"The law and the heart - are they really opposites?"
We are celebrating a communion service today, so you will be relieved to know that I have washed my hands, and will apply an alcohol gel rub before touching the bread.
I am doing this for two reasons; one is that I have been recommended to behave like this by the Bishop of St Albans, and I have taken a canonical oath to obey all lawful commands that he gives me. This isn’t actually a command as such, but the principle will do for the purposes of this sermon. The other reason is that I don’t want to pass on any germs to you, and you might be interested to know that I used alcohol gel before the recommendation was made.
So today’s reading, which appears to be about hand-washing, is quite apt, isn’t it? Or is it?
On the surface this seems to be a debate about tradition versus the law of God, and which one is being treated as most important by the Pharisees and teachers of the law. It seems to be about hand-washing.
However, below the surface is a broader debate about the place of Gentiles in the new order that our Lord is inaugurating. One church, one faith, one Lord.
I think this is a question about why Gentiles are eating with the Jews, and what it means for Jews and for the followers of Jesus. The passage clearly states that all Jews, not just Pharisees, washed their hands. Yet there are people present who have not washed. This suggests that there are Gentiles present and it is this ritual uncleanness created by association with the ‘unclean’ that is being challenged – Jesus is eating with Gentiles.
Why does that matter? We know from other gospel accounts that Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners so we are not surprised. But to the teachers (and upholder remember) of the law, those who are fulfilling the commands in Deuteronomy 4 to teach the laws and decrees to their children, this was cause for concern.
It must have seemed as if Jesus was breaking the laws that God had given. We know from Matthew 5:17 that Jesus was sent, not to abolish the law, but to fulfil it, but they didn’t know that.
So here we find Jesus, expanding his ministry from the Jews alone to include Gentiles – something that the Jewish leaders would only have expected at the last times when all the nations were expected to flock to Jerusalem. The clues are there, but they do not see who they are talking to.
We look back with 20/20 hindsight so must avoid the temptation to look down on those teachers and preachers who were so tied up with their own task that they didn’t recognise that Jesus had a greater task; that he was the very person they had been praying for.
Mark’s gospel is written in the context of an expanding church, one in which Gentiles were welcomed, as we are now. The fact that Mark has included a comment to explain the Jewish custom of washing suggests that the original audience for this gospel included people who were not familiar with Jewish customs, i.e. Gentile – people like you and me in fact, although I hope we do wash our hands!
I think Mark was trying to say to his Gentile readers – “see, Jesus intended you to be part of his plan, part of his kingdom. All that anyone has to do is repent and believe in Jesus as the Son of God.” Jesus fulfilled the law, and we are the beneficiaries of that. We can be and are a part of it. One church, one faith, one Lord.
But the time that is being written about this hasn’t yet happened. So we have some 20/20 hindsight being applied to this story. That inclusion now of Gentiles is, I think, what Jesus is talking about when he appears to be challenging the purity laws of Leviticus 11 (which is about what kind of living creatures Jews may eat). In this part of the story I think Jesus is using a picture to make a point. He says “Nothing outside a man can make him unclean by going into him… it is what comes out of a man that makes him unclean” – in other words, returning to a point we make frequently, action not feeling is what matters.
We know we are saved by faith, but the epistle from James tells us that faith without deeds is dead. Our behaviour, our actions tell who we are.
As I read this I was reminded forcefully of Mark 12:30-31 “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbour as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these.", and of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians where he speaks of the need for love.
Paul says, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal… Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
Compare that list to the list of unclean outpourings that Jesus lists, every one of which is some kind of perversion of love, “evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly”. Most of those are actions too, and they demonstrate how far we fall short of selfless love of God and our neighbour.
I think that Jesus is telling us once again that love, selfless love as he modelled it, is a verb not an intention or a feeling; it is the spirit of love living in us, outworking in our lives that identifies us with God, it is the outpouring of that love in caring action for others that shows us to be one with him in the kingdom.
So what does this have to do with hand-washing?
The Jews had a tradition of washing, which was sensible hygiene practise for people who lived in a hot country where water was scarce, in the days before refrigerators and antibiotics. Jesus isn’t criticising them for holding on to their traditions; he effectively says, as Morna Hooker puts it, “you are so concerned with keeping the letter of the law that you have forgotten the other side of it, the spirit of the law.” I believe the first flows from the second, that the action flows from the change in heart.
For the ignorant, uneducated, or just plain ‘ornery among us the letter of the law is all we have, and whether we agree with individual laws or not, blind obedience is better for our society in many cases than blind disobedience. We too had better wash our hands and wear aprons because the kitchen regulations say we must.
Most dangerous though is the person who may not bother to wash their hands unless someone else is watching – who rejects the spirit and the letter of the law - after all it is simply legalistic nonsense, the nanny state in action…
For those of us who love and care for our fellow humans, and who want to serve them in our shared newness of life through Christ, we want to wash our hands because, understanding the way that disease is spread, we don’t want to make another person ill. One is done from ignorance, the other from a heart of love.
As Gentile inheritors of Christ’s love for all humanity, let us all remember that the heart and the law of God work together to show us how to live in loving, active relationship with each other as one church, one faith, one Lord.
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