The grandson had not seen his 90 year-old grandfather for some time, but decided to go visit him before taking a job on the west coast.  The grandfather lived way back in the country off the paved roads.  The grandson arrived after dinner and the two spent a couple of hours catching up on family and reminiscing.

     The next morning the grandfather prepared a breakfast of bacon, eggs, and toast.  The grandson, however, noticed a film-like substance of his plate, and he questioned his grandfather, asking, “Are these plates clean?”

     His grandfather said, “They’re as clean as cold water can get them.  Just go ahead and finish your breakfast.”

     They went down to the pond following breakfast and fished for awhile.  For lunch the old fellow made hamburgers.  Again, the grandson was concerned about the plate, as his appeared to have tiny specks around the edge that looked like dried egg.  So he asked again, “Granddad, are you sure these plates are clean?”

     Without looking up the old fellow said, “I told you before, Sonny, those dishes are as clean as cold water can get them.  Now don’t you fret and I don’t want to hear another word about the plates.”

     Later that afternoon, the grandson was preparing to drive into the nearest town to pick up a prescription for his grandfather and as he was leaving, his grandfather’s dog started to growl, and wouldn’t let him pass.  The grandson yelled, “Granddad, your dog won’t let me get to my car!”

     Without diverting his attention from the grindstone on which he was sharpening a blade, the grandfather yelled, “COLDWATER, GO LAY DOWN!”

     Now, I hope you can forget that before you are invited out to dinner by friends or family. 

     I usually read the Gospel for the coming Sunday on Monday morning.  I usually just let it sit in the mind for a day and then begin to put together something to say about it.  This week the words “soap,” “security,” and “salvation,” came to mind.  I wondered for a time about what it was that held these words together.  Then I looked at the differences between the teaching of Jesus the Christ and those of the Orthodox of his day.  The seventh chapter of Mark describes the tension between law and gospel.  It is a tension that remains incredibly active in our day.

     The question that is asked by the Orthodox to Jesus is a simple one.  “Why do your disciples not live according to the traditions of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”  The response Jesus gives sort of ties soap, security, and salvation together. 

     For the Orthodox the law meant two things; first and foremost, it meant the Ten Commandments, and, secondly, the first five books of the Old Covenant, known as the Torah.  What began as a series of moral principles to serve as a guideline for deciding moral questions, had, by the fourth and fifth centuries before Jesus, become entangled by the work of the legal experts, called the scribes.  They were not content with great moral principles, but wanted to know the minutest detail of what was meant.  They wanted these great principles amplified, expanded, dissected, and explained.  In order to do that, these general guiding principles had been broken down into hundreds and hundreds of little rules and regulations governing every possible action and every conceivable situation that might arise in life.  Everyday life, by the time of Jesus, was no longer governed by principles but by rules and regulations.  Most of these were not written down until well after the time of Jesus.  They were simple called the oral law or the traditions of the elders.  This was what was underneath the question posed by the scribes and Pharisees. 

     The disciples of Jesus were not observing the ceremonial rules for hand-washing.  This had very little to do with hygiene.  To keep the traditions of the elders would mean washing the hands in a prescribed manner.  This would be expected not just before the meal, but between each course.  The hands had to be free of any coating of sand, mortar, or gravel.  Water for this purpose was kept in special stone jars, so that the water was clean in the ceremonial sense and was not to be used for any other purpose.  A heavy cover was attached so that nothing might fall into it or be mixed with it.  Hands were held with the fingertips pointing upward, water was poured over them, and had to trickle down at least to the wrist.  The minimum amount was one and a half eggshells full.  While the hands were wet each hand had to be cleansed with the fist of the other.  The fist of one hand was rubbed into the palm and surface of the other.  This meant that at this point the hands were wet with water and that water was now unclean, because it had touched unclean hands.  So, next, the hands were held with the fingers pointing downward and the new water was poured over them in such a way that it began at the wrists and ran off at the finger tips.  Only after this had been down were the hands considered clean. 

     To fail to do the washing in this manner was to Orthodox eyes not only to be guilty of bad manners, but to be unclean in the sight of God.  Those who might eat with unclean hands left themselves open to attacks from demons, might suffer great loss leading to poverty, and might undergo personal destruction.  Stories would be shared in the oral tradition about a rabbi who was imprisoned by the Romans and how he used the little water he was given for this ritual hand-washing.  In the end he nearly perished of thirst, because he was determined to observe the rules and regulations of the tradition of the elders.  To the Orthodox that was true religion.  It was ritual, ceremonial, and descriptive in detail.  That was the essence of service to God. 

     That was what Jesus was up against in this incident reported in Mark’s Gospel.  To the Pharisees and scribes these rules and regulations were religion.  To observe them diligently was to please God.  To break them was to sin.  That was their idea of goodness and behavior pleasing to God. 

     In a religious sense, Jesus and the Orthodox spoke a different language.  It was precisely because he had little use for all these regulations that they considered him a threat and a bad influence.  There is a fundamental break here.  It is the break between the person who sees religion as ritual, ceremonial, rules and regulations and the person who sees religion as loving and serving God and loving and serving God’s people.  It is fundamentally the difference between religion and spirituality.

     So, soap, security, and salvation really have very little to do with each other.  “Cleanliness is next to Godliness,” really is not the 11^th commandment, contrary to what my Granny Harris believed and practiced.  I do believe her commitment to cleanliness had more to do with hygiene and disease prevention than with pleasing God. 

     But, traditions are important.  They provide a sense of security.  There is nothing wrong with them, in and of themselves.  The problems arise when we make traditions equal with salvation.  Maintaining traditions cannot put us in a right relationship with God.  That is precisely what Jesus meant by his reply to the scribes and Pharisees, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.

     Our security cannot be bought by not engaging in that long list of sins Jesus gives.  Trust and obedience to God are the basis of true security and it is through faith, by God’s grace, that salvation comes.

     We have been washed in the blood of the lamb and that alone makes us worthy to stand before God and to come forward again this day to Christ’s table.  Don’t confuse soap, security, and salvation.  It is okay, however, not to depend on “cold water” to keep your dishes clean.  Amen.