Cleanliness is Next to Godliness

Mark 7:1--23 (NRSV)
¹Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, ²they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. ³(For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; ⁴and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) ⁵So the Pharisees and the Scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” ⁶He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,

⁹Then he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! ¹⁰For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ ¹¹But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban’ (that is, an offering to God)—¹²then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, ¹³thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.”

¹⁴Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: ¹⁵there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”

¹⁷When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. ¹⁸He said to them, “Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, ¹⁹since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) ²⁰And he said, “It is what comes out of a person that defiles. ²¹For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, ²²adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. ²³All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

I am sure we’ve all heard the old expression “Cleanliness is next to Godliness”.

According to the fourteenth edition of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, it is an old Hebrew proverb used in the late 2nd century by Rabbi Phinehas ben-Yair.

I grew up on this old proverb as many of you did. You washed your hands before coming to the table or you didn’t come to the table. In our house, not washing one’s hands before coming to the table was seen as naturally repulsive but also common, coarse, flaunting the mores of proper people, and disrespectfully to the home and the cook. Not to mention the fact that it was considered disrespectful to God, the ultimate provider of our blessings of home and food. One could not say grace for food with dirty hands steepled toward heaven. It was a contradiction in realities—dirt, un-cleanliness, and the holy didn’t mix.

However, if you were out working, fishing, or hunting you could eat without washing your hands and still say grace over your food. It was confusing, but I didn’t questions the traditions, I just did what I had to do to eat. Besides, Grandmother Lottie’s fried chicken was worth a lot of scrubbing.

Yes, I was taught about bad hygiene and diseases, but I knew there was more to all this cleanliness stuff than germs and diseases. This notion of being clean, thankful, and worshipful was a part of something much more important than any understanding of microbes, looking bad, or smelling bad

As adults, we have come to understand the principles and reasoning behind some of these things. Furthermore, our mother’s saying, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness” extended one’s attitude about the holy beyond the church and into our everyday lives. This injunction of cleanliness recapitulates the Psalmist’s insights as he said,

Please be aware that from the dawn of human history physical cleanliness and water have been associated with moral purity and holiness in most of the world’s living religions.

In the Old Testament, we get a glimpse into ancient Israel’s understanding of what it meant to be clean, pure, and holy in Leviticus 20:26:

²⁶You shall be holy to me; for I the LORD am holy, and I have separated you from the other peoples to be mine. (NRSVA)

To be holy was to come out of the common, the profane, and that which was contrary to God and God’s nature. To a large degree, what it meant to be holy people, people separated unto God, for the Israelites can be summed up in this whole notion of Cleanliness in its moral and physical dimensions.

Having said that, why did Jesus come down so heavy on the Pharisees and the Scribes in today’s scriptures when they talk about an attitude of cleanliness as a part of one’s sense of respect for the Holy? The answer to the question lies in Jesus’ perception of their motives for questioning him. This particular bunch of Scribes and Pharisees were out to undermine Jesus’ authority as a noteworthy teacher.

Marks audience, along with its problems of impending persecution by the Romans, was dealing with an internal, religious problem. The dynamics of this problem lay in sorting out their Christian faith from its moral, spiritual, and religious roots in Judaism. In this process, Mark, as a Hellenistic Jew, living far from Palestine and Jerusalem, makes some mistakes in interpreting more orthodox Jewish customs and practices as well as misrepresenting the Scribes and Pharisees as groups of people.

Let me further add that there is good scholarship that indicates that later editors and revisers of the Gospels, under the influence of Pauline Christianity, tended to paint all Pharisees with the same bad brush, when it was only a small and select group of these folks, possibly the group called the Herodians and the Sadducees, the priestly class, who were the major persecutors or antagonist of Jesus.[1] If you will, the Pharisees become a catchall group for anyone who opposed Jesus.

The scribe’s main function in Judaism was to interpret the Law to the people[2]. The Scribes were responsible for the oral interpretations of the Mosaic Law as an attempt to keep people from straying in to un-holiness in those ill-defined areas of the Law. The Scribes, as it were, built a fence of interpretations around the Law. To their credit, the Scribes generally issued opinions on the Law from within the Mosaic Laws and scriptural sources—what we might call proof-texting today. This was also Jesus’ method of interpreting scriptures. This oral interpretation or fence around the Law, however, became the burdensome religious additions that were the source of much of Jesus’ condemnation.

