Passage Read: Mark 7-8
Meditation Verses: 7:1-2
Thought
Nowadays, we'd call this basic health and safety. Wash your hands before eating, because you've touched all kinds of things, and you have no idea what you've picked up along the way. As God, Jesus would know that, but He never bothered to teach His disciples such basic cleanliness rules. More than that, He knew this confrontation was coming. He could have avoided it without encouraging it by ensuring that all His disciples observed basic rules of cleanliness. When confronted, He didn't take the opportunity to rebuke the Pharisees' hypocrisy but introduce cleanliness (which we used to say is next to godliness). It's as if He didn't think eating with clean hands was important, not even as a health concern. It's as if He wanted the confrontation, so let His those disciples who didn't wash first continue to eat with unwashed hands. Neither did He call out or commend those disciples that did wash first. It's almost as if the only thing Jesus cared about was honoring the commands of God as given, without making them something they're not. He wasn't concerned about fitting in culturally; He only cared about doing what God really commanded and nothing else. Perhaps He even thought that true obedience to God would even cover errors in hygiene. Trying to stay well, trying to stay healthy was less important to Jesus than trying to stay in alignment with God's will and ways.
Application
I see two rebukes to modern thinking here: One, being culturally sensitive in order to win a hearing for the Gospel is unnecessary, and perhaps even counter-productive. Let the conflict come so that truth can be shared and trust God to work what needs working in the hearts of those who hear it. Many will be offended, but some with come to a knowledge of the truth. Two, being more concerned about health and safety than about proclaiming the Gospel and the truth of godly living is at best a distraction and at worse a real problem. Such thinking makes me and my safety too important. Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but that doesn't make it a proxy for godliness. The Pharisees thought they were godly because they washed hands before eating, but they weren't concerned with the godliness God actually sought. Neither should I think that I'm more pleasing to God because I wash more frequently than others. Godliness should be what matters most to me, trusting that God will take care of my health as I pursue what matters most to Him and live in accordance with what He actually says. I don't need to be sensitive to the culture of men, but to the culture of God. I don't need to be afraid for my physical health; I need to be most concerned with my spiritual health.