away anything from it, but keep the commandments of the Lord your God with which I am charging you. You must observe them diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!’ For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to him? And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today?
But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children—
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 honours 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.’
FACING THR GOODNESS OF GOD
In our reading today Jesus is once again challenging the Pharisees’ teaching and exposing their hypocrisy. Preachers tend to do down the Pharisees, saying that they were simply backward thinkers. Ok, there were issues, but their motivation came from a desire to obey God as best as they can. And actually, we are much more like them than we think. We will get to that soon, but first, our reading from Deuteronomy.
“So now, Israel, give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe, so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you. You must neither add anything to what I command you nor take away anything from it, but keep the commandments of the Lord your God with which I am charging you. You must observe them diligently.”
The people believed that it was obedience to the law that kept them close to God, kept them intimate with God. That was their mission, to be a beacon in the ancient world so that others would see it and worship God. Verse 7 and 8 – “For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is whenever we call to him? And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today.’
This is the foundation of the very culture of the Israelites, their way of being. The basis upon which they live in covenantal relationship with God. Then we have Jesus, who allows his disciples to eat with defiled hands, without washing them. And the Pharisees ask Jesus, why do you allow this to happen? You’re breaking with tradition. What’s happening? Is Jesus breaking the law of God?
The ‘rules’ of the pharisees in our passage, however, didn’t actually come from the Bible, they came from the ‘oral teaching’ or the Mishnah, of the Jews. This has been passed down from generation to generation since the time for Moses. And was, ‘practical advice’ of how to live out the laws of God in daily life. And so, these rules and traditions would be followed so the Jewish people to keep in step with the principles of the law given to them by God.
Now, After the exile in Babylon, Jewish people had a greater exposure to the Gentile culture, the cultures which the LORD, so often in the Old Testament wants them not to be like. To the Jewish mind therefore, to maintain their own purity, had to become much stricter in their observances in order to differentiate themselves from the cultures around them. (remember, the Jews were to be a beacon of light to those cultures)
This was taken up to different extents by the people. Some were really strict, other less so. The Pharisees actually, are about ‘the middle of the road.’ However, by the time of Jesus, for the Pharisees, adherence to this tradition of the elders was as important to them as was adherence to Torah.
There were many things that defiled for the Jews; corpses, carrion, creeping things, idols, lepers, Samaritans and Gentiles were also unclean. And hence, why Jesus caused so much controversy, as he often associated with those who were considered unclean, Samaritans and Gentiles and Lepers and the like. The Pharisee’s obsession with purity on the other hand even went to the point of cleaning pots and pans, so that they would remain clean and not ‘defile’ themselves. They would for example ‘walk on the other side of the road’ if they saw a man beaten and bloody so a not to defile themselves.
Jesus takes the pharisees to task, not necessarily because of the rules and regulations of the Mishnah, but rather, about their use. The Pharisees, he claims, are using these human-made rules, these traditions, in order to ‘nullify the word of God.’ They’re ‘making it up’ basically and saying that it is God’s law.
Jesus however, gets to the true heart of the matter. Verse 14, ‘[a]gain Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. 15 Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.”
Jesus is saying that it is what is inside that corrupts, not what is on the outside; not failure to adhere to rituals. Sin is a matter of the heart. And it corrupts everything. Verse 21 and following of our gospel reading:
“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.” Wrongness comes from within.
Do we believe this? I have difficulty with it at times. I remember remembered watching an episode of Dr Who a few years ago which said explicitly that human beings are fundamentally good. And I thought, ‘No, that’s not true. Its more complicated than that.’ Yes, we are image bearers of God and all of the goodness that entails, but that image is also marred by the wrong that we do.
We are very good at lying to ourselves and assuming that we are right and pure and think that everything is fine. G K Chesterton the great twentieth century author said it wonderfully in his spiritual biography Orthodoxyabout those who deny humanity’s sinfulness, ‘[people] admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street.’ Evil is real, and it comes from the heart. And we are commanded not to, we are told not to do these things.
It’s also a hard thing to recognise this and to be held against the standard of goodness and found wanting. C S Lewis says in his great book ‘Mere Christianity,’ Which I would recommend you all have a read of if you haven’t.
“[w]e know that if there does exist an absolute goodness it must hate most of what we do. That is the terrible fix we are in. If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless. But if it is, then we are making ourselves enemies to that goodness every day, ... God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies. Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion.”
The prophet Isaiah sees this, he sees the glory of God and says, “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
Lewis again when Susan and Mr Beaver speak about Aslan.
“Aslan is a lion - the Lion, the great Lion." "Ooh" said Susan. "I'd thought he was a man. Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion"..."Safe?" said Mr Beaver ..."Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.”
When we gaze at God, at Jesus, he is the king, and we are all found wanting. Yet, as Lewis said, he is always the only comfort. He holds out his hands to us and says, ‘follow me, and I will show you a new way to be, one where there is no hypocrisy, where the is only goodness, where there is forgiveness and where there is hope. My invitation this week is to invite us all to know more about him. To read the Gospels and see, really see just how good he is, and remember that we don’t have to cover our eyes and hide. We don’t have to be terrified as Elijah was. For he is merciful to us. He holds out his hand to us, and if we let him, he will take us on a wonderful journey of forgiveness, love, hope and redemption. Amen .