We are in eye-rolling territory. Eye brows raised, head tilted along with the accompanying surprised look on the face.
Really?
Are you serious?
All the problems in our world…and your thing is – hand washing?
People are daily dying from hunger and your concern is washing hands?
The Romans kill our people day in and day out – and you want to discuss “holiness?”
Our leaders, the leaders of the people are in cahoots with Rome and you call for ritualistic washing?
Daily men are scourged, women abused, children orphaned, women are made widows and crucifixions expected and you want to talk about why my disciples eat with undefiled hands?
This is what you have?
Jesus seems to be ridiculing what was a kind of Hebrew fundamentalist stance. The crowd (no doubt) was egging him on…
The peasant Jews in the crowd would have loved this kind of confrontation. You cannot impose your beliefs on others…especially on us!
This was blatant hypocrisy.
Some people are always more concerned about themselves then they are about others. Everything is all about them.
This was about their ritual. Not every one’s ritual. This was their practice, and not the practice of everyone.
What about the marginalized?
What about those treated unfairly?
What about the lame and the blind and the maimed?
What about those who suffer most within society? Where is there concern for them?
In the first century of the Common Era “Gentile Impurity” was probably the single greatest barrier between Jews and Gentiles.
It was a rather limited world view. There were Jews…and then…there was everybody else.
The issue of “uncleanness” was “a real hot button issue.”
The Jews were clean.
The Gentiles were unclean.
It was that simple and that black and white.
It seems like the atmosphere heats up whenever the Pharisees are present. Things get picky…quickly!
Purity practices such as ritual cleansings were important cultural markers. Every culture has them. They are how we know who belongs and who doesn’t, who is in and who is out.
For first century Jews, the following of dietary laws and observing the proper acceptable or kosher religious practices signaled one’s loyalty and place in the tribe.
It was important to let “others know” that you were a “practicing Jew.”
We have entered into radical territory. Some would even say, blasphemous territory!
Others have been there before us. We are not unique, nor is our culture or society. We all go through changes.
The message of Jesus becomes clearer: Holiness or a relationship with God is for everyone.
There comes a time when the “old rituals” and the “old ways” no longer apply. Over time…they disappear, much to the chagrin of the older populations…who still remember when!!!!
Sometimes our man-made, man enforced laws make no sense and some would argue, they never did!
How can things that are external – affect spirituality…or things from within?
This is the debate. This is the argument.
Going through rituals for the sake of going through them is pretty meaningless unless it comes from the heart.
It needs to come from within.
Who is unholy in God’s eyes? Not in your eyes…but in the eyes of God? Who is unclean? Who is beyond hope, beyond salvation, beyond redemption? Who is to be permanently excluded forever?
Jesus was radical. He was before his time. People are just people, or more correctly, perhaps all people are people. What makes us holy and allows us into the presence of God is not culture, or tradition, or ritual, or our biblical interpretation. It is who we are on the inside that determines our holiness.
The crowds must have went wild!