Bloomsbury 16th February 2020
Mark 7.1-23
Listen to this sermon here:
I’ve recently started reading Bill Bryson’s latest book,
The Body:
A Guide for Occupants,
and I
highly recommend it.
In his chapter on ‘skin’ he talks about the importance of
washing your hands,
and I
thought some short quotes from the book
might be an interesting place to start our engagement this morning
with
Jesus’ argument with the Pharisees
on the significance, or not, of washing your hands.
Bill Bryson writes:
To make one’s hands safely clean after a medical examination
requires
thorough washing with soap and water for at least a full minute
– a standard that is, in practical terms, all but unattainable
for anyone dealing with lots of patients.
It is a big part of the reason why every year
some two
million Americans pick up a serious infection in the hospital
(and
90,000 of them die of it).
‘The greatest difficulty,’ Atul Gawande has written,
‘is
getting clinicians like me to do the one thing
that consistently halts the spread of
infections:
wash our hands.’
(Bryson, Bill. The Body, p. 24).
A little bit later in the book he tells the story
of an
unfortunate woman known as Typhoid Mary,
who was a symptomless carrier of Typhoid
working as
a cook in a number of wealthy houses
in New
York City in the early twentieth century.
Apparently,
She was personally responsible for at least fifty-three
cases of typhoid
and three
confirmed deaths, but possibly many more.
The particular tragedy of it
is that
she could have spared her unfortunate victims
if she had
just washed her hands before handling food.
(Bryson, Bill. The Body, p. 327).
Bill Bryson also tells the story of the discovery
of how to
eliminate the horrifically fatal disease known as ‘Childbed Fever’
which swept through Europe in waves
from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries,
often
killing 90% of the young mothers it infected.
He says,
In 1847, a medical instructor in Vienna …
realized
that if doctors washed their hands
before conducting intimate examinations
the
disease all but vanished.
‘God knows the number of women
whom I
have consigned prematurely to the grave,’
he wrote despairingly when he realized it was all a matter
of hygiene.
Unfortunately, no one at all listened to him…
[and
Childbed Fever] continued to be a problem
for far
longer than it need have.
Into the 1930s it was responsible for four out of every ten
maternal hospital
deaths in Europe and America.
(Bryson, Bill. The Body, p. 296)
Even today, the main defence against MRSA infection in
hospitals,
which
results in an estimated 700,000 deaths every year worldwide,
is an
insistence on careful hand hygiene.
All of which leads me to conclude
that the
Pharisees may have had a point.
After all, here at Bloomsbury we insist
that those
who volunteer in our church kitchen
are trained in Food Safety and
Hygiene,
and a key
part of that is washing your hands!
And if I were to say that I was going to serve communion
later
but hadn’t
bothered washing my hands
after I
went to the toilet before the service,
I bet some of you at least would discover
some
hitherto unconfessed inner sin
that required you to abstain
from
partaking in the bread and wine this week.
And don’t worry, by the way:
I
certainly did wash my hands!
But on the face of it, the Pharisees’ insistence
on washing
anything they bought from the market before they ate it,
and of washing their cups, pots and bronze kettles,
as well as
their hands,
seems a
perfectly sensible thing to do!
And it’s the same with many of the other food and
cleanliness regulations
that
existed within ancient Jewish culture.
They may not have had an understanding of bacteria,
but people had learned by trial and error
that, for example, undercooked shellfish could make you ill,
and that
not washing things spread disease.
So, why did Jesus allow his disciples
to eat
with defiled hands?
Why did Jesus choose to pick a fight
on the
issue of whether it’s a good idea to wash your hands
before
eating dinner?
And what on earth are we to make of this
in the
light of modern advice on food hygiene?
In order to understand what’s going on here
with the
disciples and the handwashing, or lack of it,
I think we can draw a helpful parallel
with the
methodology of Citizens UK.
Let me explain.
Most of you will know that Bloomsbury is a member of London
Citizens
- the
community organising network
that draws together churches, mosques, synagogues,
schools, universities, and other community groups,
to work
together for greater justice in our city.
Some of you are coming to the Copperbox on the 21st April
to join
with 6,000 others from London Citizens
to put pressure on the candidates for the London Mayoral Election,
on issues
such as climate change, welcoming refugees,
housing and
homelessness, and the like.
And by the
way, if you want to come
but haven’t yet got your name
down yet for a ticket
- please speak to me, or Helen, or Jess after the service.
However, this kind of big-show-of-strength,
getting
thousands of people together to demonstrate our collective power,
is the kind of thing we only do once every few years.
Most of the time, the work of London Citizens
to bring
about changes in culture and society
is done on a much smaller
scale,
using
carefully thought-through and targeted symbolic actions.
An example of this we’ve all heard of
is Martin
Luther King and Rosa Parkes;
both
trained in exactly this kind of community organising strategy.