Now let’s not be too hard on the Scribes. Let me tell you about some crazy New Mexico laws:

The Pharisees were for the most part devout Jews, who separated themselves and kept away from persons or things impure, in order to attain the degree of holiness and righteousness required in those who would commune with God.”[3] The Pharisees tried to live by the Laws of Moses and the scribal interpretations of Mosaic Law.

In defense of the Pharisees, they were a fraternity of men who seriously and conscientiously wanted to know and understand God’s will and ways. They were not as has been portrayed by many a bunch of backward, religious schizophrenics out of touch with reality. The fact that some of them conscientiously went overboard at times or deliberately misrepresented or misused their religious beliefs for ill reasons does not mean that as a group the Pharisees were hypocrites anymore than all Christians can be called hypocrites because of some overly devote or corrupt Christians.

Matthew will later correct many of Mark’s misunderstandings and misuse of Hebrew Scriptures, customs, misrepresentations, and errors in Palestinian geography. Yet the universal and unjust condemnation of Pharisees remains a part of Christianity today.

Mark clearly wanted the Gentiles in his audience to understand and to honor their moral, ethical, and spiritual heritage rooted in Judaism while freeing them from the burdensomeness of many of the ritualistic and ceremonial laws of Jerusalem Judaism. To this end, he makes a clear and salient point that is true Jesus in these passages of scripture. That point being, “don’t sweat the small stuff of religion at the expense of the big stuff of your spiritual relationship with God” especially in the face of impending persecution. Alternatively, as one writer said, “Don’t make a minor thing your major thing.”

A close study across the Synoptic Gospels will reveal that Jesus more often than not agreed with the teachings of the Pharisees but not with their practices. We see this in one of Matthew’s corrections to Mark in--

Matthew 23:2-3 (NRSV)
²“ The Scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; ³therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.

The big exception to Jesus’ agreement with the religious leaders of his day is seen in his association with the unclean and “unwashed” multitudes, the ‘Am ha-areZ—the commoners, the publican, and the sinner.

As I said earlier, these Scribes and Pharisees today question Jesus with the implications that he is not a noteworthy and true teacher of Israel because his disciples were eating with unwashed hands contrary to the traditions of the Jewish elders. Jesus’ response does not question the practice of washing before eating. Jesus challenges the intentions of the Scribes and Pharisees for making an issue of his disciples’ not washing their hands in the face of their more import work—assisting Jesus in teaching and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God to those people that the overly rigorous and hypocritical Scribes and Pharisees had disenfranchised with their trivial, religious legalism.

Jesus calls their hand by citing an ongoing, petty, Pharisaical debate over the nuisances of making vows to dedicate one’s wealth to God at the expense of extending the interpretation of the Fifth Commandment to honor one’s parents to include using one’s financial resources to take care of one’s parents in times of need instead of setting it aside for religious purposes. In the Pharisees favor, a sage or wise elder could and often did cancel out such overly exuberant or even fraudulent vows.

Let me give you and example: A parishioner once came to me and told me he needed to amend his annual pledge to the church because his mother had gone into a nursing home and Medicaid would not cover all her expenses. He was going to have to pick up some of the additional costs. I was flattered and honored that this man came to me and did this. However, I was deeply impressed with the seriousness with which he took his pledge to the church. This is a similar situation to what was going on in ancient Pharisaical Judaism.

What sends Jesus through the overhead was the fact that the Pharisees and Scribes were even debating and haggling over something so profoundly stupid. Such preoccupation with nit-picky, legalistic interpretations of the Law at the expense of the spirit of the Law was hypocrisy at its clearest.

Jesus calls the crowd in close, the crowd moves in showing he hasn’t lost his authority to teach them during this encounter with the Scribes and Pharisees. He tells them clearly, what many great prophets, sages, and even Pharisees of his day knew and taught—what renders a person unholy, spiritually unclean, has nothing to do with food but rather the intentions behind a person’s actions. To make this point clear, Jesus reiterates the prohibition of certain sins listed in the Ten Commandments in verse 20, which have absolutely nothing to do with food or ceremony.

Let me add this as a side note. Many cite these scriptures in Mark’s Gospel as proof that Jesus suspends the Jewish dietary laws and kosher practices. In these passages of scriptures in Mark, he does not. Notice that the parentheses in the scriptures are the author’s or editor’s addition not Jesus’ words. Jesus addresses only the hypocrisy or the play, acting piety of the Scribes and Pharisees. Mark or one of the redactors of Mark’s Gospel, however, takes liberties, or misinterprets at this point probably to accommodate the Gentiles. Matthew in Chapter 15:1-20 will correct this comment on the Jewish dietary laws.

