Clean from Within

Reading: Matthew 15.1-20


The story is told about a young Negro boy at a fair. There was a balloon man. Every now and then, when business was slack, he would release a balloon and the boy watched in fascination as it rose into the sky. There was a white one, a red one, a yellow one… "Say, Mister," he said, "would a black one go up too?" "Yes, sonny," said the balloon man, releasing a black balloon as he spoke. "You see, it's not the colour of the balloon that counts, but what's inside!"

What figure in English literature had the cleanest hands? It was Lady Macbeth. Yet we hear her say, "Out, damned spot! out, I say!… What, will these hands ne'er be clean?… Here's the smell of blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand…" (Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1). The hands were clean enough, but the conscience wasn't.

"Who has the right to go up the Lord's hill? Who may enter his holy Temple? Those who are pure in act and in thought, who do not worship idols or make false promises" (Ps.28.3-4).

The King James Bible translated that "He who has clean hands and a pure heart…" But not just the washing of the hands after the event - pure in act as well as in thought. There are many others than Pontius Pilate and Lady Macbeth who have hoped that the washing of hands would also cleanse the conscience. No matter how we may "wash our hands of the whole business", God always looks at the heart.

Human Rules

To understand the attitudes of "the Pharisees and teachers of the Law" in today's reading, we need to be aware of the historical background in which they arose. Following the death of Alexander the Great, the Greek empire was divided into four. A couple of hundred years BC, Palestine was being ruled by Antiochus Epiphanes who strongly promoted Greek culture and religion. One historian tells us, "Antiochus seized Jerusalem without fighting, plundering it of as much wealth as he could find, and returned to Antioch. Two years later he invaded Judaea a second time and seized the city by treachery. He stripped the Temple of its furnishings and confiscated its treasures. Having ravaged the city, he massacred many of the inhabitants and carried away a large group of captives, estimated by Josephus to be about ten thousand. He demolished the walls so that the city was defenceless, and having built a tower of his own overlooking the temple site, he garrisoned it with Macedonian mercenaries. His worst offence was the desecration of the Temple, which he devoted to heathen worship by sacrificing a sow upon the great altar. He compelled the Jews to erect shrines to the Greek deities in their villages and to sacrifice swine on the altars. His officers seized and burned all copies of the books of the law and executed their possessors. Circumcision was forbidden and women whose infants had been circumcised were strangled together with their children. Many complied with the king's regulations, but a large number resisted them and paid for their convictions with their lives" (M.C. Tenny, New Testament Times, p.33).

Little wonder that the Pharisee movement grew - a group conspicuous for their zeal for the Law. We find them continually watching Jesus to find fault with him.

"Your disciples don't wash their hands in the proper way before they eat!" The issue had little to do with hygiene and a great deal to do with maintaining ceremonial purity in a society where contact with the Gentile world became more and more likely. There was no rule in the Old Testament about this hand-washing, but it had become an essential part of the tradition of the Pharisees, which they regarded as having equal authority to the Law itself. It was regarded such an important part of personal righteousness that one Rabbi, Akiba, when imprisoned, and receiving scarcely enough water to sustain life, preferred to die of thirst than to eat without washing his hands.

Avoiding what God requires

But Jesus had come to make people clean from the inside out. God looks at the heart, the motives. We hear Jesus saying to the Samaritan woman, "God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth" (Jn.4.24).

One Sunday when Louis XIV of France and his royal party arrived at church, no one was there except Archbishop Fenelon, the court preacher. Surprised to see all the vacant seats, the King inquired, "Where is everybody? Why isn't anyone else present this morning?" The minister answered, "I announced that Your Majesty would not be here today, because I wanted you to see who came to the service just to flatter you and who came to worship God."

For all their show of righteousness, the Pharisees used their man-made traditions to avoid God-given responsibilities. When they were making a vow, they used certain words - Qonam ("let it be established") and Qorban ("given to God"). If a person said, "Qorban whatever I might have used to help my mother and father", it didn't mean that he had actually given it to God. He could use it for his own benefit, but not to help his parents. Commenting on the discussion of the issue in the Jewish Mishnah, one writer has stated, "So stringent was the ordinance that (almost in the words of Christ) it is expressly stated that such a vow was binding, even if what was vowed involved a breach of the Law. It cannot be denied that such vows, in regard to parents, would be binding, and that they were actually made. Indeed, the question is discussed in the Mishnah in so many words, whether 'honour of father and mother' constituted a ground for invalidating a vow, and decided in the negative against a solitary dissenting voice" (A.Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, vol. 2, p.21).

Jesus quotes from Isaiah 29.13, "These people claim to worship me, but their words are meaningless, and their hearts are somewhere else. Their religion is nothing but human rules and traditions, which they have simply memorised."

Clean from within

Jesus had come to make people clean from the inside out. God looks at the heart, the motives.

A person is not made "ritually unclean" - unclean and unacceptable in the sight of God - because of what he/she eats. A person is unclean because of evil in the heart which is expressed in attitude, word and action. "For from his heart come the evil ideas which lead him to kill, commit adultery, and do other immoral things; to rob, lie, and slander others. These are the things that make a person unclean."

Later we hear Jesus speaking out, "How terrible for you, teachers of the Law and Pharisees! You hypocrites! You clean the outside of your cup and plate, while the inside is full of what you have obtained by violence and selfishness! Clean what is inside the cup first, and then the outside will be clean too! How terrible for you, teachers of the Law and Pharisees! You hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look fine on the outside but are full of bones and decaying corpses on the inside. In the same way, on the outside you appear good to everybody, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and sins" (23.25-28).

Jesus said of his work, "The Son of Man did not come to be served; he came to serve and to give his life to redeem many people" (Mk.10.45) and "The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost" (Lk.19.10). We hear him praying from the cross, "Forgive them, Father! They don't know what they are doing" (Lk.23.34).

In a way that we never fully grasp, Jesus in his dying became the perfect sacrifice through whom alone the guilt of sinners can be removed. His cleansing from within begins with forgiveness - offered and received.

John, in his first letter, writes, "Now the message that we have heard from his Son and announce is this: God is light, and there is no darkness at all in him. If, then, we say that we have fellowship with him, yet at the same time live in the darkness, we are lying both in our words and in our actions. But if we live in the light - just as he is in the light - then we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from every sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and there is no truth in us. But if we confess our sins to God, he will keep his promise and do what is right: he will forgive us our sins and purify us from all our wrongdoing" (1 Jn.1.5-9).

Jesus lived and died and rose from the grave in order to make it possible for us to be made clean from within. The Spirit he pours out on people we know as the Holy Spirit because he takes the redemptive work of Jesus and applies it to transform our lives.

Where are you in relation to the Lord? Like the Pharisees, very particular and convinced of your goodness? Or open to your need of forgiveness, open to a deeper relationship with the Lord, open to read and reflect on his Word and to pray, open to the inner transforming of his Spirit?


© Peter J. Blackburn, Buderim Uniting Church, 11 February 1996
Except where otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Good News Bible, © American Bible Society, 1992.

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