Pentecost 13B
Mark 7.1-7, 14-15, 21-23
August 29/30, 2009
It seems that ever since humanity began, we’ve found ways to exclude people from table fellowship. We’ve found ways to create inner circles and the group of folks who just don’t belong. One need not look back very far in our own era to find that to be true.
It wasn’t so long ago that if your skin was dark, you were not welcome to sit with me at table. We couldn’t share a lunch counter or enter the same restaurant. Skin color divided us and kept us from being part of the same community.
It wasn’t so long ago that if you were Indian you were not welcome on the same parcel of ground. You were a savage and couldn’t possibly share a meal with me. You might take more than the food. There was no way we could be part of the same community or sit at table together.
It wasn’t so long ago that if you were a woman you couldn’t sit at the table. You had to serve and prepare the food and do the dishes. You couldn’t hold conversation at the table. You couldn’t hold a seat in the boardroom or sit at with the church council. We couldn’t be part of the same community or sit together at table.
It wasn’t so long ago that if you were Asian you couldn’t walk the street of the United States; you had to take your meals in work camps. We couldn’t be part of the same community or sit together at table.
Those prejudices and fears are part of our corporate history and they don’t wash off. They don’t wash off with plain soap and water. It takes something more.
It’s horrific really that in Jesus day one thing that could separate the community and keep people from table fellowship was water. Water was an expensive commodity. It was expected that before one ate a meal, one would wash ones hands.
There is a history behind this, but not a law. God required, in the book of Leviticus, for the priests to wash their hands prior to offering the sacrifice at the altar and presiding over the community meal to follow. This meal, after all, was offered to God and God was present in the temple so cleanliness laws must be followed. One would not want to come before God without being clean.
It became tradition to take the same practice into the home. It’s a beautiful practice really that makes the ordinary holy. It was an acknowledgment that God could be present at our dining room tables, at the office picnic, at the pot luck supper when the church gathered. Sort of like saying grace at supper time, knowing that God blesses our daily meals with his very presence.
Over time, it became a way to exclude people from the table. One could not just go into the washroom and turn on the faucet. One had to be able to have access to water, have the money to afford water—and 13 itinerant men would not have the means to acquire water.
“How is it that your disciples eat with unwashed hands?” They shouldn’t be seated at the table. They shouldn’t be dipping into the hummus with those filthy fingers. They shouldn’t be rubbing elbows with the inner circle of clean people.
Some things you just can’t wash off with plain soap and water.
The disciples’ hands were indeed filthy. They’ve always been filthy. They’ve been out and about running from city to city, from town to town. They’ve been touched and touching.
Some of them still have fish slime under their fingernails. There’s a tax collector in their midst who has had his hands all over filthy money. They’ve touched lepers, encountered oozing sores. Their fingers have held the hands of the sick and the lame. With their palms they have wiped the tears from the faces of the grieving.
These disciples have been out and about in the filth and dirty of life. Bleeding women have grabbed their master. The dead have been caressed and lifted to life. With great hunger their finger tips have plucked raw grain and popped it into their mouths. As Jesus has taught them perplexing stories, they have scratched their heads in dismay. In a violent storm when they thought they were faced with certain death, their calloused hands were most likely entwined in a grip of friendship and support. And when faced with starving crowd, they used those unwashed hands to break open bread and fish and feed a multitude with baskets to spare.
They have touched the dirt and filth of life. And in doing so they offered life and hope, these thirteen men. Decay. Death. Disease. Some things can’t be washed away with soap and water.
How is it that your disciples eat with defiled hands.
My friends, I hope you approach the table today with defiled hands. I hope that in your life you have had the blessing of following Christ into the filth of life; that you have held the hand of the dying, patted the bottom of a new baby, wiped the tears from the face of a loved one and held tight with a sure and certain grip the hand of a friend. I hope your fingernails are crusted with fish slime or whatever work you are called to do. And that in those ordinary things, your hands have participated in the holy.
In all of those things, we cannot wash away the filth of life with plain soap and water. But water and the promise of God; the waters of baptism, can clean any stain, wash away any disease. With the promise of God out of decay can spring hope; out of disease, healing; out of death, life eternal.
Water binds us together in the love of Christ, the one who led these men into the filth of life, to touch the dying and the sick, to visit the imprisoned, to wrestle with the tough questions of life and to know that in Jesus alone we have salvation.
Washed in the waters of baptism we come to the table, holding out our hands to receive life from the one who gave his life for us. We boldly take hold of his body and blood and take it into our body for strength to go back out to dirty our hands yet again. We take in the strength to open our hands to the stranger, to lift our hands in praise to the God of the universe, to reach out to the lost with a hand of welcome into our community.
For some things we just don’t need soap and water.
Whoever you are, wherever you’ve been, bring your dirty hands, receive the gift of life, join your hands with our hands. Please join hands:
God of life, take from us the dirt of our hands that we try so hard to wash away ourselves. Bless us with dirty hands that come from knowing, following and loving you. Bless us to have dirty hands and clean hearts and words that flow with mercy from you. Amen
e!
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