Mark 7 - My Thoughts

      I believe it was Ronald Reagan who – about 40 years ago – said something along these lines: “never trust anyone who says ‘I’ve come from the government. I’m here to help.’” I don’t want to launch into an anti-government diatribe or start to advocate for a smaller state apparatus or anything like that. It’s just that Reagan’s comment came into my mind when I read the opening words of Chapter 7: “Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him.” Yes - Jerusalem. Jesus had encountered Pharisees and scribes before; he had been opposed by them; he had debated them. But these Pharisees and scribes were different, because they were “from Jerusalem.” That’s important. First of all, Jerusalem was an important city. It wasn’t the capital of Roman Judea. The capital of Roman Judea was a city called Caesarea Maritima, which was about 125 km northwest of Jerusalem on the coast of the Mediterranean. It also wasn’t the capital of Herod Antipas, the Roman tetrarch. His capital was at Tiberias, which is about 180 km due north of Jerusalem, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. So at the time Mark wrote, Jerusalem wasn’t a centre of political power, but it was important symbolically. It was the most important city in the Jewish faith; it was the centre of Jewish learning. If it wasn’t the political capital of the territory it was the religious centre; the home of the Second Temple. It was a city Jesus would have been familiar with. Luke’s Gospel tells us that when Jesus was a child his family made an annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Passover, and Luke tells us that it was during one of those visits that Jesus debated the priests in the temple as a 12 year old boy. So Jerusalem represents the religious power centre of the nation. The only modern comparison I can think of might be to point to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, which isn’t the capital of any nation but is the holiest city in Islam; the place to where all Muslims aspire to make a pilgrimage during their lifetime – the famous “hajj.” Jerusalem is important religiously to the Jews, and the fact that Mark starts out Chapter 7 by noting that Jesus encountered “Pharisees and scribes from Jerusalem” is both important and ominous. One of the key points Mark has been making is that news about Jesus has been spreading rapidly. Everywhere Jesus goes he’s mobbed by crowds. This first verse of Chapter 7 tells us that Jesus’ fame has reached Jerusalem. It was no longer local Pharisees and scribes that Jesus would simply meet along the way of his travels; now the Pharisees and scribes “from Jerusalem” were deliberately seeking him out. They “gathered around him” Mark tells us. If I could paraphrase Ronald Reagan, the message of these religious officials was “We’ve come from Jerusalem, and we’re not here to help you.” Clearly they’ve been disturbed by the reports that have been reaching them, presumably from the Pharisees and scribes on the ground in the region of Galilee. They’ve heard things about Jesus and his teachings, they’re not happy and they’re here to check this guy out. And they immediately find something they don’t like.

 

     Jesus’ disciples were eating their food without washing their hands. We today would probably read that and think “Ewww. Gross.” After the last few months we are very conditioned to the idea that we should be regularly washing our hands. But the issue here is not a hygienic issue. The Pharisees aren’t concerned with health implications and it isn’t a matter of getting all the dust and dirt washed off their hands before eating. They are disturbed by the fact that Jesus and his disciples are apparently rejecting one of their traditions. Nowhere in the Torah was hand-washing or the washing of foods bought in a market or of eating utensils and pots, etc. made a requirement. This was simply something that the Pharisees had come up with. They weren’t concerned that the disciples had “dirty” hands; their belief was that their hands were “defiled” – which means that they believed (without support from the Torah) that it wasn’t dirt that needed to be washed away but ritual uncleanness. We know from other parts of the Gospels that one of Jesus’ objections to the practices of the Pharisees was that they engaged in unnecessary rituals for the sake of putting on a show and demonstrating how pure and holy they were. Since the Pharisees were the models of how to live as pious Jews, many of their rituals were accepted by the people as being necessary to be pious and faithful Jews. The traditions of the Pharisees had started to dominate the religious life of the people rather than the commands of God. Jesus knew this, and when he and his disciples fail to ritualistically cleanse their hands before eating they’re engaging in a deliberate and very public challenge to the authority and practices of the Pharisees. The fact that they did this so openly before the Pharisees “from Jerusalem” shows once again that Jesus rejects the traditions and practices of the Pharisees as being not from God. It’s interesting that even the Pharisees seem to recognize that their practices are not in direct obedience to God when they say “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders …?” But the Pharisees have so blurred their traditions with the commands of God that they no longer see the difference. What they believe and what they do is what God wants – not because God ever said this was necessary, but simply because the Pharisees do it. In some ways you can compare the Pharisees with any group of religious extremists in any religious faith who start to believe that their teachings must be accepted as God’s will simply because it’s they who teach it. Jesus understands this fully, and he challenges the Pharisees once again with an appeal to Scripture.

 

     “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites.” (So, Jesus starts with what you’d have to call “fightin’ words.”) “This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.” Jesus is turning the world of the Pharisees (the Pharisees “from Jerusalem!”) upside down. Jesus is saying to everyone within earshot and to everyone who will hear his words that the teaching of the Pharisees is hypocritical. It’s not of God. It’s just their teaching which they then claim to be God’s. All the things that they require of the people that go beyond the Torah and its requirements have nothing to do with piety or faithfulness. Their purpose is to entrench the power of the Pharisees over the people. Jesus openly, directly and even defiantly calls them out on this. This is a different kind of encounter. To those Pharisees he had encountered in the past he had been largely respectful, even if disagreeing with him. He had debated with them, which in and of itself is giving them some degree of credibility. But with these Pharisees “from Jerusalem” there is no debate. Jesus doesn’t give them the privilege of respectful debate – he harshly dismisses them. It may be the simple fact that these Pharisees are from Jerusalem that explains the difference in how Jesus approaches them versus how he dealt with the local Pharisees. The local Pharisees are just repeating the teaching they’ve had handed down to them. The Pharisees from Jerusalem are what Jesus seems to consider the root of the problem. They are worthy not of respect and correction; they are worthy only of contempt and disregard. By treating them this way, Jesus is challenging not only their teaching but the very basis of their power over the society. You can see how this is foreshadowing what’s coming.

