The Tradition of the Elders

15Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said,²‘Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat.’³He answered them, ‘And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?⁴For God said,^* “Honour your father and your mother,” and, “Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.”⁵But you say that whoever tells father or mother, “Whatever support you might have had from me is given to God”,^* then that person need not honour the father.^*6So, for the sake of your tradition, you make void the word^* of God.⁷You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said:
⁸ “This people honours me with their lips,    but their hearts are far from me;
⁹ in vain do they worship me,    teaching human precepts as doctrines.” ’

Things That Defile

10 Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, ‘Listen and understand:¹¹it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.’¹²Then the disciples approached and said to him, ‘Do you know that the Pharisees took offence when they heard what you said?’¹³He answered, ‘Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted.¹⁴Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind.^* And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.’¹⁵But Peter said to him, ‘Explain this parable to us.’¹⁶Then he said, ‘Are you also still without understanding?¹⁷Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?¹⁸But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles.¹⁹For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander.²⁰These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.’

Church of Scotland in Assembly-does it clean the heart?

Yesterday’s blog (573) tried to unpick Paul’s attitude to the Jewish Torah, the law of God. He said that when the Laws became detatched from the God who gave them, they bec0me opppressive rather than liberating. Here Jesus tackles the current pharisaical interpretation of the Torah. He shows that their zeal for interpretation has separated the commandment from God’s will: a pious duty (giving to the temple) is allowed to override the command to honour parents by caring for them. It’s easy to do. I deeply regret that I allowed my duties as a minister to get in the way of my duties to my mum when she was ill. Jesus’ point is that God’s will is fruitful: it creates goodness amongst people; whereas religious tradition excuses meanness.

Matthew tells us that Jesus went on to tackle the religious tradition about food and eating. In effect he says that what is eaten, or how it’s eaten, cannot make a person unclean. This not only undermines the Pharisees but also the “food laws” of the Torah itself. The pharsees were also devoted to a ritual of hand-washing. (not to be confused with actual hand-cleaning!). Jesus asks people to grow up. Real dirt comes out of people’s mouths rather than going in, he says. The dirt comes from the human heart and anything that does not clean the heart is fundamentally trivial. Perhaps Jesus remembered Psalm 19: “The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever.” Matthew represents Jesus as allying himself with Isaiah in his attack on religious hypocrisy. From many of the prophets, indeed, Jesus would have learned shrewd insights into pious ways of avoiding the will of God. Paul’s theology takes a roundabout route to get to the same point to which Jesus goes directly: the need to clean the human heart. If religion doesn’t do that, it’s useless.