In the Gospel for next Sunday[1],
Jesus confronts the pharisees. The
pharisees were critical that Jesus’s disciples neglected to wash their hands
before food. Mark explains this for us;
he says this kind of requirement was called the tradition of the elders; and
they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are
also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and
bronze kettles. So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your
disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders…? As we know, Jesus’s relationship with the
pharisees was what we might call crisp. Listen
to the intensity of his response: You
hypocrites! 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. For it is from within, from the
human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery,
avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All
these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.
Jesus is adamant here because the
point at issue is central to faith and life.
It is not a matter of conformity, to the tradition of the elders,
however hallowed – although we know that washing your hands before food
does have quite a lot going for it. We
are not defiled, rendered sinful thereby, if we don’t do it, or if we eat pork,
or if women come forward in leadership, or if we have difficulties with
doctrine, or express our sexuality otherwise than the church allows… We are defiled by what we generate within – any
list for 2021 would include greed, deceit and betrayal, violence and abuse of
others, wilful blindness to truth, nursing hatred and resentment, revenge,
exploitation of others in whatever form – the list only grows.
But it is a list of the many
manifestations of egoism... me first, “me time”, as someone informed me
recently: It’s me-time now. In
our times of silence and stillness, we have a space, cleared somewhat by the
mantra, in which our own words, desires and opinions are shut down, or perhaps made
simply to wait aside, somewhere behind the mantra, for now… Ego, with all its urgency and busyness, is
shifted off the space it ought not to occupy. I think it is the hardest of all lessons,
having self step aside… not because ego is intrinsically wrong or evil, but
because we habitually give it priority that belongs to God. Ego, we might say, is a mixed blessing. Some of it is no doubt admirable – some of it
is not. In meditation however it is
surplus to requirements. We do what we
can to set ego aside – more accurately I think, in our prayer we are consenting
to God’s Spirit reducing the ego and bringing forward our true self. The self that begins to emerge, in these
processes of love and grace, is the self God made, and sees, and loves. The hardest of lessons becomes the greatest
of freedoms – it dawns on me that what comes from within (in Jesus’s phrase)
is now being checked and changed and brought into obedience to God. It is what the Benedictines like to call conversatio,
conversion, a daily return to our true self – and what comes from within are
the fruits Paul lists as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity,
faithfulness, gentleness, self control.[2]
