Mark 7,1-8, 14-15, 21-23.
In Mark’s gospel, crowds often gather around Jesus, but they are usually the ordinary folk. However, in today’s gospel reading “the Pharisees and some of the scribes” – the great and the good of Jewish religion, – who had come down from Jerusalem, gather round him. The Pharisees were hard-line separatists who kept themselves apart from all external/foreign influences that might contaminate them or their religion. The scribes were the copyists, teachers and interpreters of the law. They were two like- minded groups. Noticing failures of observance of the law would have been their speciality. The law which began as the 10 Commandments when God made the covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai had, by the time of Jesus, grown into 613 regulations. 365 of them, corresponding to the days of the year, were negative regulations, and 248 of them, corresponding to the joints in the human body, were positive.
In today’s gospel we see the Pharisees and scribes take exception to the fact that some of Jesus’ disciples did not observe the tradition of the elders which required that they wash their hands and sprinkle themselves before eating. Mark also mentions other Jewish regulations regarding the washing of pots, dishes etc, presuming that his readership, (Gentiles) did not know them.
Jesus takes their concerns as an opportunity to take them to task on the legalism and externalism behind their question and their attitude to religion and law in general. Quoting the prophet Isaiah, he accuses them of paying lip-service to God with their heart’s focusing on human regulation rather than on God the author and focus of all law. To their question about not observing purity regulations, he responds by showing how they themselves observe human, man-made traditions, rather than God’s law. He shows them how their human regulations were cunningly used to avoid observing the fourth commandment of the Decalogue, and thereby undermining it. (Mk 7,9-13 – omitted from today’s gospel reading).
Jesus presses his criticism further by asserting that what matters to God is internal purity, purity of the heart, rather than external purity, regarding food, washing etc. It is from the heart, from inside a person, and not from outside, that uncleanness and sin come. Jesus gives a list of 12 sins which come from the heart, six of which are in the plural indicating particular actions; fornication, theft, murder, adultery, acts of coveting, and iniquities; and 6 of which are in the singular, describing habitual attitudes; deceit, indecency, envy, slander, pride, and folly. All of these make a person unclean and not what he/she eats. It is this kind of uncleanness which needs to be addressed rather than that of dishes and jars.
Jesus’ key point here is that food laws, washing, and external purity, do not touch the human condition which should be the focus of good religion. The values of the kingdom which he teaches and preaches, do. The Old Testament Scriptures spoke of purity and set up laws as signposts to it. Jesus was the reality, the deeper truth, towards which they pointed.
Jesus had a high regard for the Law and the values enshrined in it, as we know from elsewhere in the gospels, but he had no time for legalism which focused on the law for its own sake rather than on the values it enshrined. Legalism and externalism were/are always occupational hazards of religion in every age. In religion, law, ritual, language, art, music, rubrics, customs and buildings are means to an end. They are not ends in themselves. The key question we should ask of all religious laws and practices is: How do these help me/us to serve God better? How do they promote God’s kingdom? If they don’t serve these purposes they are not fit for purpose.
Fr Geoff O’Grady