 

     What really interests me is that I’m not sure that Jesus and the Pharisees really differed all that much on the fundamentals. The Pharisees may have been overly pious and convinced that they spoke for God; Jesus may have been convinced that they were wrong and believed himself to be at least God’s representative on earth – but both had a similar view of human nature. The Pharisees thought that human nature was so evil that only by repeated ritualistic cleansing could people possibly earn God’s favour. Jesus didn’t counter the fundamentally negative view of human nature that the Pharisees had, Actually, he reinforced it. He said to the crowds that “there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” Mark interprets this as a statement against the dietary laws – which, interestingly enough, are a part of the Torah, so Mark is again giving Jesus the authority to speak for God, to re-interpret God’s word, and even to change God’s law. Later, speaking privately to his disciples, Jesus expanded on that idea: “… it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.” These come from with us, Jesus says. What Jesus calls “evil intentions” are built into human nature, even by Jesus’ own teaching. So the Pharisees and Jesus don’t really disagree on the substance of the matter. You might even say that Jesus is harsher about human nature than the Pharisees. At least the Pharisees seemed to believe that uncleanness came from outside; Jesus on the other hand saw it as a part of human nature. But the real point of disagreement between Jesus and the Pharisees is on how to deal with uncleanness and evil. The Pharisees believe it can be addressed by ritualistic washing ceremonies; Jesus hasn’t yet really provided a remedy.

 

     It seems significant to me that after this rather heated exchange with the Pharisees in which Jesus very clearly takes the position that nothing outside us makes us unclean, Jesus then immediately returns to Gentile territory (“the region of Tyre”) and encounters a Gentile. The Pharisees would have seen simply encountering Gentiles as something that would render a Jew unclean and require them to wash and cleanse themselves. Jesus sees no such problem. Gentiles don’t make a Jew unclean, anymore than eating shellfish or pork make a Jew unclean. Jesus’ immediate return to Gentile territory after this exchange with the Pharisees is a tangible demonstration of the contempt in which he holds the traditions of the Pharisees. In effect he says that he would rather be with Gentiles than with Pharisees. Again, he is not endearing himself to these Pharisees “from Jerusalem;” these religious officials who were at the top of the religious hierarchy as opposed to just being local religious leaders.

 

     Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophoenician woman is one of the better known stories in the New Testament. Mark returns to the motif of demon-possession (and in the next story he’ll return to healing.) In this case, it’s the woman’s daughter who is possessed by a demon and the woman boldly approaches Jesus for help. Jesus’ response to the woman takes people aback because of its seeming harshness; “it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” This is a variation on the theme that Jesus’ ministry was to Israel and not to the Gentiles. So if this is an appropriate follow-up to his encounter with the Pharisees for the reasons I just noted, it’s also a surprising one. It’s important to note that there are different ways of understanding this. The word translated simply as “dogs” is κυνάρια. It’s a diminutive form of the word for “dog.” It can mean “worthless dog” – which is how most people seem to read this, which is why it’s so puzzling to them. We probably read it a 21^st century context in which calling a woman a “dog” is an insult – some have even suggested that Jesus is calling the woman a “bitch.” But another way of understanding the word κυνάρια is that it could mean simply a “little dog” or even a “puppy.” So Jesus may not be saying “the Jews are God’s children and you’re nothing.” Jesus might be saying that the woman (and perhaps by extension all Gentiles) simply isn’t ready for adult food – similar to some of Paul’s writing in which he talks about some Christians not being ready for solid food yet. Perhaps the point of the comment by Jesus is that the woman (and the Gentiles) aren’t spiritually mature yet. I agree, though, that there is an inconsistency here, because Jesus has acted on behalf of Gentiles without question before. The most important part of the story, though, might be the refusal of the woman to take “no” for an answer: “… even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Jesus responds to the woman’s boldness and drives the demon out of her daughter. This reminds me of Hebrews 4:16, which tells us to “approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

 

     Finally, Chapter 7 ends with a fairly simple healing miracle, as Jesus encounters a man who’s deaf. Jesus doesn’t object to healing him (making one wonder why he did object to the woman’s request) but insists on doing so in private and in this strange way, putting his fingers into the man’s ears, spitting and touching his tongue.” We know that Jesus can heal with just a word; we know that Jesus can heal even without knowing it – remember the woman with the bleeding problem. This seems to be a rather strange bit of ritual for Jesus, who has just condemned the Pharisees for unnecessary ritual. There’s no explanation ever given for why Jesus engages in this very strange healing technique. There is a similar passage in Mark 8 and in John’s Gospel (9:6) when Jesus heals a man’s blindness by making a paste out of mud mixed with his spit and applying it to the man’s eyes. There’s never a biblical explanation given for why Jesus did this. The Roman Catholic Church has at times argued that this is the basis for anointing. There was apparently also a tradition known in the area at the time that the saliva of a first born heir had healing properties – so some suggest that this is a tangible way for Jesus to declare that he is the first born heir of God. The truth is, though, that we don’t know why Jesus did this. I wonder if what we learn from the story is that some things are best left as a mystery and that we don’t have to force an explanation on to everything.