Clean and Unclean (Matthew 15)

It seems the “big guns” of the religious leaders have decided to pay Jesus a visit – the Pharisees and scribes from Jerusalem have come up to Galilee to see him. Similar to the confrontation we saw in Chapter 12, these Pharisees immediately confront Jesus with his disciples’ behavior. This time, it is their failure to follow the tradition of ritual hand washing before eating. “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?”

My mother taught me to wash the grime off my hands before eating for health reasons, but what the Pharisees were complaining about was different. It was a ritual washing of the hands for spiritual uncleanness, but it wasn’t commanded in the Law – its source was rabbinical tradition. There were rules in the Law to wash when something specific had happened to make one unclean – like touching a diseased person or coming in contact with a dead body. The religious teachers had added their own rules on top of the Law to take it a step further, and require people to wash before meals just in case they had done something to become spiritually unclean without knowing it.

Jesus doesn’t answer their question. He returns a question – one that has a more serious charge: “Why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition”? Jesus gives an example. The Law was serious when it commanded us to honor our father and mother. Breaking that command was punishable by death. The religious leaders had a teaching that one could declare what he had as devoted to God and given over to Him, which doesn’t sound bad. What they also allowed, though, was for their teaching about devoting things to God to allow a person to shirk their responsibility of taking care of their parents by declaring their belongings as devoted to God, thus denying their parents the use of it. Jesus said that they used their teaching and tradition to “void the word of God” – to supersede his Law.

That’s definitely not what God intended. It’s definitely not the heart of mercy he wanted. To Jesus, it’s another example of play-acting at religion – he calls them hypocrites, and quotes a prophecy of Isaiah that describes them.

These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.

You can say all kinds of things that sound good, but the heart is what God cares about. When the worship is heart-less words based on human rules, the worship is worthless and futile – it isn’t a worship that pleases God.

Jesus turns from the Pharisees and scribes to the people to teach them the essential principle here, and the one we should understand: Spiritual uncleanness is measured by what is in the heart. The heart, not the hands is where uncleanness resides; the inside, not the outside. The Pharisees and scribes were focused on ritual and external appearances while God saw the heart. From the heart comes the things that people say and do – which can be all kinds of evil. No, he says, it’s not what goes in the mouth that makes a person spiritually unclean; it’s what comes out of the mouth, coming from the heart. Like what is coming out of the Pharisees now.

At their questioning, Jesus explains the teaching further to the disciples, warning them that the Pharisees are “blind guides” leading the blind and to ignore them and describing them as weeds to be rooted up (like the parable of the tares in Matthew 13). Then they leave the area.

They go to Tyre and Sidon, a Gentile region. There, a Canaanite woman came asking for Jesus to heal her demon-possessed daughter. He ignored her. She cried out after Jesus and the disciples so persistently that the disciples begged Jesus to send her away. He refused. She knelt and pleaded for help, and he called her a dog, a term the Jews commonly used with Gentiles.

I don’t understand this. I’ve heard people explain that Jesus was just testing how strong her faith was. I’ve heard some people claim that Jesus was teaching the disciples something here, to get them past their dislike of the Gentiles. I have no better explanation than these, but honestly it bothers me.

What doesn’t bother me is the woman. She is incredible. Despite being a Canaanite from a Gentile region, she refers to him as “Lord, Son of David”, a term for the Messiah. Driven by her concern for her daughter and her faith that he can do something about it, she asks for his mercy. When he ignores her she persists. When he refuses her, she kneels in humility. When he refers to her as a dog, her reaction isn’t anger; she doesn’t challenge him; she simply asks for the smallest crumb from the table.

The reaction is a far cry from what Jesus got from the most important religious leaders of the nation of God’s people. They’re prideful, focused on position and appearance and show, and unable to understand and believe. She’s humble, submissive, transparent, and full of faith.

Jesus marvels, “O woman, great is your faith!” He instantly heals her daughter.

Two encounters with Jesus.

One with a group of God’s chosen people, the ones who should have recognized who he was from scripture, from prophesy, from his heart, from the teaching that mirrored what God had told them for centuries, and from the power displayed. Instead, they rejected him, criticized him, were concerned only with themselves and their traditions.

The second with a Gentile that shouldn’t have known or understood a thing, and yet called him the Messiah and approached him faithfully and humbly, relying on him to take care of her need.

Which was blessed by Jesus, and which were condemned? Which was “clean”, and which was “unclean”? Which was closer to the kingdom?

Which am I more like?