Getting Our Hands Dirty
Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15; 21-23
Beaumont Presbyterian Church
September 2, 2012
The Rev. Susan Warren
I confess to being fairly compulsive when it comes to hand-washing. It think it started
right after Julie was born, when I was insistent that anyone who came in the house and wanted to
get near our newborn first wash his or her hands. And that included her father.
The habit has stayed with me. The first thing I do when I arrive home from wherever is
go to the kitchen sink and wash my hands. I usually wash my hands before worship, especially
when we’re serving communion, even though I don’t touch any of the elements that you
consume. When I was working with Hospice during seminary I was taught to wash my hands
before and after entering a patient’s room, so I still do that for hospital and nursing home visits.
Of course, unlike the Pharisees in our story, I don’t think of my dirty hands as defiled.
I’m not washing out of some need to abide by a ritual established by my religious ancestors. I
just don’t want to get sick, or make someone else ill with my germs.
That doesn’t mean that I mind getting my hands dirty. Most of you know I love to garden
– pulling weeds, planting, digging in the dirt. And despite my mother’s frequent admonitions, I
rarely wear gardening gloves. I’m usually sorry later as I’m soaking my hands and nails, trying
to get the dirt to disappear. But I guess I just like to feel the ground and the plants unencumbered
by a layer of cloth.
We can hear the anger in Jesus’ voice as he responds to the Pharisees’ question – an
accusation, really. After all, the disciples have just helped their leader feed 5,000 people and now
they’ve crossed the Sea of Galilee to Gennesaret, where there was much healing work to be
done. They must have been exhausted and famished. Seeing their unwashed hands, the Pharisees
– always on the lookout for some sort of infraction – ask Jesus why.
The purpose of the story goes much deeper, though, as always is the case with Jesus’
teaching. He responds, in essence: What is the sin? Is it failing to keep the rules of our religious
order; or is it spewing judgment and criticism?
You can keep the rules till the cows come home, but if your heart isn’t clean you’ve
missed the point. You can go to church every time the doors open, you can quote scripture, you
can proclaim your devotion to God – but your clean hands will never wash away your hypocrisy.
It would be great, wouldn’t it, if all we had to do to be good and righteous people was to
follow a set of pre-determined doctrines. In fact, you may know people who do just that and
figure they’ve met some criteria that fulfills the purposes of God.
But, no. Jesus had a different understanding of what’s important. It’s not what’s on the
outside that counts, but what comes from inside, from you heart. It’s who you are, what you say,
how you live.
Amy Howe, a Presbyterian minister in Memphis, writes about the bulletin board that the
youth in her church created for the beginning of the school year. The youth had devoted a good
part of their Saturday to their special creation. The bright, colorful board welcomed children and
adults to the church, inviting them to attend Sunday Skool – spelled s-k-o-o-l. The intent was to
grab people’s attention, and it did. A note in Amy’s office commented that the youth of the
church didn’t know how to spell any better than they knew the Bible. (Feasting on the Word,
Year B, Volume 4)
The story reminds me of an incident that occurred when I was serving at Chapel Hill
during seminary. Two twin brothers who were in their late teens attended faithfully and often
brought forward the offering, much as our youth do here. An older couple in the church went to
the pastor to complain because the boys wore shorts and t-shirts. They essentially demanded that
the pastor order these young men to dress appropriately in church. He declined.
In both cases, rather than celebrating the efforts of the youth who had worked hard for the
church on their day off, and rather than expressing gratitude that the Chapel Hill kids willingly
served the church while many of their friends slept in, these misguided folks totally missed the
Christian message. Modern-day Pharisees overlook the deed, overlook the motive, to look for the
“correctness” of the execution.
Dirty hands don’t bother Jesus. Remember, Jesus was a devout Jew who honored the
traditions of his ancestors as they were meant to be honored.
Alyce McKenzie, preaching professor at Southern Methodist University, explains that,
“The spirit of Pharisaic Judaism intended these external rituals to keep the inward heart
focused on the heart of the Torah. The goal was to keep a people mindful of their duty to
God and neighbor while immersed in the details of daily life. Jesus knew that even the best
intentions can become corrupted. They can become substitutes for devotion to God while
our hearts are occupied with thoughts that promote our agendas and whittle others down to
size. We can "honor God with our lips," while our "hearts are far from God." i
So no, dirty hands don’t bother Jesus. Let’s look at what does bother him: whatever
evil comes from the human heart. And he has a whole list – all those things that rise up from
within us to cause harm to others and, ultimately, to ourselves. As always, Jesus teaches us
that you can’t cover unkind thoughts and actions with outward good deeds.
As you prepare to partake of the Eucharist today, I encourage you to look deep
within. What do you see in there? If we’re honest with ourselves, we all have something that
causes us to focus on the dirty hands of other people rather than the sin within.
I believe we overcome this problem when we soften our hearts – a way of cleansing
them, I suppose. When we stop judging; when we stop lying to ourselves and others, often in
an effort to cover up some perceived defect or to get ahead in the world; when we stop
assassinating the characters of the people with whom we disagree – and it’s a good season,
for that, isn’t it, the political season; when we look instead upon others with empathy and
kindness, our hearts soften, our words encourage rather than criticize, our hands reach out
to welcome, we do not turn away or turn others away. We stand up for truth, for justice, for
mercy, for the least among us. When we do these things, we welcome dirty hands, and we
don’t mind getting ours dirty as well. Amen.
i
Alyce McKenzie at Patheos.org