(Mark 7:8…) Jesus’ ongoing beef with the Pharisee seems
mostly to be based on the Pharisees impression that life was based on
Sacrifice. Most of their traditions centered
on external displays of their devotion and sacrifice to God. They had a fine way of twisting the law in
order to serve their own purposes that only ever put more boundaries and bondage
on people. In their defense, the
Pharisee movement was started because they saw so much destruction and brokenness
in their society. As is the case with
the legalistic religious movements of our own day, their misguided drive to add
rules on top of rules came from the idea that if you can’t beat the power of
sin, at least we have to try to control it to minimize the disaster it cause in
people’s lives. So, over time, things
that were good and practical, like washing your hands before you eat, became a
religious activity which displayed your devotion to God. Similarly, declaring the money you should use
to help your needy parents “Corban” (a gift to God) showed your devotion to
God. (Mark 7:12). But as these
traditions got more and more twisted and lost their true meaning they effectively
put people into bondage instead of showing people that they needed God to rescue
them and their sacrifice would never cut it.
Jesus says, God told you to honor and care for your parents, and you’ve
chosen sacrifice over mercy. You’ve
chosen religion over people. People are always
more important to Jesus. The Kingdom of
Heaven is about Mercy
(Mark 7:14) Jesus then starts to preach the kingdom of
heaven again to the people, who I’m sure, were watching very closely to see
what the Pharisees would do in this situation.
They’d been upstaged and contradicted again by this Rabbi who was
turning their world upside down with teachings and displays of power and mercy
of the Kingdom of heaven. Jesus takes
one of their most basic tradition, rules about food, and basically throws it
out the window to get to the root of the problem. The Pharisees teaching were all external and
based on external things. What people
could and couldn’t eat was a very easy thing to control in order give and appearance
of holiness. Jesus says, that is ridiculous
and calls into question their teachings.
“Nothing that goes into your body makes you unclean, what makes you
unclean goes well beyond anything physical; it’s a heart issue.” When Jesus makes all inclusive statements
like “nothing that…”, he actually
means nothing. It’s a freedom
statement. In this case Jesus was
debunking all the concepts they had about ceremonial food having any effect on
your spiritual condition. Freedom, the
Kingdom of heaven is about Freedom.
It’s not always enough for Jesus to declare freedom; in this
case he has to define it. People truly believed
that their standing with God was based on this external physical act. The tradition was so ingrained in their
culture everyone was scratching their heads, even the disciples. This statement that might seem so simple to
you and I, would have been culture shattering.
The ideas of ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’ were so strong that their entire
society functioned around it. What you
ate determined if you were clean or unclean.
Your health determined if you were clean or unclean. Your clothing determined if you were clean or
unclean. How you did business determined
if you were clean or unclean. And Jesus
pulls the rug out from under the whole system and says, “Eat whatever you want,
it doesn’t matter a lick. What matters
is you’re all broken from the start. You’ve
got a heart disease that has nothing to do with your diet; it goes much
deeper. And all the junk that comes out
of your life is a symptom of that bigger disease, the symptoms do not cause the
condition. (Mark 7:20-23) Then Jesus leaves. He leaves them without the answer or the cure
to the sin problem. Perhaps he was
frustrated, he certainly was with the disciples (Mark 7:18). Maybe he just knew they had to digest the freedom
he’d just served them before they could hear the rest of the treatment plan for
fixing the clean-unclean dilemma.
Whatever the case, Jesus moves on and displays the freedom
and power he was revealing to Pharisees, disciples and crowds. He went to someone’s house and tried to hide
out for a bit, tired and needing a rest from all the Kingdom of Heaven mania
that been going on I suppose. But the
Kingdom of heaven is hard to hide when there are people in great need
around. A Gentile woman shows up. Now she is free from all the Pharisees religious
baggage, God’s law wasn’t for her people.
So she seems to have no trouble breaking the cultural and religious norms
in order to get to only one she knows can help her. She falls at Jesus feet and begs him to heal
her daughter who is tormented by a demon.
So even though she wasn’t wrapped up in the religiousness of the Jews,
she knew the kingdom of Darkness was real; her daughter was bound to it.
Jesus response seems strange to us, “First let the children
eat all they want, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it
to their dogs.” But the woman recognized
the cultural nuance. She new enough to
know that the Jews were considered God’s chosen people, God’s children. She would have heard that Jesus was bringing
a message of freedom and life to the Jews who were bound in religious
tradition. She wasn’t interested in
that, she was just looking for crumbs.
Her response to Jesus, “even the dogs under the table get to eat the
children’s crumbs.” Like the woman who
just reached out to touch the fringe of Jesus robe and gets healed, she was desperate
for a touch of God to set her daughter free, just a crumb would be enough.
And Jesus does it. “Good
answer”, he says, “you’re daughter is free.”
She got up and went home to find her daughter restored. Jesus didn’t ask here any questions about her
religious performance, her family lineage, her acts of devotion towards God,
her pour choices, her sacrifices. He saw
her need, her desperation, to see the kingdom of heavy bring mercy and freedom
to her daughter. She got to see it; the Kingdom of heaven’s freedom and mercy
in full display, with no religious pomp and circumstance anywhere in sight.
Jesus opened the door to us in this miracle. To this point his message had been to the
Jews, but he opened the Freedom and Mercy up to the rest of us through this act. The door is wide open to us, if we knock he’ll
open it. If we through ourselves at his
feet and see that he’s the only one who can rescue us from the heart condition
we’re all born with, he will rescue us. It
was promised and guaranteed when he went to the cross to die and take our
punishment for sin that got up three days later, alive and well to beat it’s
great power over us; death. So now
experiencing the freedom and mercy is wide open to us, it’s the reality of
following Jesus.
No special diets, no
special ceremonies, no special religion required.
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