Lectionary for Sept 1, 2024
15th Sunday after Pentecost
Song of Solomon 2:8-13; Psalm 45:1-2, 6-9;
James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
I felt called to be a minister of Word and Sacrament after all the times I saw how people could be excluded from the meal. One time the pastor of the college ministry I was part of was gone for the weekend. So a fellow student prepared the meal, said the words of institution, and helped the assembled group of ecumenical students celebrate the eucharist. At the time I was just beginning to explore Lutheran flavors of Christianity and didn’t know enough to know that this would raise some eyebrows. But when the pastor returned, we did receive a lecture about offices and good order. (By the way, I’m happy to report that the student in question is an ELCA pastor today.)
Another time my wife and I visited an Orthodox church and were told to remain back and forego the bread and wine so as not to offend the host. My wife sobbed throughout communion, never having been refused a spot at the table.
Human rules sometimes get in the way of sharing the goodness and grace of the kingdom of heaven. We may know all the rules, but are we following Jesus to make sure everyone is fed?
I’m so happy to be back in the Gospel of Mark and to read this week’s passage. Pharisees and scribes had come from Jerusalem to gather around Jesus. Now, we need the context: Jesus was in the neighborhood of the Gennesaret (6:53), a small plain on the west side of the Sea of Galilee. This isn’t far from Capernaum and Jesus’ home base. The crowds all knew of Jesus’ and his disciples’ (13) healing ministry, so they had gathered all who were sick and brought them to the marketplaces (55-56). Jesus and his disciples were there, touching and being touched by sick people wanting to be healed. This is the essential context of the conversation between Jesus and his interlocutors.
By focusing on the “common” hands that the disciples were eating with, the critics missed out on how uncommon the hands were that healed and grasped out to be healed!
Mark’s parenthetical references here—that when the Pharisees come from the marketplace they don’t eat unless they wash their hands (Mark 7:4)—makes more sense, given that context. Is washing your hands before you eat, especially if you’ve been around sick people, a good idea? Of course! But what the Pharisees were trying to understand—and I think they were asking good-faith questions here—was how the disciples could eat with their ministry hands. After all, they had just been supporting Jesus’ healings in the marketplace!
Jesus is incensed by the direction of the question. After healing people, how could the disciples eat? Why not ask instead, “Before they ate, how did Jesus and his disciples heal?” This week’s lectionary text omits it, but Jesus’ questioning is illustrative of his understanding of what the Pharisees were asking. He accused them of using the rules of men about sacrifice to defraud parents of economic support that children must provide (“honor your mother and father” must at least mean to take care of them when they are older!). Jesus was explaining that the rules of hand-washing were being used to deprive the people of something that they were owed, based on relationships.
If the disciples must become ritually pure after healing others before they are allowed to eat, at least one of two things would suffer. There would be less time for eating or less time for healing. Jesus was concerned that enforcing hand-washing rules—though a good idea—would get in the way of the provision of food or health. God’s commandments are to love our neighbor as ourselves (Leviticus 19:18). Every Pharisee there that day knew this, to be sure. But by focusing on the “common” hands that the disciples were eating with, the critics missed out on how uncommon the hands were that healed and grasped out to be healed!
It’s not enough to have memorized commandments (or catechisms, whatever their size) if they don’t lead us to action, as James tells us (James 1:23-24). Instead, if we really gaze at and contemplate God’s perfect law of freedom (25), we will become not idle questioners and critics but people who do the work and words of Jesus (22-25).
So, whatever the state of our hands, we are called to participate in healing, in the power and name of Jesus. And we are called to serve food—again, whatever the state of our hands. Jesus warns that we should not let human traditions get in the way of healing or meals. Amen!
