Ok, we’ve watched you do this before. You slam the religious leaders, and it makes for a good show. You put up a good defense for your own boys, and these jerks come out with mud on their faces. Nice. But then you turn on the very people you’re trying to attract? This kind of preaching will get you nowhere, Son of Man.

Sometimes you’ve got to tell it like it is.

If you allow even a small bit of corruption in your pack, it’ll come back to bite you. True, Jesus raises the bar here. If you let people slide or cover-up what they really think or want out of you, the whole enterprise will collapse.

Yep, these religious leaders were from the big league, right of out Jerusalem, site of the Temple. Jesus was in his home territory, Galilee, where let’s just say things were a little less formal, somewhat lax. These Pharisees were by-the-book leaders, always on the watch to keep the people in line with the Levitical Law. Trouble was, they were obsessed with it. Their interpretations would have every facet of living regulated. Worse yet, they couched it in how faithful a soul was to God.

Hypocrites and Those Like Them

On that day, they messed with how Jesus’ disciples didn’t use the proper hand washing procedures before eating. That’s when Jesus unloaded on them. Quoting the ancient prophet Isaiah,  he accused them of creating a farce of worship, substituting their own regulatory traditions in place of what God’s commands intended. Jesus’ names them for what they are: Hypocrites.

ALL Right! That’s how to knock the phoniness out of religion. These holier-than-thou frauds need to hear it out loud and right in front of the crowds no less. No problem there. But why not just end it and let the people take in their champion, maybe set up a new sect, get this thing going places. Jesus, sometimes you can be your own worst enemy.

No, this wasn’t a denouncement of the faith, the law that had been handed down when God had taken a rag-tag extended family and formed them into a nation. God meant every word that was given to the people because it would order them such that they would survive when other clans went extinct. Sure, right now the Jews were under Roman rule, but they weren’t down and out yet. What had kept them going was their faith in a God who would restore them as a nation. All were on the look-out for a leader who would deliver them. As a people, their faith held them together. Jesus wasn’t aiming to change any of that.

But he did them call out right before the people. As it was, Jesus hit these gatekeepers where it hurt, maybe even more than his name calling of these elite priest-types. They could easily dismiss, maybe eventually eliminate him. He needed to give his enemies notice as to what they truly were. Yet this crowd was looking for a champion, and he wasn’t playing nice. Not how you win friends and influence people.

“Thought-life defiles you.”

Jesus’ words were a stab in every living soul. Like open heart surgery, he exposed them and us. Some people cover themselves with right living, so to speak. While the religious leaders dressed themselves in fine robes, underneath there was a primary need for power and control. The same goes for the rest of us. People know well how to cover up the worst parts of themselves. Most even deny they do it. But suppression doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Jesus’ challenge then is to come to an awareness of what sits in the mind and heart. That awareness takes brutal, honest self-reflection. Understand that from reasoning and desire comes action. It can either honor God and love neighbor, or it can hide from God and diminish one’s relationships. Jesus’ list of evils is comprehensive but not foreign to any of us in any measure.

C.S. Lewis wrote, “Pride… is the complete anti-God state of mind.”

At the center of it is pride. The need to control, have things our way and the way we want it, is the source of what would separate a soul from God and others. As any cognitive-behavioralist will tell you, thoughts lead to emotions and emotions lead to actions. So whatever is good in the thought-life will be realized in positive actions. But negative, ugly thinking leads to negative, ugly action. “They [thoughts] are what defile you and make you unacceptable to God,” he said.



Jesus would not excuse anyone from this teaching, regardless of how critical or supportive persons could have been to his message. Yet, as is more often than not, what is preached to others must first be examined personally. Possibly, he gave this message first for himself.

In the next contest Jesus would meet, he’d have to decide how much and how far God’s love would be offered. A desperate woman would make him define what kind of champion he really was. 

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 20-23

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