Rosa Parkes didn’t just wake up one morning
and decide
to sit in the wrong seat on a bus:
it was a carefully thought-through tactic,
to generate a response from the authorities
and advance
the civil rights struggle.
Sometimes you need a big show of strength,
but
sometimes you just need to sit in a different seat.
And Jesus allowing his disciples
to ignore
the ritual about handwashing
was exactly this:
a
carefully targeted and highly symbolic action,
designed
to provoke a response from the powerful Pharisees.
The thing is, that whilst the first century rituals about
handwashing
may have
originated in perfectly sensible observations about disease control,
and whilst they certainly make good sense to us
from a contemporary hygiene perspective,
in the hands of the legalistic Pharisees
they had
become a tool to denote and control
who was
acceptable to God, and who wasn’t.
And this is because the language of ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’
had become
transplanted
from the
physical world to the spiritual world.
So, whilst it might be perfectly acceptable
to point
out to someone that their hands are dirty
and that they
ought to wash them before eating dinner;
telling them that they are unclean in their soul
and are
therefore not welcome to the banquet of God’s kingdom
is
something else altogether.
In the thought-world of the Pharisees,
the
language of uncleanness had been taken to another level,
and so
they talked
not just of the cleanliness of a person’s hands,
but of the purity of a person’s soul.
And the thing is, I get it! And I’m sure you do too…
It’s a
natural use of language, isn’t it,
for us to say that we feel ‘dirty,’
when what
we mean is that we are experiencing shame,
perhaps as a result of our own sinful actions,
or because of wrong things others have done to us.
And more positively, there is something spiritually
uplifting
about
washing, feeling clean, and spending time in water.
As many of you know, I go swimming quite a lot,
and the
sensation of being immersed in water,
and taking exercise whilst doing so,
is
something that I find brings me closer to God.
So, this pattern of using a metaphor drawn from our physical
existence
to speak
of something we experience spiritually,
is
something we can all relate to.
But where it started to go wrong for the Pharisees,
was that
they fused the physical metaphor,
with the spiritual reality.
they
confused physical uncleanness
with spiritual defilement
So, rather than regarding washing before eating
as a useful
and sensible social function,
passed
down through tribal memory and learned behaviour,
it became in their minds
a kind of
status-symbol of spiritual suitability,
an outward
show of inner cleanliness.
And, as fundamentalist religious leaders
have
discovered time and again down the years,
often to
the great delight of the tabloid editors,
if the marker of your spirituality is an outward show of
ritual purity,
the danger
is that it gets easier and easier to fake it,
keeping up the show on the outside
whilst
allowing the spiritual core to degenerate
into
hypocrisy and duplicity.
More than one religious leader has fallen from grace
whist
keeping up appearances.
So Jesus allowed his disciples to rattle the Pharisees’
cage,
by
skipping their washing before a meal,
and it certainly worked!
If he was aiming for a response,
he got
one.
But the way the Pharisees responded Jesus is interesting,
because
they didn’t go,
‘Ew - their hands are dirty, that’s gross!
Go and wash them!’
Rather, they said,
‘Why do
your disciples not live
according to the tradition of the elders,
but eat
with defiled hands?’
And here we get our first key insight
into what
is going on in the Pharisees’ minds.
For them, this isn’t about cleanliness being next to
godliness,
rather,
this is about the tradition of the elders.
There were two kinds of Law, or Torah, at the time of Jesus.
There was
the written law:
the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy and so on;
and there
was the oral law:
the traditions of the elders.
The written law doesn’t say much about the importance of
ritual washing;
it just
suggests that if someone has an unusually coloured discharge
they
should wash themselves and their clothes, (Lev. 15.11-14; cf. Ps 26.6).
But the traditions of the elders are full of it,
listing
all kinds of regulations, which take the physical action of washing,
and make
it a spiritual marker of purity.
So what Jesus allowed his disciples to do,
which so
scandalised the Pharisees,
was to act in a way that challenged the authority of the
oral law.
And the clever thing here,
is that
the disciples aren’t breaking the written law at all,
only the traditions of the elders
that
sustained the Pharisees in their never-ending quest
to erect
liturgical markers around the faith-boundary of their identity.
And here I find myself wondering,
what
symbolic actions we.
who are the disciples of Jesus in our time,
might be
called to that will similarly challenge the hypocrisy
of those with a vested interest in keeping some in, and some out…?
I found an interesting observation in one of the
commentaries I read
as I was
preparing for this morning.
It says,
‘If a society feels under threat,
it will
reinforce its purity codes
as a way of insisting to itself,
that it is
really what it should be.’[1]
And I wonder what our purity codes are?
Language?
Ethnicity? Nationalism?
Militarism? Neoliberalism?
