NOTES for Mar 7:1-23
Today's reading brings us back again to a question that kept arising in Jesus' conversations with the Pharisees: the question of revelation and religious tradition. It concerns the norms and rules of ritual purity accepted among a certain part of the Pharisees. The washings mentioned in the text of the passage are undoubtedly connected with rules mentioned in the Old Testament, for example in Leviticus, but judging by the evangelist's description, their number had increased substantially compared with the Old Testament prescriptions. This exaggerated attention to questions of ritual purity was apparently connected with the fact that, for the Pharisees who followed these rules, ritual purity was the chief condition of a full spiritual life. At the same time, exaggerated attention to the observance of some norms could quite well be combined with neglect of others, and this neglect found its theological justifications even when a direct violation of one of God's Ten Commandments was involved (vv. 9-13). Here Jesus evidently encounters a phenomenon that is, sadly, characteristic of any religious tradition: as these traditions develop and become more complex, over time they often begin to obscure the core connected with their birth and original formation. In the end it can even happen that the truth revealed by God is pushed into the background by theological concepts created by inventive theologians. Jesus Himself answers the question about purity by pointing to the human person: whether a person is clean or not depends precisely on that person's spiritual condition, or, in biblical language, on the condition of his heart (vv. 18-23). Here, of course, the matter is no longer external, ritual purity, but inner purity, which determines the quality of spiritual life. And if a person's heart is clean, then nothing from outside can defile him.