Mark 7:1-23 · Clean and Unclean
One of the truisms of life is that you can’t judge a book by its cover. Things are not always what they seem.
In our lesson for the day, the Pharisees and some of the law teachers had come from Jerusalem to “investigate” Jesus. On the outside, these Pharisees were the epitome of respectability. On the inside, however, they were full of fear and envy, and they were growing in their hatred for Jesus. They looked for any excuse to cast aspersion on him and his followers.
On this particular day, they observed some of Jesus’ disciples eating food without washing their hands. This, of course, offended them. Understand this wasn’t about sanitation. There was no sign around saying employees MUST wash their hands. It wasn’t about preventing germs. They knew nothing about germs in those days. Instead, this was about maintaining a religious tradition. Mark pauses momentarily and explains to his Gentile audience living outside of Palestine the Jewish practice of ceremonial washing.
As Mark explained, “Unclean,” the Greek word is koinais, means “ceremonially unwashed.” It was a technical term among Jews denoting whatever was contaminated according to their religious rituals and thus unfit to be called holy or devoted to God. Unclean could refer to practices or people.
The most common ritual cleansing was washing one’s hands before eating food. Disregarding this regulation was a sin for a loyal Jew. You and I might say that these disciples were engaging in unsanitary behaviour when they did not wash their hands before eating. In the Pharisees’ minds, though, Jesus’ disciples indulged in sinful behaviour when they did not wash their hands.
Let’s pause for a moment and acknowledge that this tradition of ritual cleansing probably had a positive effect on the health of the Jews who observed it. It is fascinating, isn’t it, how some of the Jewish ceremonial laws protected them from disease? This was one of those cases. However, protecting their health was not why they washed their hands before eating. It was because they were keeping the tradition of their fathers. Jesus’ disciples did not observe those traditions.
So the Pharisees and law teachers asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?”
Jesus knew what this was all about. He knew the Pharisees were not nearly as concerned about whether his disciples washed their hands as they were determined to find fault with his ministry. He does not refer to his disciples’ apparent ungodly conduct. Instead, he replies, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: ‘These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’ You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.”
Of course, Jesus was correct in his assessment of the Pharisees. The ceremonial laws regarding ritual cleansing were not biblical. They were part of later traditions that the rabbis used to comment on scripture. In truth, they were holding fast to human traditions rather than to God’s commands. However, Jesus was not interested in the Pharisees’ theology but in their hypocrisy.
Jesus was not concerned about outward appearance but inner integrity. “These people honour me with their lips,” he said, citing Isaiah, “but their hearts are far from me.”
Pastor David Yarbrough says that when he was in Bible College he met an attractive young man named Shannon. What made Shannon enjoyable was his looks. His hair was a different colour each week, his ears were loaded with earrings, and he wore big, loose grunge-style clothing. But the most exciting point of his appearance was his shorts . . . and he always wore shorts regardless of the weather. What made his shorts so odd was the way he wore them. You see, he always wore his shorts backwards. That’s right--he wore his shorts backwards. As you can imagine, anyone dressed like that at a Bible College stuck out like a sore thumb.
One day, says Yarbrough, he couldn’t stand it any longer, and his judgmental sarcasm got the best of him. He had to make a crack about Shannon’s shorts. To his surprise, Shannon was ready to receive criticism. Shannon turned to him and said politely, “I’ll tell you . . . just like I tell everyone else who asks me why I wear my shorts backwards. I tell them that God turned my life around so fast that my shorts couldn’t keep up.” Did you catch that? “God turned my life around so fast that my shorts couldn’t keep up.” That is quite an exciting response.
Yarbrough says that something interesting happened as that semester progressed. Despite his odd appearance, Yarbrough began to see through Shannon’s actions, class participation, research papers and prayers that he was a very spiritual man. His initial reaction to Shannon was rejection, but his rejection soon turned to respect when he saw past his bias to Shannon’s heart. (2)
Have you ever been guilty of judging a person by their outward appearance? Do some of you remember thirty or forty years ago when the easiest way to give certain middle-aged men a near stroke was to introduce them to a young male with long hair?
Does anybody remember Archie Bunker and his son-in-law whom he called “Meathead”? One of the reasons Archie despised his son-in-law was his appearance--long hair and hippie dress. Nowadays, if you watch a Gaither’s concert on television, a veritable bastion of southern white conservative culture, some of the singers look very much like “Meathead.” How stupid we were 40 years ago when we got so upset about how young people looked.
Do you suspect that 40 years from now, people like us, church people, will realize how ridiculous our generation was to ostracize young people for such things as tattoos and piercings? I say this not to upset anyone here but to ask you, who do you think is most in need of the Gospel, the prodigal who has wandered far from the family farm or the older son who has stayed at home and lived just like mama and daddy desired. We may treasure that older boy more; he needs the Gospel just as much as his younger brother, but we should not write off the prodigal just because he or she looks or thinks differently.
We’ve got a problem in the church today. I love something that theologian and church prophet Leonard Sweet said years ago: “The church loves blue hair . . . until it walks through its doors on a 16-year-old kid.” (3)
I’m sure that you’ve noticed that most churches today are graying. Where are the young adults who so severely need Jesus? Could we have driven them away because they feel they will be judged by how they look outside and not what’s in their heart? Of course, we can make that same mistake with older people.
Be very careful about judging people, young or old, by their appearance. Jesus was not concerned about outward appearance but inner integrity. “These people honour me with their lips,” he said, “but their hearts are far from me.”
Our tendency to judge people by their appearance is a symptom of our estrangement from them. By getting to know people person-to-person, we can see beyond appearances.
Does it reflect Jesus's heart? Be careful of judging based on outward appearances. Get to know people, and you may discover that the person who looks like they don’t belong is actually a child of God.
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