There is a scene in the classic movie Sound of Music were the nuns were trying to look for Maria (played by Julie Andrews). As they were talking about Maria, all of them agreed that she is someone who doesn't adhere to common practices or traditions of the Catholic Church. Thus came the phrase,"How do you solve a problem like Maria?"
In our passage today, the Pharisees were also singing a similar tune: "How do you solve a problem like Jesus and His disciples?" What do we do with people who do not adhere to traditions of the Church?
Tradition is a beautiful thing. It helps ground us in our history. In a way, it is how the ancient continue to teach us today, by handing down ideas and thoughts and habits through our traditions.
Tradition’s roots are to be honored and adored and truly respected. But what happens when we begin to lose sight of these roots and begin to focus on tradition itself? What happens when we begin to honor the tradition rather than what tradition points to?
In our lesson today, the Pharisees confront Jesus for not holding to ceremonial washing traditions. These traditions probably come from important reasons; ways to keep hands, food, and dishes clean so that diseases do not get passed on.
Or perhaps the traditions help instill the washer with thankfulness toward God who has provided the meal, the dishes, the time, and everything to put a meal together.
The tradition comes from holy roots, roots designed to teach us about ourselves, God, and how to care for one another’s health. However, the Pharisees have focused so much upon the tradition that they have forgotten the reason. Tradition existed for its own sake, to be done because it was “supposed” to be done, not because it pointed beyond itself.
Jesus points out that cleanliness does not come from activity alone but from a place much deeper. What does it mean that someone follows all the rules of hand-washing but does not care for the other? (see the list from Mark 7:21-22) Cleanliness is not what we do, but is a way of life. Tradition is not the point. It is what the tradition points to, that is the point.
In Mark's gospel the Pharisees are arguing with Jesus about why the disciples do not wash their hands, as custom commands, before eating. Jesus responds by saying, "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." And then he calls the crowd again and says 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."
Jesus conveyed a message: get to the heart of the message in the scriptures - practice the spirit of the law, not the letter of the law. And when we first read through the gospel lesson, it seems obvious why Jesus should be chastising them, obvious that he is right and that they are at fault. But it's too easy for us to scapegoat the Pharisees when we read this story, too easy to shake our heads at their ways, all the while patting ourselves smugly on the backs for being and doing better than them, at least. But are we being fair to the Pharisees? Are we being honest with ourselves?
After all, what exactly is it that they are doing that is so wrong, so different from what we would do, anyway?
If we look at the actions of the Pharisees it is easy to see that they might conceive themselves as acting rightly as doers of the word. The Pharisees know the commandments of the scriptures, and follow them meticulously. They know the cleanliness codes, and they know that eating with out cleansing is ritually impure according to holy law.
By following the law, aren't they being doers of the word as James urges? However, doing involves more than blind obedience, it takes more than crossing t's and dotting I's in good behavior - it something to the spirit of the law that gives it life, not just the letter of the law only.
Jesus quotes Isaiah by saying "this people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." Though the Pharisees held fast to the commandments, they managed to do so while at the same time missing the entire point of the very rules they followed.
Cleanliness, Jesus insisted, wasn't about literal cleanliness, but about the purity of our inner beings. The passage is encouraging us to be doers of the word, encourages us to take a look in the mirror, and remember who we are and what we see there. Purity of religion before God always starts with concern for others, he reminds us, care of the orphan and the widow, those most vulnerable in society. Our doing must be reconciled to those who are most oppressed - then we will be clean and undefiled from inside out.
The Pharisees missed the point even as they diligently followed the commandments of God. But still, with their faults, we can't yet let ourselves of the hook, and put all the blame on them. We are still to be held accountable. The passage asks us to be doers, not simply hearers of the word. He demands that we look in the mirror, and see ourselves clearly, and see what our weaknesses and strengths are clearly, and see what God calls us to do, clearly. Jesus asks us to be pure, clean, from the inside out, and not worry as much about the outside in. How do we hold up to their demands? What do you see when you look into the mirror?
Jesus calls us to be faithful from the inside out instead of outside in. Too often, we let our motivation for our actions come from the wrong sources. We, too, like the Pharisees, get caught up in particular practices that we think will guarantee our holiness, our righteousness, our correctness. And we, too, are concerned about who is clean, who is pure enough to be part of us, part of our fellowship, part of our church, part of our lives.
Over time for Christians this has meant banning dancing and card-playing, avoiding going to the movies, sticking to only a certain translation of the Bible. It has meant deciding that the church could exclude people because they were unclean, not fitting in because of something external about them, because of skin color, income level, country of origin, and many other reasons.
We are indeed called to be clean and pure, but it is what comes out of us that makes us clean, not what we put in. It is how we treat others, how we live our lives, how we act, what we do, that makes us pure. We are called not only to honor God with words, with our lips, but with our hearts and our souls. So let us be clean, from our insides out. Amen.
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