Breaking With Tradition

Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat.”  He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ But 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 honor the father. So, for the sake of your tradition, you make void the word of God. You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said: ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’”

Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.” Then the disciples approached and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?” He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.” But Peter said to him, “Explain this parable to us.” Then he said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.” – Matthew 15:1-20

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Today’s reading from the book of Matthew begins with the word “Then…” – which means we’re starting in the middle of the story. It begs the question, ‘what happened before then?’

What happened before then was Jesus was having a very rough week. A few days earlier, John the Baptist’s disciples came to Jesus and told him that his cousin had just been murdered by King Herod. John the Baptist was beheaded, and his head was presented to Herod’s stepdaughter as a gift in exchange for her dancing for his dinner guests.

When Jesus heard this news he wanted to be alone for a while. He needed time with his Father God. I think all of us can relate to this: there are times when the world is just too much and we need to be alone with God.  I think that’s why the song In the Garden means so much to so many people: it captures the feeling of being alone with God.

So Jesus got in a boat and went away from the crowds, towards a lonely wilderness on the other side of the lake. But the crowds followed Jesus on foot, skirting the shore of the sea of Galilee, so that when Jesus got to the far shore they were waiting for him. And Jesus looked at them, and he had compassion on them, and healed the sick. And then, because they were in the middle of nowhere and getting hungry, Jesus and the disciples collected up five loaves and two fish, and Jesus blessed the food, and Matthew says they fed at least 5000 men, not counting women and children.

When they’d all had enough to eat, Jesus blessed the crowd and sent them home, and told the disciples to get in the boat and leave Jesus there so he could be alone to pray. Jesus finally got that alone-time with his Father.

After night-fall, Jesus walked across the water and joined the disciples in the boat – which is a whole other story – and the next day they landed at Gennesaret, where Jesus was soon recognized and more sick people were brought to him for healing.

All these things happened in a span of just a few days! And in spite of everything, Jesus was still on his feet, still ministering, and still loving people in the name of God the Father. Then…

Then the Pharisees came, with the scribes. Side note on these two groups of people: In spite of what we read in Scripture, the Pharisees were actually popular in the day. They were the peoples’ pastors. They opposed the Sadducees, who were the elite, the “one percent” of their day, and many of the Pharisees’ teachings became the foundation of modern-day Judaism. The reason we tend to see Pharisees in a negative light is because Jesus often took them to task for being legalistic and for being hypocritical… and as we read in the Gospels, Jesus was right. But this wasn’t true of all the Pharisees all the time; some of them actually ended up becoming Christian believers.

The Scribes were essentially lawyers who specialized in the Law of Moses – that is, they specialized in the Ten Commandments and all that’s written in the first five books of the Bible. Back in those days there was no separation between church and state, so these experts in religious law could also draft contracts and give legal advice.

So the Scribes and Pharisees, Matthew tells us, arrived in Gennesaret from Jerusalem. They walked approximately 75 miles just to ask Jesus a question. And the question they asked sounds like something a nasty person would have written on Jesus’ Facebook page. They asked:

“Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat.”

They walked 75 miles to ask this?

In the Greek it’s clear the Pharisees are accusing the disciples of transgression. They’re referring to a religious tradition, handed down for generations, that all decent Jewish people wash their hands before eating bread. This is not hand-washing as we think of it, to remove dirt and germs. This is a brief religious ceremony requiring clean water and a silver cup and a short ritual of words and motions. It would have been impossible for those 5000 men, women and children Jesus had just fed, to come up with enough silver cups and clean water for everyone to wash their hands. And the Pharisees (as they so often did in scripture) completely missed the miracle and fixated on obedience to the letter of the law – or in this case, the letter of the tradition.

Two things I want to draw attention to here:

(1) the disciples were accused of breaking religious tradition. And it was true – they had. I want to ask this: have any of us ever broken a church tradition? I know I have. One Sunday shortly after being ordained I wore the wrong color stole – I wore a purple one when I should have worn a pink one. Priests are supposed to know better! But if you ever trip over a tradition like that, trust me, You.Will.Hear.About.It.  In my case, I didn’t hear about it from the people but from the other priests.

