Mark 7

¹ Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, ² they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. ³ (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders, ⁴ and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.) ⁵ And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” ⁶ And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; ⁷ in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ ⁸ You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” ⁹ And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! ¹⁰ For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ ¹¹ But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban”’ (that is, given to God)— ¹² then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, ¹³ thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.” ¹⁴ And he called the people to him again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: ¹⁵ There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.” [¹⁶ If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear] ¹⁷ And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. ¹⁸ And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, ¹⁹ since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) ²⁰ And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. ²¹ For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, ²² coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. ²³ All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

Tradition is a powerful, powerful thing. It is so powerful that, if we are not careful, its power may push us from a position of appreciative preference for this or that custom to a position of obsessive protectiveness for a custom that is, in an of itself, morally neutral. In other words, we may make an issue that is morally and spiritually neutral an issue of right and wrong, and that is never done without causing damage.

Allow me to share some examples.

I went to seminary with a young pastor who was called to a church that had a tradition of having Santa Claus appear in the church to hand out gifts to the children every December. This pastor and others took issue with the presence of Santa Claus in church and argued that Santa Claus would perhaps be more appropriately present in other venues. He was met with fierce and angry denunciations from the pro-Santa-Claus-in-church party.

One of our seminaries built a large chapel. On the seminary website, the president’s voice narrated a slickly produced video presentation of what the chapel would be like once construction was completed. At one point, the president of the seminary said, “And this chapel will have a center aisle, like Baptist churches ought to have.”

I know a pastor in Washington, D.C. who once moved the American flag out of the sanctuary. He loves America and is himself patriotic, but he felt that the sanctuary needed to communicate the worldwide and universal scope of the body of Christ and avoid any appearance that the Church is bound to a particular national identity. He was met with fierce opposition from the people, many of whom told him that he was not patriotic and that what he was doing was wrong. The Sunday after the flag was removed, the congregation showed up with almost all the people wearing American flag pins on their lapels in protest of the decision to move the flag.

A friend of mine pastored a church in Texas that for many, many years had never canceled a morning service. One Saturday there was a terrible snowstorm such that the roads were profoundly dangerous and iced over. My friend canceled the service. The tongue-lashing he received from a church member was as vivid as it was intense: “I cannot believe you canceled a Sunday morning service! We do not cancel Sunday morning services here!”

I once sat in the lobby of a hospital in another state and met a lady who attended a different church in the community where I pastored. She railed against her pastor, not knowing that he and I were friends. Her main complaint? He read the scriptures and his sermon notes from an iPad as opposed to a paper Bible and paper notes.

A lady who visited another church returned from her visit angry. “I am never going back to that church,” she said. “Why?” I asked. “Because,” she said, “at the end of the service they did not have an invitation. A worship service should end with an invitation.” Now we have an invitation. I like offering an invitation. But invitations are frankly new develops in Christianity’s two thousand year old history. There are lots of ways to call people to a faith response. But this lady came to believe that the way she was accustomed to seeing people called to respond was the right way, the only way.

Tradition is a powerful, powerful thing!

Santa Clause in the church?

The American flag in or out of the sanctuary?

A center aisle or a side aisle?

Patriotic elements in worship?

An invitation at the end of the service?

Scripture does not speak specifically to any of these issues. These issues are not the gospel. They are not necessary to Christian belief. They are not necessary to salvation. But these issues, and others like them, are lightning rods for controversy.

These are not issues of right and wrong. These are not issues upon which our holiness or lack of holiness depends. These are traditions, preferences. They may be very strong traditions. They may be loaded down with emotional baggage. They may be sacred cows. But these are not the primary issues of the kingdom of God.

Jesus had to deal with tradition run amuck. We are going to use the word “tradition” to describe this, but, in reality, what we are talking about is “traditionalism.”   Jaroslav Pelikan famously defined the difference between these two terms like this:

Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And, I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name.[1]

That is an important distinction because tradition itself can be a good thing. Tradition can have a grounding effect. It can put up appropriate safeguards and cautions against flippant innovation for innovation’s sake. It can tie us to important things.

What is more we might say that the gospel is the traditional teaching of the Church and this tradition should be safeguarded against any deviations or distortions! Observe how Jude describes our faith:

³ Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.

There is, then, a tradition worth guarding, a tradition that is indeed sacred. This is the tradition of the gospel of Christ.

But traditionalism, the dead faith of the living, the disproportionate fixation on this or that non-salvific, non-essential custom to which you are personally inclined, can be a killing thing, a suffocating thing, and a deceiving thing. This is precisely what Jesus encountered in Mark 7.

Tradition can become a drug that blinds us to what really matters.

