Matthew 15

Suppose a couple has four active, robust children with good appetites. And suppose that every time she calls them to the table for a meal, she stops them in turn and sends them to the bathroom to wash their hands. How many times will she be saying, “Go wash your hands, please,” before the last one has grown up and left home into a world where no one really cares whether or not he/she washes his/her hands before eating?

      I make it roughly 65,700 times, give or take.

      Or suppose the family always repeats a table grace before eating, that it's their tradition: “For what we are about to receive, O Lord, make us truly thankful.” By the 18,000^th time, would the sincerity of the utterance still retain its freshness?

      Would a thank you for Brussels Sprouts ever approach genuine gratitude? Or would it all be more or less about the habituated pre-meal rite?

      Well, Matthew 15 begins with those pesky Pharisees trying to score points against Jesus and his followers over a hand-washing ritual, an opening to a wider accusation that ritual cleanliness/uncleanness rules are being neglected by Jesus followers and that that defiance extends to carelessness about long established rites of piety in other areas.

      The problem with rituals of any kind is that they lose their sincerity, their immediacy, their fervour over time, according to Jesus who quotes Isaiah on the subject: “These people honour me with their lips but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.”

      The repetition of the ritual becomes the marker of obedience instead of the purpose behind it.

      Many rituals of Jesus' time related to eating. This probably gave rise to more contradiction from the synagogue and ended up giving Jesus an opening to explain to all and sundry that it's not what goes into you that defies God's law, it's what comes out! Supposedly, if you—a teetotaler—inadvertently eat a rum-laced chocolate, you ought not fret; given a dozen hours, that defiling, demonic morsel will have exited your body and be gone.

      The venom that comes out of your mouth, the false witness, the gossip, the white lie have—by comparison—potential to create great and lasting harm. The primitive conception of human anatomy shows here: evil thoughts come from the heart, not, as we now know, the brain and nervous system.

      I wish Matthew 15: 21 – 18 didn't exist, and I suspect Matthew of embellishing the encounter between Jesus and a Canaanite supplicant in order to reinforce that the Gospel was primarily meant to revive true faith in the Jewish population. It does, however, read as a blatantly racist conversation with Christ as the one who compares ministering to a Canaanite woman to taking food for the children (Jews) and giving it to the dogs (non-Jews). There have been theologians who've sought ways to excuse this passage, saying that Jesus is using it as a teaching/learning moment for his followers, underlined by the fact that he does, in the end, lend his healing power to the woman. 

      But by today's standards of political correctness, at least, Jesus response seems, well, racist.

      I'm not sure why the legendary feeding of very many people with very little food is featured again in this chapter as it was in the previous one. For a writer(s) of this particular gospel, it feels redundant to include both an oral tradition where the number is 5,000+ and one where the number is 4,000+. That it happened twice is always a possibility, but as I said in Chapter 14 comments, I don't glean any lesson from the magical depiction by Matthew; the signs of Christian community and fraternal generosity seem more relevant to the gist of the legend.

      So, thinking back on the core content of Chapter 15, a few teachings strike me as worth retaining. Ritualized religion, motivation governed by habituated rites--in contrast to impulses of love and common sense--will always end up in a spirituality that Jesus' teaching identifies as distorted, missing the key impetus provided by heart.

      “What comes out of a man and not what goes in, defiles him,” though, needs considerable thought. There's good food and not-so-good-food, the latter not so much contributing to defilement – ritual uncleanness – but certainly too much sugar, too many violent video games and movies, too many quarrels between parents must certainly “go in” to a child and if they're not defiling, are they not at the very least contaminating?

      Nevertheless, the quality of our discipleship seems to hinge almost exclusively on the fruit produced by our faith-in-action , not on the degree to which we focus on the rituals of our faith,or the diligent avoidance of defilement. We are not to focus on the letter but on the spirit; Hosea 6:6 again: “ I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”

      Matthew certainly knew his prophets.
     It's not important that all at table bow their heads and intone a table grace; but it's important that we be grateful to creation for our daily sustenance.
     And for health reason, children, WASH YOUR HANDS.