+ 13th Sunday after Pentecost – August 22, 2021 +
Series B: Isaiah 29:11-19; Ephesians 5:22-33; Mark 7:1-13
Beautiful Savior Lutheran
Milton, WA
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Life is full of traditions. Everyone has them. Singing “Take me out to the ballgame” at the 7th inning stretch. What you eat for Thanksgiving. When you celebrate Christmas. The playing of Taps at a funeral for a fallen soldier.
Tradition means to hand down or hand something over. Like a baton in a relay race. Tradition is a handing down of the past to the present.
The Christian faith has many traditions as well. Think of all the things that are handed down to us in the Church. The reading, hearing, and preaching of Scripture that goes back to the days of the synagogue. The celebration of certain holy days that goes back to the Old Testament. Even Scripture itself is a divinely inspired tradition, books, letters, Gospels, and psalms from the prophets, apostles, and evangelists and copied and translated by Christians in the past and handed down to us.
Traditions like these are good, necessary even. Everyone has traditions. Problems arise, however, when we forget why certain traditions exist. Imagine singing the national anthem or celebrating Christmas without knowing why those traditions are important. Problems also arise when traditions take the place of God’s promises or lead us away from God’s word.
And this is what had happened to the Pharisees in Jesus’ day, and why Jesus confronts them.
The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus 2 and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed.3 (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders.4 When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.[a])
The Pharisees were steeped in tradition – 613 things to do and not do in order to do the righteousness of God. Washing hands and feet and dishes and cushions, not just for personal hygiene but for ceremonial purity. And like all religious types, they took note who followed the traditions and who didn’t.
So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?”
Before we get to how Jesus responds to the Pharisees, it’s worth noting a few important parts of historical context here. For one thing, we tend to think of the name Pharisee as a pejorative. Like someone who is sanctimonious and holier-than-thou. Not so in Jesus’ day. The Pharisees were spiritual super-stars, religious over achievers who were looked up to.
Also, for the Pharisees, and for 1st century Jews, this wasn’t an issue of hygiene, but of ritual purity. The idea was that by touching or coming into contact with things that were unclean, you would be ritually impure, and would need to go through a cleansing, or purification before receiving God’s gifts, whatever those gifts were, be it food or his Word, and so on.
Sounds fine you say. What’s the big deal? It becomes a problem, as it did for the Pharisees, when you believe that it is by your hands and by your following of the traditions, especially the man-made ones, that are doing something that makes you worthy or holy enough to be holy in God’s presence. The problem isn’t so much the tradition as it is thinking that by doing the tradition – the ritual hand washing in this case – that by doing that, you’re doing something for God. The problem comes when sinful hearts elevate the tradition above God’s word, or put aside God’s word in favor of the traditions of men.
“This people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrine the commandments of men.”
Jesus illustrates his point with the 4thCommandment: “Honor your father and mother,” which also includes taking care of them when they’re old and providing for them. But the tradition of the Pharisees said that if you declared a portion of your wealth to be “Korban,” which was like sacrificing it in advance, then you didn’t have to use it to help your parents.
Not only did the Pharisees elevate their human traditions above the commandments of God; they also abrogated those commandments to uphold their traditions. “You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”
When Jesus quotes Isaiah he’s warning the Jerusalem’s leaders, who were acting just like the leaders in Isaiah’s day, that divine judgment of their own self-righteousness was coming. Righteousness, holiness, purity, cleansing – are only found in one place…in Jesus. In his life lived perfectly, in holiness and obedience to the Father, all for you. In his life laid down, where he died on the cross for all our unholiness, uncleanliness, and impurities – where Jesus was defiled with sin that we might be cleansed in his life. In his resurrection which raises us from the dead.
If you think about it Jesus is the ultimate tradition. Jesus is the one who was handed down to us from the Father that we might not be handed down to our sin.
Jesus gets to the heart of the issue with handwashing and traditions here in Mark 7. Do our traditions exalt Christ or do they exalt ourselves? That’s the difference between a good tradition and a bad one. It ultimately comes down to the question of what is it that makes someone holy or righteous in God’s sight? Is it by the work of my hands or Jesus’ hands? His holiness or mine?
It is Jesus holiness that makes us holy. It’s Jesus’ hands, pierced and bloody that purify and cleanse us. Every single time. Every drop of blood he shed was for you. To cleanse you. Forgive you. To declare to you…
Come; you are welcome. Never mind your burdens, sins, and hypocrisies, come to me and my table, and I will welcome you, feed you, cleanse you, forgive you and save you. The Pharisees will cluck their tongues and wag their accusing fingers at you, but come to me all you who are heavy laden. And I will give you rest.
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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