Wash What Truly Matters
Jesus was quite possibly the worst dinner guest. A Pharisee invites him to dinner and is rebuked as caring more about the letter of the law than about justice or the love of God. A lawyer thought he could keep Jesus in line and warns him that his words are offensive only to have Jesus turn the tables on him and accuse his class of murdering the prophets and ignoring the burdens of the people. This is yet another example of the truth that Jesus was not a whimp or a pushover. He doesn’t care about men’s vain trappings. He cares about what truly matters: our souls.
The Jews put so much stock in washing their hands, they missed what was truly causing them to be filthy. No self-respecting Jew, and most definitely not a rabbi, would ever sit down to a meal without first performing the ritual of washing. Those who were truly devoted would pause their meal periodically in order to re-perform this ritual. So much weight was placed on the washing of hands with sacred water kept only for this purpose that rabbis would actually claim bread eaten with unpurified hands to be as filthy as excrement. Any rabbi refusing to perform this ritual was actually excommunicated from the faith. In fact, there is story of a rabbi who was imprisoned by the Romans and chose to use his small daily ration of water to wash his hands rather than drinking it. Because of this, he almost died of dehydration but was applauded as a hero of their faith.
It is so like mankind to applaud the laughable. While people starve, we celebrate the extravagant waste of food and resources. While the lonely and brokenhearted suffer, we focus on the celebrated and put-together. Our priorities have never been right since the fall of mankind. Jesus didn’t come to begin an anti-hygiene campaign. He came to show us where we were missing the mark. Our focus and our priorities, without God, don’t line up. Luckily for us, God will realign us so that we focus on what is truly important.
Matthew 15:17-20 records Jesus telling his disciples, “Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.” My dad used to say it this way: You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig!
As Christians, we need to stop focusing on putting lipstick where it doesn’t belong. We need to get our sight in line with God’s. He cares less if we wear the right clothes or sing the words to every song on Sunday perfectly. What matters to Him resides in our heart. That is where change begins. That is where love and mercy are born into acts of compassion and grace. Washing your hands before a meal may keep you from getting whatever germ is being spread around, but washing your heart before your God will keep you from a cancer which eats your soul.
(Written by Keegan Harkins.)
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