I know, I know.
Mark 7: The Pharisees Gather to watch Jesus and his disciples eating, and they’re horrified because their hands are unwashed. Jesus answers by rebuking them: “There is nothing outside the man which can defile him if it goes into him; but the things which proceed out of the man are what defile the man.”
This verse/passage has been oft interpreted by well-meaning people as Jesus saying: “Woah, transformation comes from the inside out, and outside physical actions MUST come from inside goodness that you first sincerely experience in your heart!” Outside-in, these people argue, is ANTI-JESUS.
But I think some of our broad interpretation and resultant fears of being afraid of manipulation and legalism might justtttt possiblyyyyy be a little off from the point he was trying to make?
In the past, the church was the main patron of the arts and it developed liturgies for people to memorize, rituals of standing and kneeling and saying Amen. I was raised to look on these things with derision as "external things." I thought, in my generous moods, that these were developed for less educated people. People who couldn't read the Bible themselves needed to see the pictures of Bible stories, needed to be awestruck when they walked into a church, needed to be told what to say.
The humbling process of adulthood is realizing you are, in fact, one of those people. Whatever "those people" you're thinking of, Jesus clearly and consistently reminds you - properly, it is "we."
I learned this when first asked to "Stretch out my palms in a posture of receiving." I rolled my eyes. I lifted my arms. I struggled to open my hands and then struggled more to hold them there. I was uncomfortable I didn’t like being told what to do; I did not like being physically vulnerable, waiting for… Who knows what, I thought. For God to speak to me? For an emotional goosebumps moment?
My discomfort reveals a lot about me.
My inner spirit did not like waiting, submission… I saw myself as an individual who was pretty self-sufficient, and the idea of making myself part of a blanket-suggestion to a whole group WHILE hoping that God might have something to do -- not hypothetically, without real hope involved, but actually, in that moment -- was deeply challenging.
And training myself to hold my arms up was training myself against that individualism, training myself to face my fears and wait with expectation and to HOPE. I didn’t feel it in my heart; I needed to discipline myself to build those muscles.
It felt a lot like the humility that comes with staring up at a cathedral’s soaring ceilings. And I have realized: Maybe the long history of the church using outside-in liturgies and spaces and artworks shouldn’t be totally written off?
In fact, if I may be so bold -- I think the intention of Jesus and his disciples NOT washing their hands may even have been to help them engage in some outside-in transformation. It’s one thing to be told: “Don’t worry about appearances; it’s what’s inside of you that is corrupting.” But actually having to eat with your hands dirty while others watch in judgement -- that’s a pretty visceral way to experience his teaching, and obedience might have even been a pretty transformative step of faith.
We’re all being shaped by what’s physically around us. Let’s use our physicality to shape ourselves after Christ.
