Tuesday, June 19, 2018
Holy hygiene

Luke 11:38
When the Pharisee saw it, he marveled that He had not first washed before dinner.

This time Jesus picked the fight. He accepted a dinner invitation from a Pharisee and deliberately sat down to eat without washing His hands. A clearly sophisticated and ritualistic host was taken aback. Many of us would have been also.

We have all grown up in an era where personal hygiene is emphasised as a mechanism for maintaining our good health and for stopping the spread of many diseases. Our parents, our first school teachers, and the local health workers all strive to have us inculcate the habits of personal hygiene from very early in life.

They teach us that such habits as washing our hands before preparing or eating food, after going to the bathroom, after coughing or sneezing, and after handling garbage will help keep bacteria, viruses, and various illnesses away. These days we are also advised to keep a hygiene product, like an alcohol-based sanitising gel, handy for when soap and water aren’t available. Many ladies now have a plastic bottle with hand sanitiser attached to their handbag strap often looking more like a fashion statement than a tool for personal hygiene.

These habits of personal hygiene not only protect us, they also protect the community. For example, covering our mouths when we sneeze or cough limits the spread of deadly viruses especially during flu and cold season. Sometime during the early 2000s, the guidance about covering the mouth was changed. The new rules around coughing and sneezing were that the best way is to use the crook of your arm, or inner elbow, to prevent germs from spreading. This was intended to help prevent the spread of bacteria via your hands and lessens the risk of you infecting others with your cold.

I remember watching Kathleen Sebelius, the US Health and Human Services Secretary for some of the Obama years, during a Press Briefing at the White House in September 2009. While she was at the podium NBC’s Chuck Todd sneezed and didn’t cover his mouth with the crook of his arm. Sebelius stopped the briefing to upbraid Todd and demonstrated how the mouth should be covered. She then asked someone to get him some hand sanitizer.

The point is that if Jesus were walking the face of the earth physically today and we invited Him home to dinner, we too would be concerned if He sat down to have dinner with us without first washing His hands in the bathroom wash basin. Of course, if we took Him to a high-class club or restaurant the attendants would pass around warm wet towels before the meal was served.

So, if this matter of personal hygiene is such a basic matter, why was Jesus seemingly deliberately not participating? Well, to answer this question requires some background. But let it be established that, in the story in Luke 11:37-44, this was not a matter of hygiene, it was a matter of Jewish ceremonial law.

The Jews had developed a system for ceremonial washing of the hands before meals and then between courses. Now to do this they added many other details. Large stone water pots, like the ones Jesus used to turn the water into wine, were specially kept for this purpose because regular water might itself be ceremonially unclean. The amount of water for each hand washing was quarter of a log, the equivalent to fill one and a half eggshells. And then there was a method, the water had to be poured first on the fingertips and run down to the wrist and then each palm must be rubbed with the opposite fist and finally water is poured from the wrist to the fingertips.

Jesus wasn’t ditching hygiene, Jesus was ditching a ritual that was emphasised over character and conduct. The Jews, scribes, Pharisees, and legal experts were focused primarily on outward religion, the things that they could do for show but they were scarcely concerned with how they lived.

Jesus’ response to his host’s incredulity was “you Pharisees make the outside of the cup and dish clean, but your inward part is full of greed and wickedness.” Luke 11:39. Making the point that what is happening on the inside is just as important as what is being demonstrated in ritual. Jesus was not going to be forced into ritual by persons who, despite ritualic adherence to the ceremonial rule, were not reflecting God’s law.

This matter had come up at other times. On one occasion Jesus’ disciple ate bread without ceremonial washing and He was challenged, His reply then was “‘These people draw near to Me with their mouth, And honour Me with their lips, But their heart is far from Me.  And in vain they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’” Matthew 15:8,9 quoting the prophet Isaiah.

Jesus then goes on the attack, challenging His host and those gathered with him to recognise that the show and the tithe are all of little significance when the heart is unchanged.

There are some members of our church, who hardly attend these days, and the reports of their lifestyle and choices raise eyebrows. But they like to send a tithe to church. I very often want to send the envelope back with a note saying that we want you with your tithe, not the tithe alone. Those who pay the bills don’t always agree with me.

These seem to focus on outward bodily hygiene, the focus needs to be shifted to holy hygiene.

Think on these things:

1. What are the religious rituals that have become a part of your life now?
2. Are you more committed to your personal and church rituals that you are to the word of God?
3. What should we do to protect against falling into ritual and routine in the practice of our faith?

Prayer focus:

Let us pray today that we would be focused on character and conduct as we are on outward signs of the faith.

In His Grace
Pastor Alex, 250