Jesus’ confrontation with the scribes and Pharisees, these alleged paragons of virtue and holiness, comes about when they observe that the disciples were eating without washing their hands.

¹ Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, ² they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. ³ (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders, ⁴ and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.) ⁵ And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”

We must understand that the great offense here is not an offense of hygiene but of holiness as the Pharisees and scribes perceived it. Simply put: good, observant Jews washed their hands to maintain ritual purity before eating. This outward washing was a sign of inner holiness and it was backed by the tradition of the elders. These washings were important to the religious elites because it was something that they could both observe and critique in others and something they could show off about themselves.

Erasmus argued that it was “on nonsense like this they rested their claim to fame for holiness and induced in the people a foolish belief in their sanctity. And – what is even more wicked – they brought slanderous charges of unholiness against their neighbours on the basis of things that contribute nothing to salvation.”[2]

So they put the question to Jesus: why are your disciples not washing their hands like they are supposed to? Jesus, to put it mildly, was less than impressed with their question.

⁶ And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; ⁷ in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ ⁸ You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”

Tradition can become a drug that blinds us to what really matters. What matters are the commandments of God. What does not matter is the tradition of men. “But,” Jesus said, “you leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” In other words, “You have been blinded by your traditions to what really matters.”

The problem with this kind of thinking is that it mixes issues that do not matter with issues that do matter and thereby creates confusion and pollutes the whole thing! Consider, for instance, the following things that were forbidden in John Calvin’s Geneva.

feasting, dancing, singing, pictures, statues, relics, church bells, organs, altar candles; “indecent or irreligious” songs, staging or attending theatrical plays; wearing rouge, jewelry, lace, or “immodest” dress; speaking disrespectfully of your betters; extravagant entertainment, swearing, gambling, playing cards, hunting, drunkenness, naming children after anyone but figures in the Old Testament; reading “immoral or irreligious books.

            A father who christened his son Claude, a name not found in the Old Testament, spent four days in jail, as did a woman whose hairdo reached an “immoral” height.[3]

Behold the muddling power of tradition! If you hide the weightier things that matter behind the weightless things that do not matter, or if you mix the two, as Calvin’s Geneva did, you create confusion and then despair.

Put more bluntly, if you burden people with stupid rules on things that do not matter, they will eventually reject them along with the important rules that do matter!

Tradition can become a drug that blinds us to what really matters!

Tradition allows us to fool ourselves into thinking that we are holy when we are not.

One of the most pernicious things about traditionalism is that it allows us to think that we are holy when we are not. Jesus called these religious leaders out on just this point by using one of their traditions called “corban.”

⁹ And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! ¹⁰ For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ ¹¹ But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban”’ (that is, given to God)— ¹² then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, ¹³ thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.”

What is corban? St. Jerome’s answer from many years ago suffices perfectly well:

The Lord commanded that poor parents should be supported by their children who would reimburse them back when they are old for all those benefits which they themselves received in childhood. The scribes and Pharisees instead were teaching children to honor their parents by saying: “It is corban, that is to say, a gift which I have promised to the altar and will present at the temple, where it will relieve you as much as if I were to give it to you directly to buy food.” So it frequently happened that while father and mother were destitute, their children were offering sacrifices for the priests and scribes to consume.[4]

In other words, the religious leaders had developed a tradition that (a) circumvented the clear command of God (i.e., “Honor your father and your mother!”) and (b) enriched these religious leaders personally in the process. The tradition of corban therefore eclipsed the commandment of parent-honoring. Then, in a most perverse twist, those who claimed corban over their goods instead of giving the goods to their elderly and poor parents actually felt that what they were doing was holy and that, conversely, giving the goods to their parents was not holy!

Do you see? Once traditionalism takes root, it can actually distort evil into a good and good into an evil. The only problem with this is that evil remains evil even if you call it good and dishonoring your parents remains dishonorable even if you are doing so in the name of honoring God! Beware the corrosive power of blind traditionalism! Consider how some of our traditions may actually be leading us into sin!

It is profoundly wrongheaded when we grieve over the violation of traditions while simultaneously breaking the weightier matters of the law. There are people in churches, for instance, who care deeply whether or not people are properly dressed but who indulge in ruthless gossip. There are people in churches who fret over whether or not people show up to evening services but who themselves are nursing old grudges in their hearts and the bitterness that comes with them.

How about you? What angers you? Does it matter? And where is your own heart in the process?

These Pharisees and scribes were condemning Jesus’ violation of traditions while they themselves were running a racket to get more and more wealth from disobedient children. What hypocrisy! We must guard against such in our own lives!

