Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost: Gospel, Mark 7:1-13                    

Mark 7:1-13

Whenever people begin to add things to the Bible-and I’m writing about moral demands-we need to run the other direction. Why? Because whenever anyone calls you to submit to rules and regulations not clearly written in Scripture they are robbing our souls of life. Yours and mine.

This week we read of Jesus being challenged on the behavior of His disciples. The religious professionals of the day are all about rules. And they should be because they were adept at “making” them. “The Tradition of the Elders” was a technical term for those points of interpretation where additions had been made to the moral law and only those in good standing with that tradition could be assured of God’s favor. The followers of Jesus didn’t get in line. And those wielding authority let Jesus know about it.”Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” Jesus, they aren’t towing the line and neither are you. You can hear how they despise our Lord and His “free-wheeling” attitude towards the Law. Well, in their view, anyway.

Jesus quotes Isaiah in their defense as He says, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men’” (Mark 7:6-7). He then puts in the knife, “You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”

There it is. When you leave the Word of God, all you have left is the word of men. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they never line up. Let’s all thank God for the grace of His true Word and let’s get to know it. It’s the genuine article.