Being A Hypocrite

In Sunday’s Gospel reading, Jesus is taken to task by some religious leaders who have gone to some trouble to find him. They don’t like it one little bit that Jesus’ band of disciples don’t follow the traditional purity regulations that require washing one’s hands before eating. Mark provides a short list for his readers of some of the rules related to food, including washing food purchased at the market and cleaning pots and pans. [BTW: this is some evidence that Mark wasn’t writing to a Jewish congregation, but a Gentile one who didn’t know the customs.]

We normally think of Jesus as pretty laid back when criticized, but I think this isn’t one of those times. He calls his critics hypocrites and cites Isaiah as prophesying about such behavior. “The 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 he adds, “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human traditions.” Ouch.

We do love rules, don’t we. The Church has been creating them since the earliest days of Christianity. One of the characteristics of the Roman Empire was the breadth and detail of its legal system. The men who led the Church were Romanized, no matter what part of the world they called home. It was only natural that the Church leadership would adopt Roman practices of spelling out everything. Just one tiny illustration: the vestments clergy wear when leading worship are based on early Roman garb, the garb of civil servants. Soon the Church began to focus more on order and having rights beliefs and standards and doing things the right way so they could be the same throughout the Empire. 

There’s nothing wrong with standards and order per se. I think even Jesus would agree with that. The problem arises, Jesus pointed out, when these rule take on the power of doctrine--or even dogma. Soon it’s easy to focus on keeping the rules rather than applying the Gospel. In Jesus’ commentary on Isaiah he says, “You abandon the commandment” singular “of God...” What did he mean; what commandment?

In another place, Jesus is asked what is the most important of the 615 Jewish laws and he says to love God and to love neighbor. While that sounds like two commandments, the way he puts it is “...and the second is like the first...” The sense of this is that the two are inseparable. You can’t do one without also doing the other. I think this is what he’s reminding the “hypocrites” about.

I’m not an anarchist. I don’t want to abandon rules and order or tradition. I would like it very much if we could see beyond rules to focus on love and grace more. Especially as we try to be the Church and try to follow Jesus.

Just sayin’

Jerry