What are God’s commandments for? Do believers in and of God keep these rules to please God? What are some fundamental reasons to follow them? What do we gain from keeping those commandments? What benefits does our society or local community or people around us receive from our faithful observance of them? In order not to be legalistic about religiously observant practices and rules around them, we ought to reflect and ask these questions. This would be a constant spiritual discipline to remind ourselves why we do what we do.
In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus’ friends are criticized by the Pharisees and some of the scribes for not keeping the law of washing their hands before eating. So they ask Jesus, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” This accusation is of course to attack and minimize Jesus and his ministry out of envy. What’s interesting, however, is the logic of how one becomes defiled. The hands of Jesus’ friends wouldn’t have been defiled if they hadn’t eaten any food. Their hands become defiled as they eat something with their hands. Before that, their hands are not unclean. What's considered clean or unclean is determined by conditions and actions that follow after. In the case of Jesus’ friends, their hands are not washed, and the action is that they eat something with that specific condition. Now they are not only judged to be guilty but also their hands are defiled according to the tradition of elders. This raises another question of who made this rule and for what purpose it is to be kept. Is God happy that I wash my hands before eating? Maybe. I don’t know if God should even care. It’s a bit too tedious. But if this is about public health, which we have heard during this pandemic era the importance of washing our hands with soap at least for 20 seconds, this ritual of washing hands before eating makes sense. God must be happy that I don’t touch my neighbors with my germy hands! The logic of the condition of defilement is quite thin. What we really see in the encounter between Jesus and his critics is this human nature that we see things around us based on what’s already preconceived in our minds. Human tradition in this sense may be what’s already preconceived by ancestors is being handed over to the next generation. Anais Nin once said, “We don’t see things as they are but as we are.” The Pharisees and scribes look at Jesus and his friends in the way they define themselves: what’s clean or not, or what’s lawful or not. This is the lens of self-righteousness. This echoes Jesus’ saying this morning, “...there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” If the Pharisees and scribes don’t have any preconceived notion of how one’s hands become defile, there really is nothing unclean in the action of eating. Their lens of a legalistically oriented black-and-white worldview defiles people and their actions that don’t meet the standards. This then takes us to examine our own minds. What kind of mirror do we see people around us? How do we reflect the world that we see in our hearts? One way to check is what we first see in people and how we judge others. Quite frankly speaking, my default lens to people is to look for what’s wrong, dangerous, or generally what’s not in my cup of tea. I imagine there would be many of us who can join my boat. This, I think, is more about our brain that is programmed for survival. What matters is to candidly see what lens we use most frequently, which is in and of itself a spiritual practice. Imagine we’re looking at the mirror of our minds. See what’s on it and what’s in the way to reflect the world as it is. (Think about a foggy mirror in the shower.) As we contemplatively look at the mirror of our mind, see what’s there, and wipe it clean more mindfully, we can meet the mirror of compassion and wisdom. This means that whatever mirror of defilement we have can be transformed into the mirror of compassion and wisdom. Jesus’ teaching of “That all these evil things come from within, and they defile a person” can also mean the opposite: all good things can come from within, and they sanctify a person with the help of the Holy Spirit. With confidence and hope in the Spirit, we strive to see this mirror of compassion and wisdom. Compassion is the way we understand and treat others while wisdom considers conditions and causes of situations where people are situated. Compassion stops us from prematurely judging others while wisdom helps us see what’s going on just as mercy and justice go together. What’s then after the mirror of compassion and wisdom? No mirror! In our union with God, the mirror of compassion and wisdom is not needed. Mirrorless that we see people and things in Christ as God sees them. Amen. |
Paul"...life up your love to that cloud [of unknowing]...let God draw your love up to that cloud...through the help of his grace, to forget every other thing." Archives
January 2025
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