Jesus plainly says that the things that defiles a person, makes them unholy, morally and spiritually, proceeds from the seat of human intentions—the heart--and from immoral actions, which are the products of human intentions. What food one eats or how one eats doesn’t make one unholy. Duh! This insight seems so obvious to us today doesn’t it? On the other hand, maybe it doesn’t... In Christianity today, we still tend to place less than the best and most scholarly interpretations of scripture and Christian traditions on a par with the Laws of God and the Teachings of Christ. In fact, we have Christian denominations founded on such misinterpretations.

A young man once came to a great rabbi and asked him to make the younger man a rabbi. It was wintertime then. The rabbi stood at the window looking out upon the yard, while the rabbinical candidate was droning into his ears a glowing account of his piety and learning.

The young man said, "You see, Rabbi, I always go dressed in spotless white like the sages of old. I never drink any alcoholic beverages; only water ever passes my lips. Also, I live a plain and simple life. I have sharp-edged nails inside my shoes to mortify me. Even in the coldest weather, I lie naked in the snow to torment my flesh. Also daily, I receive forty lashes on my bare back to complete my perpetual penance."

As the young man spoke, a white horse was led into the yard and to the water trough. It drank, and then it rolled in the snow, as horses sometimes do.

"Just look!" cried the rabbi. "That animal, too, is dressed in white. It also drinks nothing but water, has nails in its shoes, and rolls naked in the snow. Also, rest assured, it gets its daily ration of forty lashes on the rump from its master. Now, I ask you, is it a saint, or is it a horse?"

Which is more important – what goes into us or what comes out of us? Which defines us more – our outside behavior or our inside motivation?

I don’t feel I have to belabor the obvious insights of these scriptures—human morality, spirituality, and holiness are a matter of the heart; God knows our hearts. We become unholy, un-separated unto God, indistinguishable as God’s people, when we harbor ill will toward others, misuse our religion, revel in immoral thoughts, and commit immoral acts.

What does need to be said however is this: To condemn wholesale, on the authority of others, including the editors and revisers of our New Testament as well as the traditions of our modern, religious teachers and elders a whole race or class of people—such as the Jews, the Scribes, or the Pharisees is not right. I hate to remind us how many times bad interpretations and misunderstandings of New Testament scriptures have been used to justify some awful, crazy things. The Crusades were based upon poor scholarship and the teachings of the Pope of the Roman Church. Protestant, Christian Europe and the Vatican used so-called biblically based anti-Semitism in support of Hitler as well as fan the flames of the Holocaust. The doom and gloom, end-of-the-world’ers, who misread scriptures perpetrate all sorts of craziness. Biblical justification for slavery and the repression of women are further misuses of scriptures. Look at those who kill and maim today based upon crazy, ignorant interpretations of scriptures.

Therefore, we as true people of Christ must spend time studying scriptures, their context, and their various interpretations at different times across Christian history under the presence of the Holy Spirit in order to understand scripture and to apply the truths of scripture to our moral and spiritual lives. Each passage must be held up to the mirror of God’s love. We must ask of each passage how does this passage or section of scripture help me understand God’s love for me, a sinner, and for a sinful world. How does each passage point beyond itself to the truth of God’s love made known in the life, ministry, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ?

Remember, no one Scribe or Pharisees represents all Scribes or Pharisees as no one of us represents all Christians. Which of us as an individual, as a church, or as a denomination would want to hold up our lives and theology as the standard by which history would judge all Christianity for good or bad? Please, please, note that the extremist on either pole of a religion do not reflect the whole.

Cleanliness, cleanliness--washing off the dirt of immorality, unhealthy intentions, spiritual and religious laziness, and willful ignorance--is truly next to Godliness. Let us be a holy people, people who live in God’s will separated out from the common, the profane. Let us not hold ill will toward others, revel in willful ignorance, and participate in immorality, unhealthy intentions, damning pride, and hate.

As people of God, let us examine ourselves and wash up before we come to the table of grace.

[1] Jewishencylopedia.com, Pharisees, Kaufman Kohler

[2] The Jewishenclopedia.com, Scribes, Isodore Singer, et al

[3] The Jewishencylopedia.com, Pharisees, Kaufman Kohler