Wash Your Hands?
(Mark 7:1-23)
I’m willing to give the Pharisees and Scribes a little slack on why they originally wanted to be so rigid about preserving the outward signs of faith with those little physical acts that kept the people of Israel connected to one another – and to God – while they were under the boot of Rome. Kind of like a secret handshake that identifies members of a lodge and keeps them connected to the other members.
I understand it, because Israel didn’t have a stellar track record of resisting the lure of other religions practiced by the folks they lived among. Just ask the prophets. So, the religious leaders were willing to do just about anything to keep their people pure in their faith.
But there’s a bigger problem here because the Pharisees and Scribes are only focused on the handshake at this point. They’ve lost sight of the big picture. They’re so focused on the outward signs that they’re neglecting what’s going on inside.
No matter how many times you wash your hands, it can’t clean your heart. Handwashing will never be able to purify your soul. Only God can do that, and He did it through His Son, Jesus Christ.
Jesus took our failings, our impurity, and our pollution, and took them on Himself. He cleaned us up and made us presentable to God. We don’t have to worry about missing a hand washing or eating a side of bacon with our eggs this morning, because none of that outside stuff matters.
Jesus tells us that the only thing that really matters is what comes from our insides. That’s what we need to worry about. Things like “fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
So how do we keep ourselves free from all the bad stuff? It would have been a lot easier to just wash our hands of the whole thing. But the truth is, the way to stop focusing on all the bad stuff and keep ourselves free of pollution is to focus our hearts on God instead.
Come near to God with your heart, not just with memorized prayer and empty words of praise. Mean your worship. Live your worship. Make it so much a part of who you are that your life becomes a prayer of praise.
Jesus is God’s way to embrace us even in our impurity and defilement. And that’s a sign that should open us, free us, and push us toward a more daring trust in God. A trust we should take with us when we eat here, wash there, or associate with neighbors. Even the questionable ones with unwashed hands.
God loved us even when we were dead in sin and made us alive in Christ. And that’s true whether we wash our hands or not.