As an extreme example of something far more insidious,
did you
see the story of the ‘Happy BREXIT Day’ notices
pinned up
on every floor of a tower block in Norwich,
The signs say:
"We
finally have our great country back...
we do not
tolerate people speaking
other
languages than English in the flats."[2]
Thankfully, this hateful act was swiftly followed
by people
putting up love hearts
with
messages of solidarity, love, and welcome.[3]
But of course the use of language
as a
boundary marker of identity, has a long history:
where something as positive and natural
as the words we learned from our parents,
are taken
and used to create a culture of fear and suspicion.
You only have to read about the English suppression of the
Welsh language
for a
clear example of this in action in the history of the United Kingdom.
And this is one of the reasons I’m so excited that
Bloomsbury is playing a part
in the
welcoming of the two Syrian refugee sisters to the West End.
Community Sponsorship of refugees
is a
creative way of challenging the cultural boundaries
that keep
people apart, isolated, and suppressed.
Any narrative of nationalism
that is
sustained by purity markers of language or controlled behaviour,
is, it seems to me, exactly the kind of thing
that
Jesus’ disciples should be subverting.
And whilst the Coronavirus is reminding us, at great and
tragic cost,
that there
is an entirely appropriate reason
to be
concerned about washing one’s hands regularly,
the incidences of racist abuse perpetrated against Chinese
and other Asian people
in London
over the last couple of weeks[4]
is a further example of how easily a proper concern about
cleanliness,
can spill
over into abusive acts of spiritual or ideological purity.
The philosophical belief that underlies all of this
is the
teaching of Plato,
the Greek philosopher who lived
about 400 years before Jesus.
Plato said that world was divided into two realms,
the
spiritual realm and the physical realm.
And he believed that the physical realm that we all live in,
is merely
a poor shadow of the true perfection that can be found
in the
spiritual world beyond this one.
This philosophy came to be known as dualism,
and it
spread through the ancient world
as the
Greek empire expanded under Alexander the Great.
It’s influence can clearly be seen in the Pharisees’
teaching
that the
physical world of ritual washing and other observances
was a
reflection of the spiritual state of a person’s soul.
So Jesus’ challenge to the Pharisees’ ideology of exclusion
based on
their fusion of physical and spiritual cleanliness,
was actually also a challenge against the underlying
philosophical mind-set
that gave
power to their teaching.
In the simple act of allowing his disciples to not wash
their hands,
Jesus was
taking on not just the Pharisees,
but the
entire edifice of Greek Philosophy!
Up until this point in the gospel,
Jesus has
been casting unclean spirits out of people.
But in the symbolic action of resisting the ritual of
handwashing,
he makes
clear his wider agenda
of casting
spirits of uncleanness out of the world.
The new world, the new kingdom, that Jesus is proclaiming,
and which
he invites his disciples to live into being,
is not going to be somewhere
where
people feel shame for who they are,
nor is it to be a place
where
people’s souls are rendered unclean or dirty,
either because of things they have done,
or for things which have been done to them.
The new world of the kingdom of heaven
is not a
world of ideological quarantine,
spiritual decontamination chambers,
or
ritualised holding cells.
It is not a world where the whispered traditions of the
elders
get to
codify laws that exclude or isolate the vulnerable or the different.
And so Jesus bites back at the Pharisees
with his
slightly strange tirade about ‘Corban’ law.
That’s ‘Corban’, not ‘Corbyn’!
Because the Pharisees, for all their outward displays of
purity,
were using
their ritual observance
as an
excuse to escape from their moral obligation.
And Jesus’ point was that purity of motive
always
trumps purity of action.
It’s not that what we do doesn’t matter, of course,
our
actions are very, very important.
But right action stems from right motive,
and the
Pharisees had been getting this round the wrong way.
If the focus is on outward purity,
the heart
can rot away leaving a hollow shell.
But if the heart is right before God,
the
actions that come from it will be a blessing and not a curse.
So in a minute we’re going to come to the Communion Table,
and share
in the bread and wine
that are for us the symbol and sign
of the new
kingdom that Jesus was proclaiming.
And as we come to the Table,
I want us
to notice a few things.
Firstly, all are welcome.
In our tradition we do not fence the table,
but rather
we invite everyone to share in the food.
Secondly, I don’t really care if you’ve washed your hands.
Partly,
it’s because the bread is already cut, and we use little cups,
so the risk of passing on your cold are quite low,
but the
deeper point is that there is no ritual we need to observe
in order to be spiritually clean before God.
Thirdly, we are forgiven,
whatever
we’ve done, or whatever has been done to us,
whatever
shame we carry, however dirty we feel,
we are
forgiven, and welcomed by God.
And finally, we are called to a new basis for our
discipleship,
where the focus is not
on doing the right things for their own sake,
but rather
on responding faithfully
to the renewal of our hearts
by the love of God.
[1] Robert Hammerton Kelly
[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-51341735
[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-51490033
[4]
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-london-51361930/londoners-experiencing-racism-over-coronavirus
