“Actors’ Masks & Hand Washing” Mount Olive Lutheran Church Season of Pentecost Sunday Sermon August 25, 2024 – Mark 7:1-13

Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sun Aug 25th 2024: Season of Pentecost / Mark 7:1-13 “Actors’ Masks & Hand Washing”

Now when the Pharisees gathered to Him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of His disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders, and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.) And the Pharisees and the scribes asked Him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” 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 commandments of men.’

        You leave the commandment of God and

hold to the tradition of men.”

And He said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban”’ (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 by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.”

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in Your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Good Christian Friends perhaps you remember this line from Shakespeare, “All the World’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts,”[1] today we have the Pharisees—those successful business men—and the Scribes—those crafty lawyers and bean counters—entering stage left into our reading from the Gospel of Saint Mark and with one word Jesus calls them actors: they are not being true, they are not being honest, and their desire is to have Jesus act in the ‘play’ they have produced loosely based on the Word of God and His Law. This is like when you see a movie and it says things like “based on a true story,” or “based on true events.” Of course the wise viewer knows not to take what they are about to see as the Gospel Truth, the wise viewer knows there will certainly have been creative license taken with the actual true story. The one word that Jesus uses for these men, that shows that they are actors and are no genuine, is the word “hypocrite,” Jesus says “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites.” Hypocrite is from a word used for the mask that an actor wears when playing a role on a stage, in a play. You may have run across this before: the smiling mask and the frowning mask, the two masks together, that comes from ancient times; that word Hypocrite is drawn from the word meant for masks like those.   

Backed up by their lawyer friends these Pharisees have arrived at the sea side town of Capernaum in Galilee making a special trip from Jerusalem to “investigate” this Jesus that they have been hearing so much about back home. But as has been the case along the way most of the Pharisees simply want to publicly discredit Jesus and disband His followers so they can get back to being the star of the show in the eyes of the people. They would like to see Jesus canceled in the eyes of the people, so when they see some of His disciple eating without having washed their hands first they call Jesus into question implying that He is a false teacher because His students are not following the Pharisaical practice of washing their hands before eating meals.

You see the Pharisees were not Levites and as such they were not legitimate priests. The Sadducees included the Levites and they were the ones who looked after all the observances in the Temple in Jerusalem. The Pharisees wanting to be thought of by the people as ones who had the same sort of religious authority as the Old Testament Levites and the Sadducees of their day, for this reason they were at pains to outdo the Sadducees in the eyes of the people so in a case like hand washing before meals they took a ceremonial law of the Old Testament and misapplied it to their daily meals. In the book of Exodus chapter 30 The LORD said to Moses, “You shall also make a basin of bronze, with its stand of bronze, for washing. You shall put it between the tent of meeting and the altar, and you shall put water in it, with which Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet. When they go into the tent of meeting, or when they come near the altar to minister, to burn a food offering to the LORD, they shall wash with water, so that they may not die. They shall wash their hands and their feet, so that they may not die. It shall be a statute forever to them, even to him and to his offspring throughout their generations.”[2] Aaron was a Levite; these Pharisees of Mark’s Gospel were not. They were however attempting in their day to out “holy” the ones set aside and consecrated as “holy.” So in effect they had fashioned for themselves a religious mask more religious that the most religious in the hopes that others would accept them as equal, if not superior, religious authorities in the land and if Jesus wore their mask maybe Jesus could be one of them. Jesus knew that they had no command to do as the Levites were commanded to do, and what the Levites were commanded to do in the tabernacle tent of meeting and eventually in the Temple was not prescribed for the table of the people in their homes. Now there is nothing wrong with washing your hands before you eat, you are free to do so, in fact it is recommended when it comes to good hygiene but the Pharisees were not interested in good hygiene they were interested in usurping spiritual and religious authority. For His part Jesus had violated no law of God but had only transgressed the law of the Pharisees who had misapplied the actual Law of God and not just in this case as we will see.   

To illustrate their hypocrisy Jesus digs into their stewardship and their charitable giving exposing how they misused the gifts of God that they had acquired by God’s grace in order to make themselves look holy and righteous in the eyes of the people. What does Jesus says in the Gospel of Saint Matthew (If you listen carefully a particular word will jump out at you) Jesus says, “Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”[3] The hypocrites in the synagogues and in the streets are the Pharisees and those who follow them.

And in today’s reading Jesus is not speaking only of charity to the needy but also of offerings dedicated to the Temple. So Jesus unmasks these self righteous Pharisees saying, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban”’ (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 by your tradition that you have handed down.” They had no old age pension managed and provided by the government, it was the younger members of the family that took care of the needs of their aging parents, particularly the widows in their families. The community at large was also to participate in their care, this is why we read about how in the Book of Deuteronomy the Lord provided by Moses this statute: “At the end of every three years [the people were to] bring out all the tithe of [their] produce in the same year and lay it up within [their] towns [for any who were in need]. And the Levite, [Moses says] because he has no portion or inheritance with you, and the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, who are within your towns, shall come and eat and be filled, that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands that you do.”[4] Eventually Saint Paul would write to the younger pastor Timothy, “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”[5] So here with the Pharisees what Jesus is saying is that they are seeking public praise for their gifts dedicated to the Temple, called Corban, while in truth they are breaking God’s Law.  