We all had a good laugh about it. But how many people, I wonder, have been put off by the church because they’ve been attacked for something silly like this? Or how many won’t go into a church because they don’t know how to ‘do church’? They say to themselves: “I don’t know how to pray. And when do I sit, stand, or kneel?” So I put this question to all of us: How can we make our churches welcoming and easy to get to know? How can we keep tradition in its place and not let it be a hindrance to people who are seeking God?

(2) The Pharisees are keeping the letter of the law – well, the letter of the tradition – but they’re completely missing the spirit of it. The point is to be clean before God. Washing hands doesn’t accomplish that.

By the way, Jesus never taught his disciples not to wash their hands. (And neither would I in this pandemic time – keep on washing your hands!)

But the Pharisees are accusing Jesus of allowing his disciples to break religious tradition. Jesus doesn’t answer this. He doesn’t waste time trying to help the Pharisees understand where he’s coming from. Instead, Jesus answers by saying the Pharisees commit greater transgressions – they transgress God’s commands – with their traditions.

And Jesus gives an example. He says: One of the Ten Commandments says “honor your father and your mother”. But the tradition of the Pharisees and scribes says that a child can say to an aging parent “any help you might have had from me is given to God” – that is, given to the temple or the synagogue – and then that person need not take care of their father or mother. Honoring one’s parents in the Old Testament began with providing for their physical needs and went from there. So Jesus says: “you revoke the word of God for the sake of your human tradition.”

Jesus then turns to the crowd and says:

“hear and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of it.”

The disciples pull Jesus aside and say, “do you know the Pharisees were scandalized by what you said?” And Jesus answers, “every plant my father has not planted will be uprooted.” This echoes the passage we read last week, the parable of the wheat and the weeds – that pictures God as a farmer who plants good seed, and then an enemy comes along and plants weed seeds. And they grow up together for now so that the good plants don’t get pulled up with the weeds. But – as Jesus says – every plant the Father has not planted will be uprooted.

Jesus says: Let them go. Give it up. They are blind guides; and if the blind lead the blind they will both fall into a pit. This is a hard word from Jesus. He’s basically saying, “Don’t even try with them.” How sad is that, when Jesus says about somebody, ‘don’t even try’?

Peter says “Lord I don’t understand” – which is a great prayer to pray when you’re feeling confused. So Jesus explains: what goes into one’s mouth enters the stomach, passes through the intestines, and is dropped into the latrine. (That’s literally what the Greek says.) But what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart, and that’s what defiles a person, because out of the mouth comes evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false testimony, blasphemy and abusive language.

You’ll notice Jesus doesn’t rank these sins. He says all of them equally begin with evil thoughts, or as the Greek says, in the inner dialogue we have within ourselves. The things we say to ourselves when we’re alone with our own thoughts – that’s where all sins begin.

So two things I’d like to take from this passage today:

1. Let’s pray – for ourselves and for others – that God will cleanse our hearts and sweeten our words. That God would make what comes out of our mouths worth being heard, helpful to others, kind, loving, and just. Pray for that.
2. Remembering the Pharisees – and how their hypocrisy often made God’s people feel like they didn’t belong in the synagogue – for those of us who are still in the church, let’s give some thought to the questions: what traditions do we have that might invalidate a command of God? What doctrines do our churches teach that are man-made and not God-made? For example, does the church’s tradition of holding up marriage and children as the Christian ideal have the effect of minimizing the involvement of single people? Divorced people? Widows and widowers? Does it make childless people feel like second-class citizens in God’s kingdom? That’s just one example of how a church tradition might get out of hand.  And where it comes to doctrines – nowhere in the Bible does it say Lent must be purple and Pentecost must be red. That’s all human-made. Having the “wrong color” is not a sin.

That’s just for starters. As Jesus says, the real issue is in the heart. Our work on our hearts will be life-long, but thank God we don’t have to do the work by ourselves. We have a Father who loves us, we have Jesus who died for us, and we have the Holy Spirit to guide us. And we have Christian brothers and sisters to help. So let’s ask the tough questions, and welcome the outsider, in the name of our Lord Jesus. AMEN.