Matthew 15a

 The previous chapter, 14, began with Herod the ruler hearing about Jesus and wondering if he was the reincarnation of John the Baptist. Jesus was told about Herod beheading John, and warned of Herod’s desire to find out who Jesus was; so Jesus withdrew to a ‘quiet place’. It was not his time for confrontation yet. The ‘quiet place’ was hard to come by. The crowds found him and Jesus, having compassion, ministered to them all afternoon. Then he fed 5000 men, retired to pray, walked on water, and finally had to minister to a new crowd after the boat came ashore at Gennesaret. 

 Matthew has developed a pattern of popularity followed by surveillance by the opposition. Now, this chapter begins in a similar way, not with scrutiny by Herod, but by a traveling investigative committee newly arrived from Jerusalem. 

15: 1-6.  Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat.” He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ But you say that whoever tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is given to God,’ then that person need not honor the father. So, for the sake of your tradition, you nullify the word of God. 

 Herod had heard some things, but he clearly did not know much about Jesus. The Pharisees and scribes also hear from far away. So, they send a team of investigators to find out what he is teaching and what he is doing. They are gathering dirt for an accusation. Instead of truly being interested, they are searching for something to charge Jesus with (politics again). As Matthew said previously, “But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him” (Matthew 12: 14). .

 The charge seems pretty thin, but it is not a matter of washing hands because of germs, or not washing pots and pans properly as Mark adds (7: 4-5). The key to understanding this exchange is the difference between “tradition” and “commandment.” Both are important in their place, and there are many good traditions in every culture. However, none of them should be elevated to the level of a command of God, nor should the people be confused by leaders weaponizing certain traditions. Think about it. 

 As usual, Jesus counters a question with another question which, in effect, brings into the spotlight the possibility that new traditions might tend to nullify old commandments. Mark (7: 10) adds the word corban/korban which means that a person sets aside some money or possessions as dedicated especially to God. Thus, whatever other obligations a person has are diminished. In this way, a man could even eliminate his obligation to care for aging parents; think of it as a tax-dodging scheme. As happens even today, the super-Christians find a way to negate their obligation to help the poor, work for peace, and build up the neighborhood by instead funneling some money into narrow ‘Christian’ causes, such as political parties. 

 First, exactly what is the commandment or word of God? In Exodus God does command the washing of hands (Exodus 39: 19, 20; 40: 31). A closer look, though, reveals that the commandment is for the priests, including the line of Aaron (who was not a Levite). This is not a commandment for everyone; rather it instructs the priests to wash their hands before they handle the sacrifices offered to God.  

 Second, what is the overall goal of the Pharisee movement? The movement originated about 170 years before Christ, in the Second Temple period when the Maccabees had revolted against Greek domination and before the Romans came to power in the area. So the Pharisees represent a strongly isolationist movement believing in the necessity of Jewish ethnic identity based on purity/pollution laws. Thus, they have been working to bind all Jews to the Torah, a process that began with the return as described in Ezra and Nehemiah. These traditions created boundaries around the Jews as a people, but at the cost of a harsh legalism.  

 Such an approach put the Pharisees into conflict with Jesus who supports the commandments of God, but not the tradition of small rules that tied people up in red tape. After the destruction of the temple (70 AD) and the scattering of Jews into the Diaspora, the Pharisees declined and Judaism became centered on local synagogues with rabbis as leaders.   

 15: 7-9.  You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said: ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines'.”

 The “You” implies that Jesus said this directly to the Pharisees and scribes as an answer to their question. Jesus chose the Isaiah passage with care. As usual, quoting the first part of a passage in those days meant that the people who heard it were supposed to look up the rest of the passage.  

“The Lord said: ‘Because these people draw near with their mouths and honor me

with their lips, while their hearts are far from me and their worship of me is a

human commandment learned by rote, so I will again do amazing things with this people, shocking and amazing. The wisdom of their wise shall perish, and the discernment of the discerning shall be hidden” (Isaiah 29: 13-14).

 If the first part of this quote applies, and it was Jesus who applied it, then the second part applies as well. It seems to me that the second part applies to the appearance of Jesus who has more authority in his teachings than the Pharisees and scribes. Once again, the human tradition that had become a burden to bear by the people is overcome by something old and something new. What is old is the original word of God, and what is new is an interpretation that carries out God’s original intent. That is the difference between following the ritual and following the meaning.   

15: 10-14.  Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.” Then the disciples approached and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?” He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.” 

 Well, surprise, surprise. The Pharisees took offense at Jesus pulling the rug out from under their feet. They no longer speak with the authority of their interpretative tradition. Jesus returns to the opening claim, that his disciples erred when they did not cleanse the ritual pollution from their hands before eating. Jesus brings out a more foundational truth: It is not what goes into the mouth that pollutes a person, but rather what comes out of the heart when that person speaks and acts. Notice Jesus’ reference to the ‘lips’ and the ‘heart’. 

 Was it not David himself who saw that a newly cleaned heart made someone a man after God’s own heart? 

“You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart. … Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit” (Psalm 51: 6, 9-12).

  Mark concludes from Jesus’ statement that “Thus he declared all food clean” (7:19). Remember though that Mark is writing to Gentile Christians in Rome, while Matthew is writing to Jewish Christians around Antioch in Syria. Thus, Mark tells the Gentiles that they do not have to follow Jewish food laws, while Matthew leaves intact Jewish prohibitions for their local Christian congregation. At any rate, the point is made that it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person but rather what comes out of the heart, whether in words (the mouth) or in actions (such as murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, and slander). 

 Matthew alone includes the critical comments about the Pharisees in a way that is reminiscent of the Parable of the Weeds. However, ‘planting’ and ‘uprooting’ are also Old Testament tropes for God’s dealings with Israel (See Jeremiah 1:10, 11: 17, 18: 7-9, 24: 6, 31: 28, 42: 10, 45:4). Mark does not include anything further about the Pharisees, perhaps because a Gentile church in Rome would not have problems with those Jewish traditionalists. 

15: 15-20.  But Peter said to him, “Explain this parable to us.” Then he said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”

 Notice the progression: Jesus schools the Pharisees and scribes, then gives a lesson to the crowds about why he disagrees with the traditionalists, then he has to explain it further to his disciples. This is an excellent example of the multiple audiences that a ‘field preacher’ has to deal with. John Wesley said once that, to reach the laborers who never got a chance to go to church, he had to “become more vile,” that is, go out of church and into the field to preach to them at the shift change when they swarmed out of the mines. That’s a different kind of preaching, requiring the preacher to speak to different groups of people who might form within the crowd.

 The Pharisees and scribes are religious conservatives, or so they claim. But, they have detached the laws from the actual words of God, and then elevated these laws, as traditionally re-interpreted, to the level of God (suggested by Gunther Bornkamm; see Witherington p. 297). This is a classic political strategy still in use today to take a set of beliefs that seem loosely connected to God’s words and try to impose them on all people.   

 Jesus points out that when a tradition is overly legalistic it can be used to negate God’s actual commandments. For example, when a Pharisee, 

“...an expert in the law, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 22: 35-40).

 We will encounter this passage again in a few weeks, but for now just notice that Jesus pivots to the intent of the Law and the Prophets, rather than the legalistic tradition that has grown up around it. This is an important lesson, and part of the reason that Jesus had to be removed because he undermined traditional society and opposed the conservative religious leaders of that society. First century Jewish and Roman society is long gone; but the radical Jesus lasts forever. Jesus’ lessons are forever fresh because the elite of every society tries to perpetuate its rule by bending the rules.