Wash your hands!

 "You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition." (Mark 7:8)

Jesus, in the Gospel of Mark, is being challenged by the Pharisees about the behavior of his disciples. Jesus' disciples were caught eating with dirty hands. They had not washed them. Gross! Now, what Jesus is teaching is not that we shouldn't wash our hands, but that washing our hands is not anything special that sets us apart from those other heathens.

I wonder often about our rituals and our attitudes towards them. Sometimes we elevate things that just do not matter to the health of our communities. Whether it is about the flag, or the pledge, or any other jingoes that we might think makes us better than those others. As one of our hymns reminds us: 

This is my song, O God of all the nations, 

a song of peace for lands afar and mine.

This is my home, the country where my heart is;

here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine;

but other hearts in other lands are beating

with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine. (Lloyd Stone, ELW 887)

Jesus wants to call us back to the core of God's desire for us, to live in peace. Part of living in peace is not falling into the trap that somehow our way is better, or our perspective is correct, or our privilege is earned, or that saying, "I love Jesus," is more important that loving like Jesus.

Our work is to follow the command of God that Jesus summarized as "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself." Let us readjust ourselves, let go of our anger and our frustrations, and take a deep breath with our eyes closed, so that when we open them, maybe we will see what God sees.