Wash Your Hands!
Read Mark 7:1-23.
How often did I hear those words when I was growing up? "Wash your hands!" Make sure your hands are clean before you eat! (Of course, even then we weren't allowed to eat with our hands...we had to use our utensils...but I digress...) I wish I had known this passage by heart during those days. I could have responded to Mom or Dad, "Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them" (7:15). Then I could have mumbled, "Well, that's what Jesus said" as I was sent up to my room without supper.
Our culture is obsessed with cleanliness. We have this underlying fear of germs and dirt, so we station hand sanitizers everywhere and remind kids, "Cleanliness is next to godliness." (I think that's in the book of I Assumptions, but I can't tell you the chapter and verse right off the top of my head.) I once had an infection control nurse comment to me that our obsession with sanitizing everything could very well set us up for major illness—because we're losing our ability to build up immunity to certain germs and diseases. (Whether that's true or not, I have no idea and no desire to debate the issue.)
Now, this is not a rant about hand washing. It's meant to help us understand the obsession the religious leaders of Jesus' day had about washing hands before eating. They weren't that different than we were, except that they couched such hand washing in religious terms. You washed your hands in a certain way and at a certain time to honor God. And when the disciples don't do that—when they flaunt the tradition by (gasp!) eating with unwashed hands, the religious leaders are angry. Why don't they follow the tradition of the elders?
Jesus takes the discussion in a different direction than, I would guess, the religious leaders planned on it going. He talks about things that really harm us. Whether we eat a little dirt or a few germs with our food is not, in the long run, going to do all that much for us—positive or negative! (It's going to happen anyway.) What does do harm to us are the things that damage our soul. Jesus even gives a list here: "sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly (7:21-22). Now that's quite a list, but Jesus isn't even all that focused on the actions that those words represent. He's focused on the heart, because every single one of these actions begins as a motive, a feeling, a bad attitude in the heart.
It's not what we eat. It's not even if we wash. It's the things we focus our hearts on. That's what makes us unclean. And that's what can produce a sickness that leads to death.
Jesus isn't looking at your hands. He's gazing at your heart.
How often did I hear those words when I was growing up? "Wash your hands!" Make sure your hands are clean before you eat! (Of course, even then we weren't allowed to eat with our hands...we had to use our utensils...but I digress...) I wish I had known this passage by heart during those days. I could have responded to Mom or Dad, "Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them" (7:15). Then I could have mumbled, "Well, that's what Jesus said" as I was sent up to my room without supper.
Our culture is obsessed with cleanliness. We have this underlying fear of germs and dirt, so we station hand sanitizers everywhere and remind kids, "Cleanliness is next to godliness." (I think that's in the book of I Assumptions, but I can't tell you the chapter and verse right off the top of my head.) I once had an infection control nurse comment to me that our obsession with sanitizing everything could very well set us up for major illness—because we're losing our ability to build up immunity to certain germs and diseases. (Whether that's true or not, I have no idea and no desire to debate the issue.)
Now, this is not a rant about hand washing. It's meant to help us understand the obsession the religious leaders of Jesus' day had about washing hands before eating. They weren't that different than we were, except that they couched such hand washing in religious terms. You washed your hands in a certain way and at a certain time to honor God. And when the disciples don't do that—when they flaunt the tradition by (gasp!) eating with unwashed hands, the religious leaders are angry. Why don't they follow the tradition of the elders?
Jesus takes the discussion in a different direction than, I would guess, the religious leaders planned on it going. He talks about things that really harm us. Whether we eat a little dirt or a few germs with our food is not, in the long run, going to do all that much for us—positive or negative! (It's going to happen anyway.) What does do harm to us are the things that damage our soul. Jesus even gives a list here: "sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly (7:21-22). Now that's quite a list, but Jesus isn't even all that focused on the actions that those words represent. He's focused on the heart, because every single one of these actions begins as a motive, a feeling, a bad attitude in the heart.
It's not what we eat. It's not even if we wash. It's the things we focus our hearts on. That's what makes us unclean. And that's what can produce a sickness that leads to death.
Jesus isn't looking at your hands. He's gazing at your heart.
Sorry. Still have to wash my hands after handling money or gas tanks. But, like you said, it wouldn't kill me if I didn't.
ReplyDelete