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For the Sake of the Dullards

Matthew 15:1–9

Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, “Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.” He answered them, “And why do you transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘He who speaks evil of father or mother, let him surely die.’ But you say, ‘If any one tells his father or his mother, What you would have gained from me is given to God, he need not honor his father.’ So, for the sake of your tradition, you have made void the word of God. You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said:

‘This people honors me with their lips,

but their heart is far from me;

in vain do they worship me,

teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.’”

The Setup

The Pharisees are trying to humiliate Jesus and prove to the crowd that he’s just a charlatan. So they accuse the disciples of breaking the law because they (the disciples) don’t wash their hands before they eat.

What Went Down

Despite the apparent lack of proper parenting in his disciples, Jesus is having none of this. He points out a loophole in Jewish law that would make Breaking Bad’s Saul Goodman blush, and then quotes Isaiah at them. In other words, someone does get humiliated in this scenario — and it’s not Jesus.

Jesus then turns to the crowd and uses the Pharisees’ complaint as a teachable moment about what’s in a man’s heart. I can only imagine the disciples standing behind Jesus, wisely nodding their heads. (Of course, later we find out that they don’t have any idea what he’s talking about.)

Then the disciples worry that some of the Pharisees are offended. Jesus tells them not to worry about it and makes a joke about blind people falling into pits. Seriously. Read it yourself.

Peter (who, you might recall, will be the first pope one day) takes everything way too seriously and, in classic android fashion, asks Jesus to explain the parable. My copy of the Bible doesn’t have a footnote stating that Our Lord rolled his eyes, but the NIV translation says he literally called the disciples “dull” (Mt 15:16).

As one reads about Jesus breaking down his lesson for the disciples (Peter was probably asking about the blind person joke, but Christ goes back to the lesson for the crowd), one can almost imagine Jesus grabbing a whiteboard from just out of frame and drawing a diagram of human anatomy, emphasizing every word as he goes, like you do with children: “Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach, and so passes on?” (You know James elbowed John and pointed at the drawing’s butt.)

Jesus goes on: “But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a man” (Mt 15:17-18).

Now, in the disciples’ defense, Jesus is shifting willy-nilly between the literal (what goes into the mouth) and figurative (what comes out of the mouth). At least four of the disciples are fishermen. Fish don’t do this kind of shifting. They are either real fish or … well, they’re pretty much all real fish.

The Takeaway

Don’t get hung up on the letter of the law. Actions and intent (which come from the heart) are the most important things.

Can’t you just imagine Peter following right behind Jesus as he starts to leave and asking, “Lord, can we make … like a signal for when things are ‘real’ and when they are ‘figurative’?”