Reflections on Mark 7

Mark 07 (Contemporary English Version)


1. Some Pharisees and several teachers of the Law of Moses from Jerusalem came and gathered around Jesus.
   
2. They noticed that some of his disciples ate without first washing their hands.
   
3. The Pharisees and many other Jewish people obey the teachings of their ancestors. They always wash their hands in the proper way before eating.
   
4. None of them will eat anything they buy in the market until it is washed. They also follow a lot of other teachings, such as washing cups, pitchers, and bowls.
   
5. The Pharisees and teachers asked Jesus, "Why don't your disciples obey what our ancestors taught us to do? Why do they eat without washing their hands?"
   
6. Jesus replied: You are nothing but show-offs! The prophet Isaiah was right when he wrote that God had said, "All of you praise me with your words, but you never really think about me.
   
7. It is useless for you to worship me, when you teach rules made up by humans."
   
8. You disobey God's commands in order to obey what humans have taught.
   
9. You are good at rejecting God's commands so that you can follow your own teachings!
   
10. Didn't Moses command you to respect your father and mother? Didn't he tell you to put to death all who curse their parents?
    
11. But you let people get by without helping their parents when they should. You let them say that what they own has been offered to God.
    
12. You won't let those people help their parents.
    
13. And you ignore God's commands in order to follow your own teaching. You do a lot of other things that are just as bad.
    
14. Jesus called the crowd together again and said, "Pay attention and try to understand what I mean.
    
15. The food that you put into your mouth doesn't make you unclean and unfit to worship God. The bad words that come out of your mouth are what make you unclean."
    
16. (SEE 7:15)
    
17. After Jesus and his disciples had left the crowd and had gone into the house, they asked him what these sayings meant.
    
18. He answered, "Don't you know what I am talking about by now? You surely know that the food you put into your mouth cannot make you unclean.
    
19. It doesn't go into your heart, but into your stomach, and then out of your body." By saying this, Jesus meant that all foods were fit to eat.
    
20. Then Jesus said: What comes from your heart is what makes you unclean.
    
21. Out of your heart come evil thoughts, vulgar deeds, stealing, murder,
    
22. unfaithfulness in marriage, greed, meanness, deceit, indecency, envy, insults, pride, and foolishness.
    
23. All of these come from your heart, and they are what make you unfit to worship God.
    
24. Jesus left and went to the region near the city of Tyre, where he stayed in someone's home. He did not want people to know he was there, but they found out anyway.
    
25. A woman whose daughter had an evil spirit in her heard where Jesus was. And right away she came and knelt down at his feet.
    
26. The woman was Greek and had been born in the part of Syria known as Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to force the demon out of her daughter.
    
27. But Jesus said, "The children must first be fed! It isn't right to take away their food and feed it to dogs."
    
28. The woman replied, "Lord, even dogs eat the crumbs that children drop from the table."
    
29. Jesus answered, "That's true! You may go now. The demon has left your daughter."
    
30. When the woman got back home, she found her child lying on the bed. The demon had gone.
    
31. Jesus left the region around Tyre and went by way of Sidon toward Lake Galilee. He went through the land near the ten cities known as Decapolis.
    
32. Some people brought to him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk. They begged Jesus just to touch him.
    
33. After Jesus had taken him aside from the crowd, he stuck his fingers in the man's ears. Then he spit and put it on the man's tongue.
    
34. Jesus looked up toward heaven, and with a groan he said, "Effatha!" which means "Open up!"
    
35. At once the man could hear, and he had no more trouble talking clearly.
    
36. Jesus told the people not to say anything about what he had done. But the more he told them, the more they talked about it.
    
37. They were completely amazed and said, "Everything he does is good! He even heals people who cannot hear or talk."

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The primary focus of this chapter is related to Jesus' conflict with the Jewish religious leaders. From His encounter with them we see the perpetual conflict between man's traditions and God's teachings. This conflict is alive and well today. It begins with an attempt by religious leaders to clarify, for those less learned in the scriptures, the instructions given us in God's Word. Over time these clarifications become common understanding and practice and are ingrained in the traditions of the community. And traditions of any kind carry with them the weight of the community to give them validity along with the pressures of the community to assure adherence to them. Unless one stays closely ingrained in scripture they lose any distinction between the two - tradition and scripture. With this loss of distinction, tradition soon carries more weight than does scripture within the community. This error is especially prevalent in a community that has a hierarchical structure, as in Judiasm of Jesus' day, that exalts the leaders of the religious community as being the only ones of the community qualified to speak with authority concerning the things of God. Thus the emphases is on the laity coming to God through the "priestly" office of the leaders. Their worship of God and their understanding of Him is mediated for them by these leaders.

This describes Judaism of Jesus' day as well as the practice of a number of Christian communities today. Jesus' exchange with Jewish leaders in this chapter points out the error that occurs when tradition trumps God's Word. At issue, in this account of chapter 7, is ritualistic washing of hands. This was not a practice given them in the Mosaic law. It was merely a "tradition of the elders." But it was enforced as stringently as any law God had handed down through Moses. Jesus challenged these Pharisees and scribes saying, "Disregarding the command of God, you keep the tradition of men. . . . You completely invalidate God's command in order to maintain your tradition!" Then, in addition to the ritualistic washing of hands that was already at issue, Jesus mentioned another practice in which these leaders invalidated God's command. God commanded that we are to honor our father and mother. But the traditions of the elders stated that a person could dedicate whatever provisions they had accumulated to provide for their parents in their old age to the temple. By doing this, not only were they not required to use this for their parents, they were forbidden to use it. Thus, their parents were left without any help in their old age.

The traditions of the elders continued to plague the early church, threatening to make it an extension of Judaism rather than following the teachings of Christ. Since then, newly acquired traditions and practices have continued to threaten the teachings of Christianity and the true mission of the church.