NOTES for Mat 14:35-15:11
35 And when the men of that place had knowledge of him, they sent out into all that country round about, and brought unto him all that were diseased; |
36 And besought him that they might only touch the hem of his garment: and as many as touched were made perfectly whole. |
1 Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem, saying, |
2 Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread. |
3 But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? |
4 For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death. |
5 But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; |
6 And honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. |
7 Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, |
8 This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. |
9 But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. |
10 And he called the multitude, and said unto them, Hear, and understand: |
11 Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man. |
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The distinction between clean and unclean food, kashrut, has always played a special role in Judaism. This distinction is prescribed by the Torah, and the Torah connects it with the preservation of ritual purity. Purity, in turn, determines the possibility of sanctification, which is the goal and meaning of spiritual life both in Yahwism and in Judaism. But over time in Judaism, in the matter of kashrut, as in some other cases, a certain formalization took place: its meaning was not exactly forgotten, but moved into the background, while the norms and rules of ritual purity concerning food, like the norms of ritual purity in general, became an end in themselves.
Jesus returns kashrut to its original meaning. He says that the point is not what a person eats, but what he says. At first glance, words are not the most reliable criterion when the issue is the human heart. But they can say a great deal, often even what the person himself would prefer to hide. In particular, they often testify to the speaker's spiritual condition more than he himself may think, especially when they slip from the tongue involuntarily. And Jesus, of course, knowing this perfectly well, points out that the main purpose of all religious prescriptions must be a person's spiritual life, not religiousness as such. If that purpose is absent, religious norms and rules lose all meaning.
But this was not the only issue: after all, some teachers of the Torah had spoken of something similar even before Christ's coming. The issue was also that, for the Kingdom, the former norms and rules of ritual purity had truly become irrelevant in many ways. Of course, the question of purity in the Kingdom is in many ways even more acute than in our world, which is not yet transformed: in the Kingdom, as the experience of the early Christian community shows, any sin can prove deadly. But there it depends entirely on the human will, on one's intentions and value system. Nothing from outside can defile a person in the Kingdom. That is why Jesus speaks about what "comes out of the mouth": when the issue is words, one also has to speak about intentions, including those not always recognized by the person himself. Only they matter for the Kingdom. And all the norms and rules of external ritual purity matter to a person only insofar as he still remains part of our world, which is being transformed but has not yet been transformed.
Readings for 23 July 2025
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