Reflections on Matthew 15:10-20

Matthew 15 begins with a dispute between Jesus, the scribes, and Pharisees over the correct method and ritual for washing one’s hands before eating. The obvious background of this passage are the Jewish food laws of the Old Testament and the traditions that the Pharisees had established to make sure that they could be clean and pure despite their necessary daily contact with the unclean and impure. The common thread that binds all of these laws and rituals together is the idea that they intensified the separation of Israelites from the neighboring Gentile peoples, allowing them to maintain their faith in God. In other words, if a holy God was going to live among you, then you needed to do your best to practice holy living.

Jesus’ disciples did not practice the ritual hand-washing before eating. To the Pharisees, this was not simply a breach of social etiquette. They perceived the disciples behavior as a blatant slap in the face at millennia of tradition dating back to the Levitical laws of Moses. Furthermore, they saw their behavior as a blatant disregard for God, the one who had stipulated the laws in the first place.

It is against this backdrop that Jesus said to the people around him that “it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles” (Matt. 15:11). Jesus is not issuing what amounts to a critique of all Pharisees; nor is this a critique of all ‘‘outward forms of religion.’’ Jesus is not against maintaining ‘‘the traditions of the elders.’’ He finds nothing wrong with the ritual of washing hands. Rather, Jesus is against an improperly drawn boundary of acceptance.

Like Jesus, I am against drawing boundaries of inclusion or exclusion along a certain set of doctrines, practices, and traditions that have nothing to do with the heart of who God is and what God’s message of reconciliation and redemption is to God’s people. Praise God that we have been freed from such legalistic constraints and have been freed to talk about the true heart of the gospel, which is grace and mercy and love and accepting people for who they are and where they are and making sure they know of God’s love for them and of God’s desire to be in a relationship with them!

But Jesus didn’t leave it there. His problem with the Pharisees was not that they drew a clear boundary of pure and impure, clean and unclean, acceptable and unacceptable behavior for those who claim to be a part of the kingdom of God, but rather that they drew the wrong one.

In the conclusion of our gospel lection, verses17-20, Jesus drew a fairly clear boundary of what is pure and impure, clean and unclean, acceptable and unacceptable behavior for those who claim to be a part of the kingdom of God, but it was not based on anything external like the keeping of traditions, the eating of food, and the washing of hands. Jesus’ standard of purity has to do with ethical and moral behavior which flows out of the thoughts and intentions of the heart. The larger claim to which the whole passage points is that it isn’t what we eat or drink that defiles us but what we say and do and intend. It is not our religious rituals that do us in; it is rather the intent of our heart and how we live because of it.

There is a delicate line here somewhere that I am not entirely sure how to walk. There are many questions based on this passage that I do not know how to answer. How do we preach a radical message of grace, mercy, and love while at the same time holding each other to a radical standard of discipleship that places us in a position to be formed by the Spirit into the image of Christ? How do we know when to supersede one tradition for the life of the spirit? How do we address the root cause of impure and unclean behavior like theft, murder, slander, greed, materialism, selfishness, etc by getting to the ‘‘heart’’ of a ‘‘defiled’’ person rather than simply focusing on his or her behavior?

I am not sure that I yet know the answers to these questions. I do know that the church needs a group of believers who are committed to spreading the message of God’s radical love and inclusiveness while at the same time holding itself to a radical standard of discipleship that bears witness as a holy people to a holy God.