Matthew 15:10-11
A. INTRODUCTION
1. Us
There may be many things that we enjoy doing—and there are things that we do, that we look forward to with expectation. And the familiarity of the things that we do—that we surround ourselves with—may not only fill us with expectation but may give us great comfort too. Because they’re based on things that we know and hold dear. And they are things that are important to our everyday living.
And these things can include family traditions: from meeting together regularly, to sharing family heirlooms. They can include the bricks and mortars of life. They can include a reliance on a way of life, with its order and predictability. They can include the valuing of a set of rules that have been proven to be tried and true. And they can include our own personal traditions: from simple things like a Sunday roast, to all the other things that we personally value.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that we may not appreciate some variety and flexibility as well. But generally, for many people, the familiar, the things that bring joy and comfort, is what they hold near and dear.
2. The Problem with Tradition
Unfortunately, holding on to those things—those traditions—may not always be the most healthy way of living. For they can bring expectations that may do more harm than good. Indeed, they can have the habit of tying people up in knots. And the passage from Matthew’s Gospel is very good at illustrating that very point.
3. The Pharisees – A Case in Point
Because what we have in this story, is a picture of a group of Pharisees—a group of people who held on to their great religious traditions. But in doing so, it cost them their own souls and the souls of the people around them.
And the reason for this: is that little by little, bit by bit, the meaning behind their traditions became shifted. And in the process, the Pharisees lost the point of their rituals, and they consequently lost God in the process.
Now the Pharisees loved their traditions, and they looked forward to their practices. They held on to their rules and regulations. And they held them up as being tried and true. They enjoyed the order and reliability in life, and they enjoyed their place within it. But in doing so they became too engrossed in the rituals themselves. They took extended the meaning of the rituals just that little bit too far.
B. JESUS AT WORK
1. Background
And, in the particular example described, the Pharisees got uptight with the disciples. As far as the Pharisees were concerned there were rules about mealtimes, and it was imperative to wash one’s hands before eating a meal. The Pharisees had come to believe that the ritual of washing one’s hands would make one spiritually clean before God. And as the disciples didn’t wash their hands before eating, there was reason for them to get very upset.
2. Jesus’s Dilemma
Now this may seem to us to be a petty dispute. But, in reality, the argument was on in deadly seriousness. It wasn’t just the issue of washing one’s hands before a meal that was at stake, it was the whole thing about keeping tradition—and particularly the traditions that the Pharisees embraced.
The dilemma that Jesus faced, then, at the beginning of the story was: should he uphold tradition, and should he insist his disciples concede to the Pharisees’ expectations? Or should he break with tradition—to get behind the tradition—and regain the original point that the Pharisees had lost?
And, of course, for Jesus there was no competition. His love of God, and his keenness for people to be reconciled with God, was the whole point of him being born on Earth in the first place. And so, he sided with the disciples in the abandoning of the practice too.
Indeed, Jesus called a crowd around him. And presumably this was a crowd that had been there all the time that the Pharisees had been arguing with him, but had stayed back, as a mark of respect for the Pharisees. Or maybe they felt that questions of ceremonial uncleanness were not for the likes of them. And Jesus used then used the opportunity to correct the teaching of the Pharisees, and to teach the point behind the practice: the need at all times to be clean before God.
3. A Radical New Way
Now for any pious Jew the traditions that the Pharisees held dear were held in very high esteem. For them, careful ritual washing as a preliminary to eating was part of life. How else could one avoid being defiled by eating with unclean hands?
So, when Jesus said that nothing that went into a mouth would defile a man, he would have cut across all the rules of defilement to which they had been accustomed. It would have challenged the accepted religious practices, not only on hand washing but for other practices too. And it would have got Jesus immediately offside from those who loved tradition.
Jesus’s response, then, was to look at religious practices from a completely different perspective. He didn’t just suggest a minor modification to the practices, but he advocated something that was radically different. And at the same time, he dismissed the accepted practices as being unhelpful and wrong.
Far from being of value, Jesus suggested, the tradition that the Pharisees upheld had become totally unhelpful. Because washing one’s hands before a meal could not make a person clean before God. Because uncleanliness was not about dirty hands, but rather what was going on in the heart. Being unclean was something that affected a person from the very root of their being, and no ritual washing of hands could possibly change that.
Effectively, therefore, Jesus took the traditions held dear by the Pharisees, tore them up, and tossed them away. Because not only were they not right, but they were totally unhelpful—not only to the masses but to the Pharisees themselves. They taught the wrong thing; they took people down the wrong path. And rather than help people get closer to God, they actually pushed people further away.
C. IMPLICATIONS
1. Restoring God’s Laws and Values
What Jesus had to offer, therefore, was radically different to the traditions of the Pharisees. As a consequence, he engaged the people in a whole new way of thinking. (And is it any wonder that he made himself so unpopular with the authorities that they ended up killing him.)
However, the reality is that Jesus was not advocating anything new. He was simply trying to restore God’s laws and values, which long before had been taken over and forgotten, through the promotion of man’s traditions.
And, of course, this story is just one example of Jesus’s efforts to restore God’s laws and values recorded in the pages of the New Testament.
2. Pharisees in the Church
And, of course, the implication of that is that if it was important for Jesus to restore God’s values and laws in the face of some very unhelpful and damaging tradition, then the challenge is for us to do exactly the same.
And the reason I say that, is because the problem of the Pharisees, and their upholding tradition at all costs, is not just an Old Testament or even a New Testament phenomenon, but it is very much a contemporary problem that affects the church today too.
