Jesus and the Traditions of Men

so let's begin with mark chapter 7 verse 1 and following now when the Pharisees gathered together to him with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem they saw that some of Jesus disciples ate with hands defiled that is unwashed for the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands observing the tradition of the elders when they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they purify themselves and there are many other traditions which they observe the washing of cups and pots and vessels of bronze and the Pharisees

and the scribes asked him why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders but eat with hands to filed and he said to them well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites as it is written this people honors me with their lips but their heart is far from me in vain do they worship Me teaching as doctrines the precepts of men you leave the commandment of God and hold fast to the tradition of men jesus said to them you have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep

your tradition for Moses said honor your father and your mother and he who speaks evil a father or mother let him surely die but you say if a man tells his father or his mother what you would have gained from me is korban that is given to God then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother thus making void the Word of God through your tradition which you hand on and many such things you do he called the people to him again and he said to them hear me all of

you and understand there's nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him but the things which come out of a man are what defile him and when he had entered the house and left the people his disciples asked him about the parable and he said to them then are you also without understanding do you not see that whatever goes into a man from outside cannot defile him since it enters not his heart but his stomach and so passes on thus he declared all foods clean and he said what comes out of a

man is what defiles a man for from within out of the heart of man come evil thoughts fornication theft murder adultery coveting wickedness deceit licentiousness Envy slander pride foolishness all these evil things come from within and they defile a man all right so that's the end of the gospel ok there's a lot going on there that's a long gospel so uh it's another example of the fact that although Mark has fewer episodes in his gospel when he gives episodes that occur in Matthew and Luke he frequently gives more detail they're longer so the same episode

of care occurs in Matthew 15 but it's much more brief so let's walk through it together in detail first the Pharisees hand washing the the story begins here with a conflict over the fact that the disciples aren't washing their hands before they eat their meals now this isn't just a question of hygiene alright this is there's something more going on here and mark unlike Matthew accused you accuse you into what that is so when Matthew mentions the hand washing his gospel he leaves it unexplained because he's writing for a Jewish audience he's writing for a

Jewish Christian audience who would be familiar with the Pharisaic custom of hand washing but Mark who in all likelihood is writing for Christians in Rome probably predominantly a Gentile audience has to stop and explain this custom to his audience with a kind of a side to make sure they understand what's going on so what he says here is that the Pharisees and the Jews don't eat unless they wash their hands in observance of quote the tradition of the elders right so the Greek word here for tradition is paradoxes it literally means something handed on right

and in this case the tradition of the elders meant a tradition of the Pharisaic elders so who were the Pharisees they were a sect within Judaism they were a group within Judaism that made one of their goals was to live according to the holiness of the temple in their daily lives so think about it for just a minute if you go back to the Old Testament there are laws of ritual washings that you would have to follow if you were going to go into the temple in order to worship numbers chapter 9 for example talks

about some of these ritual washings Jews before they were going to the temple would wash in a bath called a mikvah they would go down into the water they would cleanse themselves and then they would enter into the temple to celebrate Passover or one of the feasts or offer sacrifice what the Pharisees did was different but they not only practice the washings before entering into God's presence in the temple they in a sense brought the holiness into the temple into all of their daily life so that before they would even eat a meal they would

wash their hands in a ritual act of purification now the Bible nowhere commands such an act right it's not in the Jewish Scriptures but it was part of the tradition of the elders of the Pharisaic sect of that sect of Judaism now the Pharisee expect was the most popular Jewish movement in the 1st century AD there were other Jewish movements like the Sadducees and the Essenes that are tied to the Dead Sea Scrolls but the majority of Jewish people if they followed any one of these groups at all followed the ways of the Pharisees okay

they had their very prominent in the synagogues throughout the the Holy Land and so what Mark is doing is just letting you know that what's happening here is most Jewish people follow the Pharisees practice of washing hands but the Pharisees here notice that Jesus's disciples aren't doing it right they're not keeping that custom and so they're offended by it and they're kind of scandalized by it and they asked him a question why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders but they eat with their hands defiled meaning unwashed and so Jesus fires

