Scripture/Sermon of the Day

The Pharisees and some legal experts from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus. 2 They saw some of his disciples eating food with unclean hands. (They were eating without first ritually purifying their hands through washing. 3 The Pharisees and all the Jews don’t eat without first washing their hands carefully. This is a way of observing the rules handed down by the elders. 4 Upon returning from the marketplace, they don’t eat without first immersing themselves. They observe many other rules that have been handed down, such as the washing of cups, jugs, pans, and sleeping mats.) 5 So the Pharisees and legal experts asked Jesus, “Why are your disciples not living according to the rules handed down by the elders but instead eat food with ritually unclean hands?”

6 He replied, “Isaiah really knew what he was talking about when he prophesied about you hypocrites. He wrote,

This people honors me with their lips,  but their hearts are far away from me.

7 Their worship of me is empty  since they teach instructions that are human words.

8 You ignore God’s commandment while holding on to rules created by humans and handed down to you.”

14 Then Jesus called the crowd again and said, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand. 15 Nothing outside of a person can enter and contaminate a person in God’s sight; rather, the things that come out of a person contaminate the person.”

21 “It’s from the inside, from the human heart, that evil thoughts come: sexual sins, thefts, murders, 22 adultery, greed, evil actions, deceit, unrestrained immorality, envy, insults, arrogance, and foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from the inside and contaminate a person in God’s sight.”

I. There are at least 40 verses in the Bible about ritual cleaning — washing of body or garments. They pertain to worship or to eating certain foods — for example — if you eat the meat of an animal that died, you’re unclean and you have to take a bath or wash yourself in a certain way and then after the sun sets you’ll be clean (Leviticus 17:15). That’s in the Bible. It’s probably not practiced. (I read something like that and wonder — what do people do who take the Bible as the literal word of God — what do they do when they read something like that.)

II. None of these 40 verses I found about ritual cleaning are about washing your hands before eating.

People after Moses made these rules that required people to wash their hands before a meal. Jesus didn’t follow this tradition and it upset Pharisees and legal experts. The Pharisees and legal experts believed they were superior to other people because they followed obscure laws like this. Remember the Pharisee that prayed and thanked God for making him better than other people? These are the people talking to Jesus now.

III. There’s something to think about here, before we see what Jesus said. That is — why do we need to feel that we are better than other people? That’s what gives meaning to sports. We just had the olympics in Paris — I don’t know how many times a day the announcers had to remind us who had the most medals and especially the most Gold medals. Because we can believe the country with the most medals is the best country. We talk about the richest country, the most powerful country. We want to feel that we’re “the best.”

The Pharisees and legal scholars were not just questioning Jesus, they were also saying, indirectly, that THEY WERE SUPERIOR TO HIM because they followed these traditions and Jesus didn’t. They would also say in other places they were better than Jesus because they kept “better” company. Why do we do this? Why do we need to be “better”? (Mystics say when our ego dies, we lose that urge.)

IV. Why does one race need to say they are better than another race? Why is there white supremacy? Why so many who say they believe in Jesus — AND also that the white race is superior? If it was — wouldn’t God have come here as an Englishman? My family believed that Jesus was white, and he was Greek. (How did that happen? Did Mary and Joseph go to Athens and kidnap him?). They were patriarchal-Greek-white supremacists.

V. Anyway — we can see that this idea of “I’m better than you are” is as old as the Bible. These religious/legal supremacists were telling Jesus they were better than him and his followers because they kept the law better. And what did Jesus say? We’re all the same. And what’s important isn’t our skin color, or our religion, or how many laws we follow — none of those things on the outside of us. And none of them will make us clean. We are contaminated by what’s in our hearts — that’s where the hate comes from — that’s where the idea grows that I am superior to you because of my race or my gender or my political party or my country. Jesus said:

“sexual sins, thefts, murders, 22 adultery, greed, evil actions, deceit, unrestrained immorality, envy, insults, arrogance, and foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from the inside and contaminate a person in God’s sight.”

After this, Jesus healed two people, a foreign woman’s daughter, and a deaf Jewish man. The message? Only the power of God can heal us. So turn to God (repent) and ask for help. It’s that simple. Psalm 51 says it: “Have mercy on me God. I am not clean. My heart is dirty. Give me a new heart that is clean. Wash me; make me good.” The Pharisees didn’t follow Jesus’ advice. But we can.