Salvation works from the inside out, not from the outside in.

Here was the primary problem with what the Pharisees and scribes were doing with their hand washing traditions and what you and I do with our dead traditionalism: they and we keep setting up traditions that reaffirm the mistaken premise that holiness works from the outside in instead of the other way around! As if washing one’s hands makes one holy! That is not the case, as Jesus forcefully declared.

¹⁴ And he called the people to him again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: ¹⁵ There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.” [¹⁶ If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.] ¹⁷ And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. ¹⁸ And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, ¹⁹ since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) ²⁰ And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. ²¹ For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, ²² coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. ²³ All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

What a powerful renunciation of the faulty thinking and hypocrisy of the religious establishment this was and remains! We might say that the Jews had become positively obsessed with outward observances and with the whole outward-inward movement of life.

Do not eat with dirty hands or your heart will be impure!

Do not eat pork or your heart will be impure!

Do not eat non-kosher foods or your heart will be impure!

Do not forget the ritual cleansings or your heart will be impure!

And I have heard countless of our own versions of this nonsense throughout my life among Christians.

Do not let your hair grow long, young man, or you will be impure!

Do not wear jeans to church.

Do not wear makeup.

Do not use instruments in worship.

Do not get a tattoo.

Do not grow a beard.

Do not listen to the non-Christian stations on the radio.

Do not go to movies.

Do not put Christmas trees in the sanctuary.

Do not take the Christmas trees out of the sanctuary.

Do not…do not…do not…

And on and on it goes until when we are finished we have constructed an entire panoply of outward-in alleged sins that we claim affect our souls. But none of these things affect your soul! And the problem with burdening good Christian people with nonsensical, absurd, legalisms is that eventually they crack under the absurdity and flee not only the absurd rules but also the necessary rules!

Telling a young man he cannot have long hair is absurd.

Telling a young man he should not sleep with his girlfriend until they are married is wise and good.

But when you confuse the stupid rules with the legitimate rules the young man eventually walks away from all the rules.

Put another way: many times what we perceive to be our children walking away from Jesus is actually our children walking away from the stupid rules about stupid things that we have surrounded Jesus with!

Jesus does not care if you have a beard!

Jesus does not care if you wear makeup!

Jesus does not care if the worship leader has a guitar!

Jesus does not care if you read His word on a phone screen or a leather bound Bible!

Jesus cares that your heart and mind and soul belong to Him, that you are in His word whatever the physical medium of the word happens to be, and that you worship Him in spirit and in truth!

Jesus has no interest in helping you prop up your cold, dead ritualism so that you can deceive yourself that you are holy when you are not!

What I am telling you is that there are seemingly good, pious, respectable, right-looking church people who do not smoke or drink and who know the hymns and know the Bible verses and who look good, good, good…but who are going to bust hell wide open while some young Christian who still struggles not to cuss or who cannot quite quit his cigarette habit, who is rough around the edges, who does not know the unspoken rules, who missed the etiquette class, and who the good folks at church do not want to sit by in the pew may be much closer to God because his heart is broken, and his trying desperately to give it to Jesus, and he loves the gospel, and he knows he is a sinner, and he is trying to die to self, and he dares to believe that God might yet love Him, that God might have a purpose for Him, and that he might actually be a child of God. And we just keep slathering a veneer of our own damnable and hypocritical self-righteous over ourselves and saying to anybody who will listen, “Look at me! Look at me! I wash my hands! I keep the rules! I know the words to say and the words not to say! Look at me! I have the big Bible and the long prayers! See?! See?! I am holy!”

Dear church, it is not your hands that save you, it is the hands of Jesus! It is not your righteousness that saves you, it is the righteousness of Jesus! It is not your traditions that save you, it is the cross of Jesus the King!

Beware the blinding power of the traditions of men!

Never elevate a custom above Jesus!

Never base holiness on things that do not matter!

“Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees,” Jesus said in Matthew 16:6.

Oh Church, let us keep Jesus main thing! Let us keep our relationship with Jesus the main thing! Let us keep the heart the main thing and not the outward form.

Keep it about Jesus.

Keep it about Jesus!

 

[1] Jaroslav Pelikan, The Vindication of Tradition. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984), p.65.

[2] Desiderius Erasmus, Paraphrase on Mark. Collected Works of Erasmus. Gen. Ed., Robert D. Sider. Vol. 49 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), p.89.

[3] Philip Yancey. What’s So Amazing About Grace. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1997), p.234.

[4] Thomas C. Oden and Christopher A. Hall, Mark. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. Gen. Ed., Thomas C. Oden. New Testament, Vol. II (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), p.98.