Vertical & Horizontal Morality and the mission of the church, Part 4
As I type this, I have a sinus infection. I get one just about every year. This past June, I even had a rare summer sinus infection. Outside in direct sunlight, I was shaking with fever chills. Yesterday at a doctor appointment, I asked if there was anything I could do to avoid infection. She said the number one best practice to avoid infection is hand-washing.
I had to laugh because in Matthew 15, Jesus has an encounter with the Pharisees about hand-washing, and I had just talked about it in my sermon this past week, which I am now sharing with you on the blog this week. The previous posts this week have all been an introduction to this passage. I’ve been talking about mission drift, and how vertical and horizontal morality affect Christians and our pursuit of Jesus’ mission. Jesus talks about what is important for staying focused on his mission, and he did so in response to the Pharisees’ accusation about hand-washing. Here’s how Matthew 15 begins,
“Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, ‘Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!’”
Unless I’m doing yard work or something that gets my hands dirty, I never wash my hands before I eat. I guess the Pharisees wouldn’t like me either. But my lack of washing my hands has nothing to do with religious rituals. I’m just much more eager to eat, so I don’t want to wash my hands. Also, I don’t generally touch my food with my hands. Except if it’s bread, of if I’m in India.
What the Pharisees are confronting Jesus about is his willingness to allow his disciples to break the law. Not God’s law. God didn’t have a law about washing your hands before a meal. The religious leaders added that law later on. But the Pharisees were all about the added laws. Why? Because they didn’t want to break God’s law, so they created new laws designed to keep everyone far from the line of breaking God’s law.
Jesus, though, is not intimidated in the least. Here’s what he says in verse 3
“Jesus replied, ‘And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, “Honor your father and mother” and “Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.” But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, “Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God,” he is not to “honor his father” with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.”’”
I love it when Jesus puts the religious leaders in their place by revealing their inconsistency. He is basically saying, “Knock it off, guys. Stop confronting me and my disciples. What really matters is the heart, and not outward appearance. You guys are the ones with a heart issue, which is obvious by how you get around honoring your parents, which by the way is one of the Ten Commandments from God, not one of your man-made rules.”
Then Jesus explains what really matters. Look at verse 10,
“Jesus called the crowd to him and said, ‘Listen and understand. What goes into a man’s mouth does not make him “unclean,” but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him “unclean.”’”
It’s the heart that matters. He wasn’t referring to our blood pumping organ, by the way. He was referring to our inner being, our mind. What matters is that we have a transformed inner being, so that the Fruit of the Spirit is flowing from us.
What matters is that we stay connected to him, which is what he taught in John 15. There in his Vine & Branches analogy, he said “Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
A major ice storm recently hit the northeast USA. We had at least a quarter inch of ice on everything. A quarter inch might not sound like much, imagine how heavy it could be when that much ice covers everything, especially things that are not capable of holding that weight, like tree branches. We had a large pine tree branch break off under the weight, so large I had to cut into four pieces to carry it off. We also have bamboo along one side of our back yard, almost like a natural fence. Iced over, numerous stalks of our bamboo drooped all the way to the ground, creating a canopy. Bamboo bends, but it doesn’t break. When the ice melts, the bamboo, for the most part straightens up, as it remains connected to its roots.
Jesus calls us to be like bamboo, remaining connected to him
Staying connected to Jesus often requires struggle, wrestling with his ways and ideas, as we seek to follow him and live like him in the world.
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash
Engaging Scripture 