You shall not worship God in vain
Mark 7: 5 The Pharisees and the scribes asked Jesud, “Why don’t your disciples walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with unwashed hands?” 6 He answered them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. 7 But they worship me in vain,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ 8 “For you set aside the commandment of God, and hold tightly to the tradition of men—the washing of pitchers and cups, and you do many other such things.”
(WHO IS THERE? and the imagined fridge of the monks.)
Jesus was many times accused with breaking the Jewish Law, like breaking the Shabbat rules, breaking some traditions, and in this story particularly he was accused of not washing his hands according to the rules of the tradition of the elders and of making his disciples do the same. As it is written at the beginning of chapter 15 in the Gospel of Matthew:
“Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem, saying:
Why do your disciples disobey the tradition of the elders? For they don’t wash their hands when they eat bread.”
One thing should be made clear, that sometimes in the Gospels, it looks like that Jesus did not care much about the rules, he just acts quite randomly as he wishes.
Actually, it is very far from the facts, because it must be obvious that although Jesus elevated the rules to the prophetic level, which means that the extraordinary might be also exceptional, still, just like his master, John the Baptist, he and his disciples strictly clung to the Holy Scriptures and the divinely ordered rules in it.
As Jesus said it in the Gospel of Matthew, in chapter five that regarding the Law of Moses the disciples must take heed that:
“For most certainly, I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not even one smallest letter or one tiny pen stroke shall in any way pass away from the law, until all things are accomplished.”
The Jesus circle also maintained that only the written Scriptures are binding, and the oral tradition is not. The oral tradition is called today the Talmud, as it became collectively written in Babylon by the early 5hundreds. That is why he answered them that “ You have made the commandment of God void because of your tradition.”
It did not mean that washing the hands before eating is wrong as a hygienic method, but it meant that if they create thousands of more extra regulations, the procedure will not help them when at the same time they break the Ten Commandments, and sin against mercy, compassion, love and justice, required by God and conveyed by many Prophets as very essential in order to enter Heaven.
Jesus was right in that regarding that the extrapolated and multiplied regulations can not be found word by word in the Books of Moses. It is obvious, that the Pharisees extended the written text with the oral tradition on a level of systematic assumptions.
Jesus acted here on a prophetical level, saying that not washing your hands will not defile anybody. Being defiled means to become ritually or spiritually unclean. His point is not a medical one, because the arguments were not about health and public safety, but ritual or spiritual cleanliness. That is why “ He summoned the multitude, and said to them, ‘Hear, and understand. That which enters into the mouth doesn’t defile the man; but that which proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man. ’ ”
This point had to be explained even to his own disciples, because occasionally even they had a hard time to understand the depth of his sayings.
As it is written:
“Then the disciples came, and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?”
He had to almost rebuke his own disciples so Jesus said:
“Do you also still not understand? Don’t you understand that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the belly and then out of the body? But the things which proceed out of the mouth come out of the heart, and they defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual sins, thefts, false testimony, and blasphemies. These are the things which defile the man; but to eat with unwashed hands doesn’t defile the man.”
Ironically, we can state that washing the hands are very important and the Pharisees had a valid point too. Nevertheless, having a valid point is not enough, when one misses the essence. Nonetheless, from the part of Jesus, it was a prophetical action through an extreme method to share the message of God.
The major rule explains it:
“ But seek God’s Kingdom, and all these things will be added to you.”
So if we discipline our thoughts and our hearts and our deeds according to the written word of God, then as an extra, we are allowed to wash our hands.
In the spiritual world, keeping only the hand-washing rules as abiding the tradition, will not help us, if in the same time, we break the Ten Commandments.
Thus, we should not confuse the important with the additional rules, we must focus on the Heavenly Kingdom.
We can abide thousands of pages of habitual rules as an inherited cultural code from our forefathers and foremothers, detailed in small print level, if we continue to sin against love and compassion, mercy and equity.
The casuistry will not help us to enter Heaven if we helplessly lose our focus.
Thus, we have to pay attention to weed out the wrong thoughts and the bad desires from our hearts, in order to worship God by not breaking a single one of them but by keeping all the Ten Commandments.
Of course we know that washing hands and the utensils are very important, Jesus obviously knew the health benefit of it. However, by placing the importance of the proceedings out of the mouth over the procedure of dining, he had a significant message. The dispute was not about hygiene, but about the religious impurity.
In that immorality must have a higher though negative importance than physical washing or not washing. Also, by stating that the real bad things are coming from the inside of the heart, he might have indicated that demons are not only out there, coming to attack us from the outside, but we do create our own demons, and we do feed them with our desires and we grow them by our wrongdoings and sins.
May we bless God, from the center of our hearts, with our thoughts, words and deeds, always. AMEN
