Text: Mark 7:1-13
As some of you already know, we
spend a lot of time at Children’s Hospital in Seattle. Once a week our son has speech therapy
there. We will be there this next Friday
and Saturday for another surgery.
Needless to say, we have gotten to know the neighborhood and the various
eating establishments very well.
One of the places we will
sometimes go is Noah’s Bagels inside the QFC market in University Village. On one of our visits, I noticed a sink near
the pop machine and coffee dispensers.
Inside the sink was a decorative pot.
I think it was made out of some type of metal. Behind the faucet was a laminated sign with
some Hebrew writing on it. My curiosity
led me to try deciphering the inscription.
Carefully, I read “Barukh ata
Adonai Elohenu melekh ha'olam, asher qiddeshanu b'mitzvotav v'tzivanu al
netilath yadayim.” Without a lexicon
at hand, I could figure out this much: “Blessed are You, LORD, our God, King of
the universe, who…” and then I was stuck.
The rest was a struggle. I could make
out the word for commandment. There was
something else there about hands.
I asked one of the employees what
it was all about. He said, “It’s a
handwashing prayer for our Jewish customers. I’m not sure what it says.” I googled it when I got home. It is indeed a handwashing prayer for
religious Jews. The exact translation is
this: “Blessed are You, LORD,
our God, King of the universe, Who has sanctified us with His commandments and
commanded us concerning washing of hands.”
This goes back all the way to ancient traditions, similar to the way St.
Mark describes the practice of the Pharisees and scribes. According
to their tradition, it is necessary to wash your hands in a carefully
prescribed fashion with a special vessel in order to avoid anything that was ceremonially unclean, defiled,
common. This tradition was further
extended to the ceremonial washing of cups and pots and pans, even the cushions
upon which you laid at your dining table.
This usually involved sprinkling with water, sort of like a
baptism. In fact, the word here in the
Greek for “to wash” is indeed the same word from which we get “to baptize.” They would literally “baptize” their pots and
pans and sofas, not just to wash them, but to make them ceremonially clean, so
that the people who used them would not be defiled by any “uncleanness.”
The Pharisees and scribes were
disturbed when they noticed the disciples of Jesus eating with (heaven forbid!)
unwashed hands. It wasn’t that they were
concerned about hygiene. They looked down
upon those who did not rigidly keep these traditions, which they held up as
highly as God’s commandments. They
thought that by keeping these traditions, they would thereby be in a better
position to keep God’s Law.
And so Jesus lays into them
here. He calls them “hypocrites.” Mask wearers.
Pretending to be something that you are not. And what were they pretending to be? Someone who honors God with their man-made
traditions. But Jesus calls them
out. Using the words of Isaiah, he accuses
them of honoring God with their lips, but in reality their hearts are far from
God. They rigidly hold to tradition, but
at the same time they were trying to find ways to circumvent God’s law. Traditions were meant to help people keep the
Law. Instead, they ended up tampering
with it, creating loopholes.
For
example, Jesus affirms the commandment to “Honor your father and your mother.” No matter how old you are, you should “give
them honor, serve, obey, and hold them in love and esteem.” But if you declared something to be “Corban” … a gift given to God … even
though you should probably be using it to take care of your parents … then you
were released from your responsibility to use it to take care of your parents.
Hypocrites,
Jesus calls them. They are more
concerned with an outward appearance of piety, more concerned with outward
purity and cleanness, less concerned with inward purity and cleanness. They spent an inordinate amount of time
scrubbing hands and pots and pans and couches.
But no matter how hard you scrub the outside, there’s no way you can
scrub the inside. And I’m not talking
about pots and pans. I’m talking about
hearts. They were overly concerned with
“doing it right,” but they forgot about “rightly doing unto others.”
But it’s not just a first century
Jewish problem. It’s not just a twenty-first
century Noah’s Bagels problem. It’s been
a human nature problem since Adam and Eve first reached out with unwashed hands
and ate the forbidden fruit. From that
moment on, not just their hands, but their hearts were defiled, unclean,
common, not fit for God’s service, not fit for being in his holy presence.
Are there any manmade traditions
that we hold to firmly? We have many
fine traditions here in the Church that may not necessarily be prescribed in
the Bible. The trouble comes when we begin
to think that we are just a cut above everyone else because “we do it this way
and they do it that way.” Do we honor
God with our lips, yet our hearts are far from him? Do we come here just to make an impression on
someone? Do we come here thinking that
just by showing up we’re somehow impressing God? And do we invent pious appearing ways of
getting around God’s commandments?
No matter how hard you scrub the
outside, there’s nothing you can do about your inside. That’s something only God can do. That’s something we need God to do for us.
That’s something that God did for
us. Jesus became common, defiled,
unclean, for you and for me at the cross.
Jesus suffered outside the walls of Jerusalem, crucified as a common
criminal. The holy and righteous Son of
God became defiled and unclean with the sins of the world laid upon him at the
cross. Galatians 3:13 says, “Christ
redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us – for it is
written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.’” And 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “For our sake
he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the
righteousness of God.” Jesus endured a
baptism of blood which paid the price for our deceiving lips and our distant
hearts. Jesus endured a baptism of blood
which paid the price for our hypocrisy.
Our masks are torn away. He calls
us to repentance and faith in his shed blood for the forgiveness of sins.
That
bath of blood is poured over you in the water and the Word of Holy Baptism. All that Jesus accomplished at the cross is
personally applied to you. Your sins are
forgiven. You are washed. You are clean. You are made to be a part of Christ’s Church,
his holy bride. The heart of the
Bridegroom is close to you. You were “cleansed
by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to
himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might
be holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:26-27).
Like
those washed and scrubbed pots and pans, you have been set apart as holy vessels
dedicated to God’s service. You are “Corban”
… gifts sent out into the world to serve and do acts of mercy and kindness in the
name of Christ, “who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to
purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good
works.” (Titus 2:14).
So go ahead and keep washing your
hands before you eat. That’s still a
good practice. Not because the Bible tells
you it’ll get you closer to God. It
really is good hygiene. But since there’s
water involved in washing, maybe it’s a good time to remember your baptism
every time you scrub your hands.
Remember how God has washed you clean and forgiven your sins for the
sake of Jesus.
And maybe I could rephrase that little prayer from behind the faucet at
Noah’s Bagels: “Barukh ata Adonai Elohenu melekh ha'olam,” … “Blessed are You, LORD, our God, King of the universe, Who has sanctified us
with His commandments and commanded us concerning washing of hands.” Maybe
I could rephrase it by using this prayer which we will use a short time from
now: “Blessed are you, O Lord, our God, King of the
universe, for You have had mercy on those whom You created and
sent Your only-begotten Son into our flesh to bear our sin and be our Savior.
With repentant joy we receive the salvation accomplished for us by the
all-availing sacrifice of His body and His blood on the cross.”
Amen.
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