right back at them with a quote from the book of Isaiah and he says to them that Isaiah spoke about you hypocrites and he basically condemned in advance he spoke prophetically about these Pharisees because he says in the Book of Isaiah that the people on earth me with their lips but their hearts are far from me in vain they worship me teaching as doctrine things that are just the precepts of men okay so what is that talking about well here Jesus is setting up a contrast between doctrine in Greek do Scalea meaning teaching comes directly

that comes directly from God and the precepts of men the Greek word there isn't Alma but the important part is it's a precept of men in other words thing that just originated with human Authority and not with God's authority and then Jesus says something so important here he says you leave the commandment of God and hold fast to the tradition of men okay what is going on there what's he talking about in in isolation it can sound like he is condemning all tradition but that's not what he's doing the key line there is you abandon

the commandment of God for the tradition of men in other words you're coming up with traditions that not only supplement the Word of God but actually undercut the Word of God and make it where you don't have to follow the Word of God and Jesus gives an example it's the example of korban what was cor Vaughn korban was an Aramaic word that means dedicated to God and what some Pharisees were doing is they were taking property and possessions and they were declaring it dedicated to God consecrated to the temple in other words they would set

these things apart for the temple in order to get out of having to use that money or use those possessions to support their own parents okay so it was a way of basically avoiding of avoiding of having to take care of your parents in their old age or provide for their means so Jesus here sets it up he says Moses told you to honor your father and mother but some of you are taking money that you should be using to take care of your aging parents and you're calling it holy and dedicated to the temple

ie korban what does he say then you use this tradition of men to avoid keeping the commandment of God and he says and you do many such things so that's the key there what he's saying here is he's giving us a window into the fact that there were some Pharisees in the 1st century AD who are using some of these traditions like the korban tradition to avoid keeping the commandments like honor your father mothers the fourth commandment which came directly from God through Moses to the people of Israel it's written with the finger of God

in Exodus 31 so Jesus's point in context here is not this is really important it's not that all traditions are bad it's that human traditions that that an undercut or contradict the Word of God have no place in the people of God and that's what some of these Pharisees have developed these human traditions that are used to avoid keeping the commandments all right so once that example is in place now Jesus calls the disciples to them and he gives them a riddle he says listen to me there's nothing outside of a man that by going

in can defile him but it's what comes out of a man is what defiles him okay now Jesus gives the disciples an example because he pulls the Messiah he says let me explain what this means to you and he uses it and he applies it to the to the issue of unclean foods and he's trying to help them see look it's not whatever food you eat whether you were eating with washed hands or unwashed hands that's not what actually defiles a person it's not what goes into him because it just passes through the body what

actually defiles a person is what comes out of the heart it's sin that defiles a person in the final analysis and in that verse mark has another aside he says thus he declared all foods clean we're going to see this play out in the early church that one of the big divergences between the early church and those Jews who continue to follow the Mosaic law is over the question of clean and unclean food so you'll get into that into the book of Acts when Peter has the vision and God reveals to him that all foods

have been made clean and all peoples have been made clean but Jesus is already planting the seed so to speak of that teaching and this passage in mark in any case Jesus ends the the teaching with a very important statement this is kind of a climax when he says from within out of the heart of man come all these evil things all right so what's he getting at here what Jesus is showing here is the primacy or the priority of moral defilement over physical defilement or even ritual defilement the cultic defilement of ritual cleansing entering

into the temple what he's saying is what ultimately matters is the interior defilement that comes from the wickedness of the human heart you'll see this elsewhere in the Gospels where Jesus will lambaste the Pharisees because some of them are acting in a hypocritical way they're paying their tithes they're making sure they wash their hands but inside they're full of dead man's bones and they're doing unthink unclean things like committing adultery or breaking the Ten Commandments so it doesn't make sense to break the Ten Commandments given directly by God but keep the tradition of the elders

