15 Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, 2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”
3 Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? 4 For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’[a] and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’[b] 5 But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’ 6 they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. 7 You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:
8 “‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
9 They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.’[c]”
Matthew 15: 1-9
We love to pick and choose don’t we? Let’s take my love for the Houston Astros baseball team for example. To recap for those of you who do not follow baseball, the Astros have been one of the best teams in baseball for the last three seasons. They finished first, top four, and second the last three seasons. Life was good for me. I was a champion. But, this past November a former Astro confessed to a reporter that the team had cheated to win the 2017 world series. Major League Baseball conducted their largest ever investigation only to find that the allegations were indeed true. The Astros were cheaters. I was a champion, but I wasn’t a cheater. It is so easy to pick and choose.
The leaders of Jerusalem during Jesus’ day faced a similar temptation. Here they came to Jesus looking to investigate. Their investigation yielded an expected result. Jesus was breaking the rules! They had become upset with Jesus because His disciples refuse to wash their hands before they eat. This was a man-made ritual that held no divine authority so Jesus, as only God could do, ignores it. This insults the leader and Jesus points out something very potent. If you consider yourself a follower of God, you cannot pick and choose your tasks, rules, laws, etc.
The leaders of Jerusalem had been instituting new laws meant to circumnavigate the commandment to honor your mother and father. These laws said that if you give all your belongings and savings to the synagogue then you wouldn’t have to give to your parents or “honor them.” In other words, the leaders were starting a money laundering system just so children could avoid taking care of their parents. Jesus is angered by this especially after being confronted for breaking a man made rule.
Christ’s anger should incite a visceral emotion in all of us. He commands us to love God, to love our neighbor, and to share the gospel message. In our compartmentalized lifestyle, do we truly devote enough time pursuing God to honestly say we do all three? Sure, we love God. Sure, we try and love our neighbor. But you know in your heart of hearts that just “trying” isn’t enough. If your husband or wife was to only “try” and spend more time with you but never actually did you would feel unsatisfied. Let us agree today that we will not let Jesus feel unsatisfied. Spend your day loving god, loving your neighbor, and tell someone the good news of Jesus Christ.
PM