Create in me a clean heart

When I first read today’s Gospel passage, there was one thing that really distracted me. Maybe it distracted you too.

It’s the hand washing thing. We’ve all just lived through almost four years of constant hygiene reminders. Wash your hands. Wear a mask. Stay home if you’re sick. We’ve eased up a bit, but you can still find hand sanitizer everywhere you look. I can’t help but think that the Pharisees got this one right and Jesus’s disciples got it wrong. I’m with the folks who say you should wash your hands before eating; wash food from the market before you eat it; wash cups and pots and kettles before you use them. That’s good science and good sense.

You’ve probably heard me or another preacher say that we should pay attention to context when we read scripture. Today’s passage is the most obvious example I can think of of why context matters.

Is Jesus really saying that we shouldn’t wash our hands before we eat? There’s no doubt that you can hear his words that way. He’s certainly defending the choice of his disciples to skip handwashing. “There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile,” he says.

My modern, hygiene-focused mind has a quick retort. “There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile?” Really? Not even E. coli?

But context matters. Jesus wasn’t talking about hygiene. The people listening to Jesus that day had never heard of E. coli. Neither had the pharisees. Bacteria didn’t enter into their thinking.

This reality is a good reminder for reading the Bible as a whole. It’s always smart to ask a few questions: What assumptions are the Biblical writers making about the world? Do those assumptions still hold? And what assumptions am I adding myself?

The writer of the Gospel of Mark didn’t know anything about modern germ theory. And if we remember that fact, it’s pretty clear that today’s Gospel doesn’t have much to do with whether or not we should wash our hands before lunch.

What is it about, then?

One thing Jesus definitely is doing is warning against empty tradition. And that’s a hard pill for many a good Episcopalian to swallow.

We love our traditions. I love our traditions.

Our liturgy is a tradition that speaks to me in a way no book or sermon can—a tradition that expresses truths about God that can’t be stated in words.

When I was a newcomer to the Episcopal Church, I noticed that everything that went into liturgy was done with great care. Language, movement, color, sound, smell, lighting. I wanted to understand how it all worked, how it fit together, why it was the way it was. Why is the altar green today? But white on Easter? Why do we stand at certain points in the service and kneel at others?

Many theologians describe our church’s doctrine as a three-legged stool. They say that our theology rests on three foundations: scripture, reason, and tradition. And that it can’t stand if any one of the three is missing.

Tradition is a big deal.

But at least at first glance, Jesus’s words in today’s Gospel aren’t very complimentary about the traditions we hold so dear.

Jesus says that the tradition isn’t what matters. What matters is what’s in your heart.

“This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me,” Jesus says. “In vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.” “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” How those words apply to us and our own dearly held traditions?

Let’s go back to hand washing for a moment.

Before the beginning of the Eucharistic Prayer, if you watch closely, you’ll see me use hand sanitizer. Before the pandemic, a deacon or lay minister would help me symbolically wash my hands at that point of the service—just a bit of water on the fingertips. Many priests still do that. I’ve switched to hand sanitizer alone in the hope that that will have a bit more antiseptic effect. But I still say a traditional prayer under my breath: “create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”

There’s no rule that says that I have to wash my hands or say that prayer. It’s nothing but tradition.

But I think there’s a useful clue to getting tradition right in the prayer I mentioned. “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” It’s a line from Psalm 51. “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”

Because of course we can’t make our hearts clean by washing our hands.

If we hold to our traditions simply because they’re our traditions, we’re doing it wrong.

But if we wash our hands as a reminder of what hand washing represents, and as a prayer for God’s presence and help, then I think we might actually be on the right track. What matters is the prayer, and the state of our hearts.

Where we go wrong is when we try to use tradition as a shortcut, when the tradition replaces the thing it’s only supposed to point to.

That’s what happened with hand washing in today’s Gospel. Jesus’s critics had come to see the tradition of hand washing as proof of purity—rather than merely its symbol. By dispensing with the tradition entirely, Jesus pointed out their error.

Jesus’s teaching represents both a challenge and an opportunity.

A challenge that asks us to question our own traditions, to make sure we keep our focus on the values each tradition points us to.

An opportunity, an opportunity to use tradition when it helps us to love God and to love our neighbor. But to move beyond it when it gets in the way of that goal.

A challenge, an opportunity, and a reminder. A reminder that the measure of all our traditions is and must be the state of our hearts.

Create in us clean hearts, O God. And renew a right spirit within us.