of washing your hands before you eat that ends up making you a hypocrite right because you're doing the external gestures of piety and fidelity to God what you're failing on the essentials of obeying the Decalogue obeying the Ten Commandments now the question this immediately is going to raise for a lot of Catholics is wait is Jesus here laying out some kind of principle of Sola scriptura where we should go by the Bible alone and not by any tradition at all is Jesus condemning all tradition or just some traditions and if so which traditions is he

condemning and which is he approving now that would take us a really long time to lay out a full exposition of the relationship between Scripture and tradition here but I just a couple of elements here that help you answer the question in a brief way number one but we know from context that Jesus is not condemning all tradition because he himself elsewhere in the Gospels commands his disciples to keep certain traditions so for example in Matthew chapter 23 I think that's probably the most helpful passage in Matthew chapter 23 verse 1 Jesus says to the

disciples the scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses's seat so practice and observe whatever they tell you but not what they do for they preach but they don't practice so for example Jesus commands in this case is striking tell us the disciples follow the teachings of the Pharisees and scribes when they sit on Moses's seat that means when they speak authoritative ly from Moses when they teach and interpret the tour of Moses but don't do what they do because they preach but they don't practice so don't be hypocrites like them so Jesus has a respect for

a Jewish tradition he himself is going to follow it when they go down to the temple to celebrate the Passover for example and they and he celebrates Passover with a glass of wine or right cup of wine there's no mention of wine in the Old Testament for celebrating the Passover it was part of Jewish tradition but Jesus keeps that so there are certain traditions that he exhorts the Apostles to keep but there are other traditions that undermine the commandments of God like the korban tradition and knows he says he rejects or other traditions which like

the washing of hands which are neither here nor there they they don't matter at the end of the day because they don't get to the heart of the matter scholars use the word Adi opera for that there they are incidentals you can give them or you can take them you can take them or leave them Paul will say this in the in his letters to Romans for example but then there are certain traditions which are binding and so again we interpret whenever we look at a passage in the Bible we interpret it in context and

in 2nd Thessalonians chapter 2 verse 15 Paul says to the Christians stand fast and hold firm to the traditions parado sis same word Jesus uses which you have heard from us whether by word of mouth or by letter right so st. Paul inspired by the holy spirit elsewhere in the New Testament says we actually do have to keep the traditions whether they're written or they're oral as long as they're from the Apostles so apostolic tradition has to be kept so in essence what's going on here is we need to make the distinction between a tradition

of men which contradicts the Word of God Jesus condemns that but in an apostolic tradition which is guided by the holy spirit and given to the church as binding whether in written or oral form those traditions we have to keep right I mean I think okay well how am I supposed to know which traditions are apostolic and which ones are man-made which ones are permanent and binding and which ones can be changed or can be dispensed with well you know that by the living authority of the church herself the reason Christ Institute's a church with

leaders like the Apostles Peter and James and John is so that the living authorities the Apostles and their successors can discern through the Holy Spirit with elements of sacred tradition are permanent and binding and and what aspects of Christian life and worship our customs our little tea traditions that can come and go so the best statement I know of this is from the Catechism of the Catholic Church if you have the Catechism you can look at paragraph 83 a nice distinction I'll quote it now Holy Tradition transmits in its entirety the Word of God which

has been entrusted to the Apostles by Christ and the Holy Spirit tradition capital T is to be distinguished from the various theological disciplinary liturgical or devotional traditions little T born in the local churches over time these are the particular forms adapted to different places and times in which the great tradition capital T is expressed in the light of capital T tradition these little tea traditions can be retained modify or even abandoned under the guidance of the church's Magisterium Catechism of the Catholic Church power of 83 edges terraeum there refers to the teaching authority of the

Apostles which they have from Christ so as Catholics in closing we believe that there are two kinds of tradition big T tradition apostolic tradition and little T traditions customs and disciplines that arise in various churches over time and that the living authority of the church is the one who helps us to discern which are permanent and unchangeable and which are in fact dispensable over time and so I hope that helps you get a little bit of a grasp on what jesus has having to say to us about human tradition [Music]