Laws and Traditions
I learned
something a few weeks ago when I covered this first story from Mark 7 in our
weekly Bible Study. Did you know that
the washing of hands is not one of the Laws given to the Hebrew people by
Moses?*
Perhaps you did, but I didn’t. For
all of these years I just assumed that Jesus was making some theological point about
reinterpreting the Law by not washing His hands. But no!
Jesus was making a distinction between God’s Law and truly man-made
laws.
Apparently
when the Jews come back from exile under the Babylonians – 500 years prior to
Jesus’ time on earth – the rabbis understood that the exile was brought about
because the people didn’t take their relationship with God seriously. So they started writing down laws that would
help keep spirituality central to the people.
While that started out okay … after several hundred years it had turned
into a legal system of gross micro-management.
It is that system against which Jesus is acting out in this passage.
What this
means, then, is that Jesus was being criticized in this story on the basis of
man-made laws. They are not attacking
Jesus’ ability to keep the divinely-given Mosaic Law. Rather, they are attacking Jesus on His
ability to keep the man-made rabbinic law.
No wonder this chafes in Jesus’ craw!
Look at
what Jesus has to say about them. He
quotes Isaiah 29:13 when he says, “You honor God with your lips but your heart
is far from Him. In vain do you worship God.” Then Jesus tells them that they are guilty of
abandoning God’s commandments in favor of their own man-made laws! That’s pretty serious when you think about
it. I can’t help but wonder: how many of
us are spiritual slaves to our own traditions rather than being in a genuine
relationship of spiritual freedom with God?
My wife
and I had a fabulous conversation about this very topic on the way to
Winston-Salem yesterday. Together we
made a point that must be said here. There
is nothing wrong with religious tradition.
Tradition can be deep and rich.
But we need to have traditions that are rooted in God’s Word and help
draw us close to God. We need traditions
that help us remember God’s ways and help us teach God’s ways to others. Tradition for the sake of tradition is what
is dangerous. I think that is what Jesus
is getting at in the first story of Mark 7.
Sin Abides Within
Then we
get to a great passage. What is it that
defiles a person? Sin! Where does sin abide? Within us!
This is a
great story for two reasons:
- First, it should bring us humbly to the throne of God. Nothing we do on our own can escape the effect of sin. Nothing we do on our own is good enough to earn God’s love. We are sinful inherently. That’s why we need Jesus!
- Second, once we have this understanding, we should be empowered. We don’t have to build up walls to keep the sin of the world out. If we’re already sinful and God can heal us of that sin, then we can genuinely go into the world and proclaim God’s grace without worrying about corruption. Of course, we do still need to genuinely protect ourselves from temptation and falling into sin. We must absolutely protect ourselves from the lure of sin. But we don’t need to worry about corruption. If God knows the sin in our heart and can cleanse us from that, then let us go boldly into the world! We don’t need to separate ourselves from the world as the Jews do in order to maintain their religious purity.
Syrophoenician
To that
very point we march into the next story in Mark: the Faith of the
Syrophoenician Woman. She was a
Gentile. She didn’t observe the Jewish
law. By all rights, coming into contact
with her would make a Jew ceremonially unclean.
But Jesus doesn’t avoid her. In
fact, He has a very playful encounter with her.
Jesus
makes sure that she understands that according to Jewish custom they shouldn’t
be having this conversation. She tells
Jesus that if she has to be considered a dog to Jesus that she is willing so
long as He can help her daughter. Once
Jesus sees a demonstration of her willingness to be humble, He heals the
daughter – from a distance, even! Jesus
is not concerned about her Gentile nature; He is concerned about the status of
her heart. After all, it is not what is
outside that makes us unclean!
Healing The Deaf Man
Finally we
turn to the neat story about the healing of the deaf man, yet in the grand
scheme of things, this story is not so neat.
Jesus’ ministry is finally getting to a point where He must start to be
careful where He does demonstrations of God’s power. He pulls the deaf man aside. He heals the deaf man.
However,
the deaf man still doesn’t hear Jesus.
Jesus tells the man to tell no one; but the deaf man does exactly the
opposite. Again we see that the crowd is
not interested in following Jesus and humbling themselves to the will of
God. The deaf man has an incredible
miracle done to him that only serves to actually highlight just how much
difficulty he really has with hearing God.
What is
sad about this story is that it is the real beginning of the end. Remember yesterday’s readings? Jesus’ disciples had begun to go out on their
own. They are becoming the message
bearers that God’s grace and love and mercy have come near. It is time for Jesus to focus on what He has
ultimately come to do: to die. How will
this come about? Jesus begins this
chapter by telling the Jewish leaders that they have abandoned God for a
religion made in their own image. Now
Jesus does a miracle knowing that the man will not be able to obey His command
to remain silent about it. The path to
the cross has now begun in earnest. The
inevitable agenda that was hidden is now capable of being clearly seen as
inevitable.
There will
be conflict. There will be conflict of
authority between Jesus and the religious leaders. There will be conflict of popularity between
Jesus and the religious leaders. People
will begin to slowly defy Jesus while other turn to complete and utter
submission. This chapter is a microcosm
of what will come.
That is
why this chapter is so sad. The disciples
are ready; they only need two more things.
They need a genuine demonstration of God’s love in order to receive
salvation and they need the Holy Spirit dwelling within them. But on that note, that is why this chapter is
so happy and exciting. The march to the
cross is obvious here. But we know that
the march to the cross is also a march to Pentecost! Thanks be to God!
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*There is scriptural law
about priests who are going to offer up the sacrifice in the temple needing to
wash their hands. But clearly that is
not the same context as we are talking in Mark 7!
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