"The struggle that every community in every age - including our own - faces is how can the 'tradition of the elders,' which has given us our identity, now be changed so that what was good in it - the desire live according to the will of God - can actually be expressed in our current circumstances."
Year B, Season of Pentecost
Proper 17, Ordinary Time 22
Sunday Between August 28 and September 3 Inclusive
13th Sunday After Pentecost 2009
Read the passage: The Message or The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).
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The lectionary ends its 5 weeks of dabbling in John and returns to Mark. No murmurs from me about this.
Once again Malina and Rohrbaugh provide helpful background on this passage. (Pages 174-176, see footnote below.)
At one level, the controversy here is between the Judean elite who were 5% of the population, and everyone else. The elites lived in towns and cities and had access, time, and money for the water needed to follow their interpretation of the washing required to follow the Torah.
The "tradition of the elders" is NOT the teaching of Moses as found in the Bible. It is the practice of the Judean elite which they are seeking to impose as THE one and only correct practice. And, as noted, the amount of water, time and money to follow those practices was beyond the reach of most people. And so most people were seen by the elites as unclean.
Jesus then quotes Scripture (Verses 6-7, and 10) to counter their challenge of him and his disciples. When we read it today, we need to be careful to read this as a condemnation of the Judean elites and not of "Jews." Indeed, the crowd of peasant Jews with Jesus were cheering him on in this confrontation. Jesus is condemning hypocrisy not Judaism, and the all-too-human tendency to make sacred cows out of human customs and traditions. (A problem which I'm sure all of our congregations will have risen above. So unfortunately this text will have no practical applications for us personally.)
At another level, the question of what foods are proper to eat, what is the proper way to prepare them, and who are the proper people to eat with are crucial questions to determine, "Who is part of our group?"
Indeed, these very questions about food arise in Acts, and the community's new response opened the way for Jesus' followers to include Gentiles (non-Jews) like you and me.
The struggle that every community in every age - including our own - faces is how can the "tradition of the elders," which has given us our identity, now be changed so that what was good in it - the desire live according to the will of God - can actually be expressed in our current circumstances.
The "tradition of our elders" did not drop down, fully formed, from heaven. The tradition of the elders is NOT the will of God. Rather the tradition is our elders' distilled wisdom through generations of trial and error. Because it is distilled wisdom, it is instructive and worthy of careful regard.
Discerning what practices actually embody God's will are more often learned from getting it wrong than they are from getting it right. Our elders' experiences of how human short-sightedness, human pride, human folly, human self-righteousness, and human self-justification have dressed themselves in "God's righteousness" are painful lessons best learned from tradition and not from personal experience.
But the truly respectful response to the tradition is for each generation to take its place in the dynamic process that leads to the creation of tradition. To take our place in the process of distilling wisdom through trial and error as we too seek to name the "best practices" for loving God (whose love is unchanging) and our neighbours, strangers, enemies, and one another (all of whom are constantly changing).
David Ewart,
www.davidewart.ca
* Link to Amazon.com Bibliography for Bruce Malina, et. al., Social Science Commentary on ... The Synoptic Gospels; The Gospel of John; The Book of Acts; The Letters of Paul; The Book of Revelation; and others.
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