22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
The past five weeks of Sunday gospels have been taken from the sixth chapter of Saint John, which, as we know, is John’s profound reflection on Jesus as the Bread of Life. The lectionary today returns to the Gospel of Mark and to a topic with which we are only too familiar from across the gospel narratives: the issue of what is clean and what is unclean, at least according to the tradition of the elders, and as policed by the scribes and Pharisees.
Once we hear that some Pharisees and scribes have come from Jerusalem, a confrontation is to be expected. Seeking to challenge Jesus, the scribes and Pharisees accuse his disciples of eating with unclean hands, which is not a matter of hygiene but rather to be unclean in the sight of God. Ritual purity was an essential dimension of Jewish worship, at least from a Pharisaic perspective.
At this moment, one might deduce that Jesus is thinking enough is enough. Time to clear the air! How better to begin than with the accusation, “you hypocrites,” and a quote from the much-loved prophet Isaiah, followed by one of the most provocative statements in the gospels, “Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person, but the things that come out from within are what defile.”
In this one sentence, Jesus lifts the conversation onto a higher plane and brings the matter to our own doors. Whatever is thought about cleanliness rituals, which hardly occupy a great deal of our thinking, Jesus warns that sin arises from within, and insists that only hearts transformed by God’s love determine the sincerity of our worship and actions.
Let Us Pray:
“A clean heart create for me, O God” (Psalm 51:12)
