Wash Your Hands Before Dinner

WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
August 30th 2009
Rev. Mark R. Bradshaw-Miller
“Wash Your Hands before Dinner”
Mark 7:1-23

I am part of the first generation raised on television. That might go to help explain a great deal about my generation. But I am not interested in generational theory this morning. Instead, I share this to point out that many of my childhood memories are connected to television. This morning I want to share one of those memories. It was a commercial, or more like a public service promotion. What I remember was watching a child complete a model boat. Completing his project he turned to his father with a mixture of joy and pride. His father looked at the project and said: “Look at the mess you made!” The joy and pride quickly drained from the child’s face and was replaced with sadness and humiliation. The point of the public service announcement was clearly not directed toward messy children but to the father who had missed the accomplishment in the midst of the mess.
Jesus and the disciples have been feeding people, thousands of hungry people. With few resources and no support from the religious community, Jesus feed the poor and hungry. It was a miracle of organization and of deeds. Faced with the new thing that God was doing in their midst the religious leadership demands to know why their hands were not properly washed. As you might imagine, it is clear that the religious folks had missed the miracle in the midst of messy hands.
At first glance this passage can appear as if the conflict is between religious practice and religious outcomes. That is no accident particularly given how the revised common lectionary has chosen to exclude certain parts of this passage. This is why I have chosen to read the whole encounter. Their decision to cut out sections, in hopes of covering more ground, leaves us at risk of missing the heart of this encounter. I do not presume to know the reasons for the decisions about why some parts of the scripture were chosen and others were not in the lectionary. However, I do know that if we follow their lead this passage can quickly be reduced to a treatise on the importance of personal morality over religious ritual. Unfortunately, that interpretation is misguided at best.
The heart of the passage is not the conclusion but the reference to Isaiah and to the practice of Corban. Jesus’ response to the challenge over proper religious ritual is to quote from the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah’s message is not about the personal morality of Israel but about the lack of justice for the widow, the orphan, the immigrant, illegal or otherwise. The prophetic oracles cannot be explained away as anything other than a call for social justice. The greatest sin God says, through the prophet Isaiah, is not personal failings but worship that ignores social justice. So, when Jesus quotes this passage it is not merely window dressing but the foundation for his argument. But, just in case the religious folks miss the message Jesus brings in a specific example: “Corban.”
It is the entire section about Corban that the lectionary chooses to skip. Through the practice of Corban, the religious leadership had found a way to increase their coffers. By claiming that financial support was going to the religious leadership, people could take away support from the elderly. Religious purity then was gained through ignoring the most vulnerable in society. Enriching the temple at the expense of the poor had become a cornerstone of religious purity. It was against this religious practice to which Jesus was raging.
Much of religious faithfulness had been reduced to personal religious practice. The overemphasizing of personal purity had led to all sorts of abuse. And into this distortion Jesus speaks very clearly that it is not what we put into our bodies which makes us impure. And on this point Jesus makes an odd turn from social justice to the condition of people’s heart. Just when we are sure that Jesus is focusing solely on social policy he reminds us that social justice and a vibrant spiritual life are intimately connected. Instead of pitting personal faith and social justice at odds, Jesus shows that the two are part of the same fabric.
So I have spent all this time making the case that this passage is not about personal religious practice. Well, it is not. However, it does not dismiss it personal religious practice as irrelevant. Instead, Jesus makes it clear that the great sin of the religious community, then and now, is the tendency to reduce our faith to a short list of personal sins we should avoid. So too, when we work for social justice we are to focus not on the symptoms and but at the root of the problem. We cannot offer charity and forget justice. Charity is essential but it is not the fullness of our calling. Let me see if I can bring this home a bit.
As a people who claim faith in Jesus we are called to build a deep and vibrant spiritual life. But this is not an end unto itself. Instead, we nurture our spiritual life so that we can remain faithful in our work for justice for the poor, widow, orphan, and the immigrant. This week I was moved by the words of a classmate of mine from seminary who is also a pastor. This week he wrote something on his Facebook page. You do not need to know what Facebook is to grasp the power of his words. He wrote:
The churches have to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and shelter the homeless. But they have also to remember that the answer to homelessness is homes, not shelters. What the poor and downtrodden need is not piecemeal charity but wholesale justice. The Bible is less concerned with alleviating the effects of injustice than with eliminating the cause of it. One wonders what else the churches are talking about. (Reverend Jonathan Carroll)
I hear his words and it makes we wonder how often Christians have, like the father in the commercial, missed the essential message of the Gospel. Where are the places we get lost focusing on the mess or focused on dirty hands when our call is to rejoice that people are being transformed and lives are being saved? May God grant us the vision to see the good news amidst the mess, and the courage to act. Amen? Amen!