“And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition!” Mark 7:9 ESV
Reflection: what truth do you find most inconvenient to accept and follow?
I heard a story the other day of a disgruntled employee who had shared with a few, select colleagues that because of her high personal moral compass, that she had to call out unfairness she saw in their department. In principle that sounds really good, wanting to better the department, to do the right thing in the name of fairness for the employees. But, turns out that her whole approach was very deceptive, very cunning. To raise the concern, she wanted to bypass the established procedure for filing an employee complaint, and go straight to an outside party. Her approach would have caused a lot of damage to the department, the employees and the management team. She appeared therefore not to want to improve the department, but instead wanting to cause damage for selfish reasons. While she technically might have had a point of observing unfairness, her motives were very selfish, and not for the betterment of her department and colleagues. She projected a self image of high morale, but in reality, we can see that
She is a hypocrite.
Many of us have run into people like this, whose fruit does not align with whom they claim to be. The fruit will always reveal what sort of tree it is. And, in today’s story from Mark, we read about religious hypocrites, who Jesus regularly encountered. They too considered themselves having the “highest religious and self righteous compass”; so high that they even challenged God, as we will see. Let’s first read how Mark characterized them, “Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders, and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.)” Mark 7:1-4 ESV. Notice carefully here the phrase “tradition of the elders”. So, as they observed Jesus and His disciples not following these traditions they held so high, they challenged Jesus:
“And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”” Mark 7:5 ESV
Jesus didn’t hold back. “And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition!” Mark 7:6-9 ESV. He called them hypocrites on many occasions. He was so clear, so unapologetically speaking the truth. And as we all know what happens when we challenge selfish, self righteous people, Jesus became so unpopular with these religious people in power, that they eventually took His life. Jesus told them truth, but it was an
Inconvenient truth.
They had literally taken God’s perfect commandments that He had entrusted to them, His perfect creation and design, and created a whole bunch of rules and traditions for selfish reasons, so that they could put burdens on the people and control them. These were the “traditions of the elders”. If you look into this, to try to understand what they taught then (and even teach today), you will be shocked. You will understand why Jesus was furious with them. Why He called them out so harshly. Why He had to basically re-educate the people of the meaning of God’s commandments, as we see for instance in Matthew 5-7. Why he used phrases like “you have heard it is said…, but I tell you.”. But, it is a message, a challenge to all of us, who call ourselves Christians today.
Are we following church traditions instead of following God’s commandments?
Do we find any of Jesus teaching “inconvenient” to accept and follow in our modern society? Being a “true” Christian means following Jesus, which also means following the intent of God’s commandments as Jesus taught them. And that is not easy, as it means giving up of self. It is literally dying to self to live for Him. It most likely means becoming unpopular among many, even hated by the world. Because it is a life lived against the stream. Against self, and against the forces of the world.