These dedicated gifts were a big deal: you see not long after Pontius Pilate had arrived in Judea as Governor, Pilate used money set aside as “Corban” for the Temple to build an aqueduct to move fresh water and Josephus the first century Jewish historian said that it cause a riot of sorts and that Pilate had his soldiers put down the uprising before his tribunal by ordering the beating of the crowed with hard wooden sticks, showing mercy by not ordering them beaten with swords, although Josephus said many of the complaining Jews died of the beatings they’d received.[6] This would still be in the minds of the people. Jesus mentioning this would have cut to their hearts because He’s saying they had made giving money to the Temple into a kind of idol for personal public praise. 

Let’s look at how the way these Pharisees conducted themselves regarding these gifts of dedication broke more than just the Forth Commandment to honour your mother and father: It starts with coveting (9th & 10th), what should go to the parents (4th), which leads to a sort of theft (7th), when they use “Corban” dedication to God as a cover-up and mask for their greed, mocking the Holiness of God and His Temple (3rd) in God’s Name (2nd) while spinning a giant lie – to make themselves look Holy and righteous in the process, (8th). And of course all of those things break the First Commandment (1st) because they are saying they know better than God in all of these things.[7]   

When something is dedicated as Corban it couldn’t be used for personal use anymore, therefore it cannot be used for the needs of caring for elderly parents. So it would be like giving a large sum of money to a charity today and having people come up to you and say, ‘you … you are awesome, you are such a great person” while all the while your family is destitute and living in unnecessary poverty.’ 

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts,”

Dear ones have you fashioned a hypocrites mask for yourself? Are you in need of putting that mask away? When you talk about yourself with others are you honest, or are you always the hero of your own story? Are you looking at the 10 Commandments regularly to see what they say? Are you applying them to your life and to your relationships and responsibilities in life? Are you more worried about what others think of you than what God thinks of you? Have you fallen into the trap of trying to keep the man made social laws of the day rather than the Law of God? Are you afraid of being called out for not saying the right thing at the right time in the eyes of the World at work or with family and friends, or are you confident to confess the truth of God’s Law and Word regardless of the cost?

Week in and week out you are given an opportunity to look at yourself in the mirror of God’s Law when you come here and we confess our sins. Here you can see what you really look like measured by God’s Word. Confession and Absolution is the removal of that mask that we’ve fashioned for ourselves. Jesus points the Pharisees and the Scribes to the Ten Commandments ultimately out of love for them and the Law of God calls them out on their sins. He also points you daily to the Ten Commandments out of love for you where you and the Scribes and the Pharisees and all people are called to repentance by the Law of God. The Pharisees had been busy inventing sins that aren’t sin and enforcing penalties for breaking manmade laws like they were God’s laws, all the while blindly avoiding the Commandments of God. We find this in our world today to. Let us pray for wisdom to see what truly is a legitimate Law of God and what is not. Let us not make traditions of man, even the good ones, into a law of their own equal to, or set above, the Law of God. Dear ones Jesus didn't suffer and die upon the cross for manmade human invented sins, Jesus died for the real sins, the sins that truly damn to hell and keep the World He loves from receiving eternal life and redemption. Whether or not Jesus’ hands were washed in a way that the Pharisees would accept doesn't impact the forgiveness He won for you when those same hands were nailed to the cross on mount Calvary in His crucifixion. As we live our lives today remember we are not called to be actors simply playing the part of the Christian for the World to see, being a Christian is not one of many parts you play in life. We are always called to scrutinize our life to look for hypocrisy within in it and, by the grace of God, to repentantly remove the mask each day returning to the waters of our baptism where Jesus has not just washed your hands but has washed you with His shed blood making you clean in a way that the Scribes and Pharisees could not attain by their keeping of their laws. If you’re seeking to be washed clean before the Lord you will find that washing in Christ alone. Amen

Let us pray:

Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen.

[1] William Shakespeare “As You Like It,” Act II, Scene VII" (1599), The Complete Illustrated Shakespeare, Wordsworth Edition 1989, Volume II Page 144.
[2] Exodus 30:17–21
[3] Matthew 6:2–4
[4] Deuteronomy 14:28–29
[5] 1 Timothy 5:8
[6] The Wars of the Jews Book Two Chapter 9, Works of Josephus vol. I., Baker Publishing Group, 1974, Page 153.
[7] 10 Commandments, Luther’s Small Catechism, Concordia Publishing House 2017, Page 13-15.