Don't worry about a Cold

It’s cold and flu season. I have two daughters in my house and one of them goes to school. I think that having a child in school has increased my chances of getting sick by a hundredfold…at least. Then on Wednesday Bekkah sent me an article entitled, “17 Germ Infested Things You Desperately need to Clean More often”.

I’m going to share them with you quickly so you can see what is on this list. 1. dish clothes and sponges 2. Those things that clean other things like vacuums, mops, brooms, dishwashers, and a washer and dryer 3. Bath towels. 4. Cutting boards 5. The kitchen sink, which can be up to 1000 times worse than a toilet seat 6. Your welcome mat 7. Toothbrushes 8. Make up brushes 9. Purses 10. Coffee machines 11. Light Switches 12. Remote controls 13. Cell phones 14. headphones 15. exercise equipment 16. Your car and 17. Your hands!

Some of the things on this list seem obvious and some are obvious but we don’t clean them often enough, but one thing that I feel that most people are good about on a regular basis are washing their hands which was the last one on the list from the article that Bekkah sent me.

Washing hands was at the top of the list that this particular group of Pharisees took offense at toward Jesus and his disciples. Now we need to get to the bottom of this issue before we can move forward with it. The issue centers around this: There are two laws that were followed by Jews. The first is the written law. Those would be the 10 Commandments and all the other laws that were recorded in the Torah of the Old Testament. Laws about what is clean and not clean to eat. Laws about caring for the poor, the widow and the outcast. The forgiveness of debts and sins and all those laws we find written down. The other is the oral tradition. These were laws or more accurately traditions that were passed down orally by the leaders and elders of the Jewish faith, but were not actually included in their scriptures.

What is happening in today’s text is that this group of Pharisees observe the oral tradition and try their best to get others to do the same, and it seems as if they treat these oral traditions to have the same importance as that of the laws given by God to the Israelite poeple. So when the disciples are having lunch or a snack and these Pharisees see it they want to know why they aren’t observing the oral traditions passed down.

Now let’s get something straight. I do not think that Jesus is at all advocating that we don’t need to wash our hands, especially before meal time. There is a real difference, though, between washing your hands before you eat and what the Pharisees are talking about. The kind of washing these Pharisees are talking about is an actual ritual that you go through to make sure that your hands are ritually clean, not just free of germs. The issue Jesus is raising is again about holding an oral tradition to the level of a law that God commanded the people to keep.

Jesus seems to find this issue especially hard to comprehend because this same particular group of Pharisees seemed to advocate for following certain oral traditions above those commandments we find in the Torah like one of the 10 commandments which tells us to honor and care for our parents. The oral tradition encouraged people to give to the temple and how important that was above other things which then meant that people may not have had enough to care for their parents. Jesus tries to help them understand that caring for family is more important than sustaining a building. That while the oral tradition may be good it should not be used to try to take away the importance of following the laws handed directly from God.

It’s hard when our humanness gets in the way of God, and we are all guilty of it. Churches split and fall apart because there is an argument over screens in church. Churches become unhealthy because people decide that only certain people can do certain things in the church. People argue over how the communion table should be set and whether or not children should be in church or not. These are all traditions that we pass down, some good and some bad that are not anything that God ever focused on, or probably cared about.

God cares about our relationships with one another and with God. God cares about tearing down those things which separate us, not building them up. Jesus is trying to help the Pharisees see those things that are more important in life, and those things that we have held on to for so long that may need to be let go.

Which is why I believe Jesus tells the crowds that it is what comes out of a person not what goes in that defiles a person. I can wash my hands a hundred times a day and yet with two children in my house I am going to get a cold. No matter how well people cook food at home or at a restaurant I have gotten food poisoning. But as much as they aren’t fun to have those things will eventually leave our system. They go through the body and come back out. But the words that we say to one another out of anger or as I talked about last week, out of fear, those are the things that both hurt others and ourselves. It is the words and actions that we take that can defile. It is the things that we say in the heat of the moment, and through our own brokenness that is what creates barriers and destroy relationships and communities.

While the focus of this text is about ritually washing our hands and paying attention to the things that come out of our bodies as warnings to us and reminders of how to treat one another, there is something else Jesus is teaching us which I have alluded to already. Jesus is doing his best to remind us that God’s love is more than that. God’s love is greater than any law or tradition or custom that we have created for ourselves. That God’s love goes above and beyond anything that may have been done for ages, because God would rather have a person come to faith than for us to follow one more thing that we have given ourselves to follow or observe. The Apostle Paul puts it so beautifully when he says that he would rather refrain from eating meat than to cause another believer stumble in their faith. God wants you to succeed in your journey of faith and wants to remove as many stumbling blocks as possible so that even if that person sitting next to you forgot to wash their hands, you are both welcome to the table, and you are certainly welcome into the family of God, now and forever. Amen.