We’ve been spending a lot of time talking about food these last few Sundays – and even though we’ve finally left the Gospel of John and his fixation on bread for a while for the Gospel of Mark, we can’t quite escape the topic of eating.
This morning, the Pharisees and the scribes, once again, are challenging Jesus. Today, they are asking him, why do your disciples not all wash their hands before they eat? You all claim to be holy, teaching the Word of God, and yet you’re ignoring the traditions we follow as faithful, pious people.
This complaint about hand-washing isn’t about hygiene. (Though that’s not to say that, in terms of hygiene, washing your hands before eating isn’t a good idea – I fully support that.) The Pharisees’ argument was about religious ritual. The priests washed their hands before entering the temple, and that tradition of washing hands, and cups and pots and kettles, came into practice by everyone, not just the priests, originally as a way of showing honor to God at mealtimes, for making those times sacred. If you didn’t follow the traditions, you may have been seen, as Jesus’ disciples were, as being unclean, defiled, or at least questionable. Religious and social rules around food,
money, gender, health, age, life and death – in Jesus’ day, these rules in some ways came to define who was pure and who wasn’t, who was acceptable and who wasn’t, who was pious and who wasn’t, who was important and who wasn’t. These traditions that dictated the ritual washing of hands and the eating of food, traditions intended to express reverence for God and to reflect a life of faith, in reality came to contradict God’s teachings. Instead of drawing people together in community and covenant, they divided and excluded. Instead of inspiring people to a greater love of God, they closed the doors of the temple to those considered unacceptable.
In the midst of trying so hard to follow tradition, to show how pious and faithful and worshipful they were, the people had forgotten the foundations of faith, the meaning of holiness, its roots in love. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your might. And, Jesus adds, love your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus lived his words – he didn’t shy away from those who were considered impure or questionable – he touched lepers, he raised the dead, he freed those possessed by demons and he healed the woman who was bleeding.
So when Jesus is challenged on whether or not he and his disciples wash their hands before a\ meal – ritually speaking – he pushes right back. The Pharisees and the scribes are hypocrites, he says, quoting Isaiah: “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” Their words are hollow, their rituals meaningless, if they do not place the love of God and of their fellow human beings first and foremost. Religious practices and social expectations, traditions that exclude anyone from the community of faith are not of God, Jesus was saying, and purity has nothing to do with what we take in, but what we give away. “… there is nothing outside a person that by going in
can defile,” says Jesus, “but the things that come out are what defile.” Jesus asks his followers, then and now, to do the harder work of holiness – to address the sins that drive us away from each other and away from God – greed, pride, deceit, theft – that long list of sins that we heard – they originate in the human heart, not outside the body. Unless we address those, then following these rituals, these religious traditions, is meaningless.
What are the traditions we cling to, and in clinging to them, ignore the greater
commandments, to love God and love neighbor? How do we pay lip service to our Christian faith without putting it into true action when we leave the temple? How often do we avoid stepping out of our comfort zones? How often do we turn away from fellow human beings because they don’t conform to our criteria, dress or speak or act the way we believe they should? How often do we let ourselves worry about how we look, or how we behave – did I say the right thing? – instead of letting ourselves listen for the voice of God? How often do we stay away from this place because we
struggle with what might feel like failure or dysfunction, not realizing that we can find strength and hope in this community of faith?
Jesus’ admonition reminds of two things – one, that we not practice piety without love – that we not allow the gestures of our faith to crowd out the reasons behind them – that religious practices are meaningless if they exclude rather than invite. And two – it reminds us that all of us are welcome in God’s house.
So there’s an interesting word choice in today’s Gospel – the word that is translated in our reading as “wash.” In the original Greek, the word has a number of different meanings – to dip in water, to dip in poison, to dye another color, or to draw water – and it is also sometimes translated as “baptize.”
And that might be the point of difference here. The traditions Jesus criticized suggested that we wash, or baptize, the food we eat, the hands we use to eat, the cook pots and the cups and the kettles – Jesus, however, is reminding us that we are what is in need of baptism, not the food and the cups and the kettles. And not in order to be allowed entrance into worship, but we are baptized through the transformation that happens in worship.
One of my seminary professors, Lisa Kimball, says “We are constantly swimming through the waters of baptism.” I love that image, that idea. Baptism is not a once-and-done act – it is ongoing. Today when we come into this space, we are not expected to be perfect or without flaws. Here is where we find transformation, where love meets us and names us – not as unclean or unworthy or unworthy, but as holy. And then pushes us back out into the world of humanity to do the same – to name each other, in love and holiness.
Sermon by The Rev. Cara Ellen Modisett at Trinity Episcopal Church, Staunton, Virginia on September 1, 2024.