And I say that, because some people associated with the church enjoy things done in a certain way, and woe betide anyone who thinks differently. Some people associated with the church insist on the use of specific rituals in the church, but in doing so they have lost their meaning. And some people associated with the church have gone too far in their interpretation of God’s laws and values, and have lost the plot of what God and the church are all about.
3. Examples
a). The Church
So, for example, despite the fact that the church is supposed to be about the people of God who come together as a community, to worship God, to build each other up in the faith, and to send each other out to share their beliefs with others, the reality is that many people—even amongst church goers—have accepted that religion is a private concern. Or they consider that church services are only important for what they, as individuals, can get out of them. Or they come at the last minute and go as soon as the service has ended, if they come at all. As a consequence, for many, meeting together, and telling others about Jesus, and encouraging one another, have ceased to be factors in the life of the church.
Far from the belief that the church is about a people being united—with the common goal of wanting to see God’s kingdom fulfilled—those unhealthy traditions strangle the gospel and strangle the church. Is any wonder, then, that the church is in such a mess today.
b). Holy Communion
Regarding Holy Communion . . . Communion is supposed to be about a group of faithful people gathering around a common table sharing a meal—sharing in the events of the day, upholding and encouraging one another, and celebrating the sacrifice that Jesus made on their behalf.
And yet how often is Communion seen today as a symbol rather than a meal. It’s something that people come to, as individuals, and have no real idea of what’s going on in the lives of the others who have congregated for a similar purpose. So, the common table remains some distance away from the people, and Communion remains a sacrament which for many is a symbol of their private devotion.
Now there’s nothing wrong with the symbol, in theory. But the tradition of emphasising the symbol rather the proper practice does rather devalue the point of the sacrament.
c). The Holy Spirit
Regarding the Holy Spirit . . . The Holy Spirit is a gift that was given to all believers. And it’s the Holy Spirit’s presence within us that makes us Christians; it’s the Holy Spirit that makes us acceptable to God. But yet how often do we see the custom (outside of Charismatic and Pentecostal churches) of totally ignoring all things related to the Holy Spirit. It’s the tradition of taboo—the practice of holding back—because it’s all a bit too scary.
And, what’s more, the spiritual gifts that the Spirit brings—that have been given to all believers to build each other up in the faith . . . Well, they tend to get discarded too. Because that is not the tradition that many people are comfortable with, neither is getting involved in the life of the church.
d). Giving
And regarding giving, whether it’s our time, resources, or money . . . God has called us all to give and give sacrificially—and how much we give should reflect the measure of our thankfulness, gratitude, and appreciation for what he has done—and still does for us.
And yet how often do we see the practice of only giving a token amount? Or the idea that giving is more about how we can get others to contribute, particularly those outside of the church?
When we ask others to give, therefore, what we are really telling God is how little we think of him.
Now, King David knew the point about giving. And he refused to give God anything that cost him less that its true value. David believed that if he gave God something that was donated by someone else, then that really was a sign that he was demeaning God. And, of course, the opposite is also true. Because Jesus commended the widow who gave what she could ill-afford, while he looked sadly on those who gave what they wouldn’t really miss out of their abundance.
4. The Way Forward
Now, over time, traditions have been built up and inevitably have changed their meaning. The Pharisees’ traditions would have begun with the laws and values of God and developed into practices that were either unhealthy or just plain wrong. And many of the things that people love today no longer mean what they did when the practices first began. And that is particularly true in the church.
But this process of change didn’t happen suddenly, and it probably didn’t happen deliberately. Nevertheless, the end result is that tradition—the ways people have got used to and the ways people love—are often some distance from the original truths of God’s laws and values.
As a consequence, when Jesus was faced with the traditions and loves of the Pharisees, he immediately made steps to correct the things that were unhelpful and just plain wrong. And that’s exactly what we are called to do today too. We need to re-evaluate where we stand regarding our practices and traditions. And we need to restore God’s laws and values to the meaning that God intended.
The way forward is not to embrace tradition, but to re-evaluate it in the light of spiritual truths. After all, the focus of Jesus’s words, that we have looked at today, effectively ripped away years of tradition which had bound the people in knots, and he helped the people to go forward again in faith. And that means, if we do the same, then many of our treasured practices will not survive. Well, at least, not in the form that we currently practice them now.
5. Popularity Stakes
Of course, the end result of this process, for Jesus, was that he made himself very unpopular. But then that is a natural result of taking things which people hold near and dear and turning them upside down. But realistically, if Jesus had come to restore the relationship between God and his people, then how could Jesus have done anything different?
And if we do the same thing today, we will make ourselves very unpopular too. But what’s at stake isn’t just people’s pride and their values and the things they hold dear. What’s at stake is the restoring of God’s laws and values, and that is far more important.
D. CONCLUSION
The Pharisees in Jesus’s day were very good at holding on to human traditions. And in doing so the Pharisees lost the perspective of who God was, and they tied the people up in knots. And, sadly, the people who hold the church back today because of their emphasis on tradition do exactly the same thing.
Today’s gospel story is a story of people who upheld their own traditions—supposedly based on God’s laws. However, the reality is that their traditions had become unhelpful, and some of them were just plain wrong. But then, unless you are very careful, that’s what traditions tend to do. Traditions tend to lose their original meaning, and they then take on a whole new life of their own.
What we have to make sure of, then, is that we learn from Jesus’s example. Indeed, we too need to challenge the unhelpful and misleading traditions of today. After all, God and his Gospel are at stake, and we need to make sure that nothing gets in the way between God and his people.
Posted: 17th October 2022
© 2022, Brian A Curtis
www.brianacurtis.com.au
