Reflecting on the Word

By Dr. Karla J. Bellinger

Have you ever been relaxing in a nice hot shower when suddenly  you got blasted with cold water? Someone started the washing  machine, turned on a hose, flushed, and—unexpectedly—liquid  icicles stream from the shower head. It wakes you up! 

That’s what Jesus did to the Pharisees in today’s reading. They  were comfortable with their purification rules. Washing hands  mattered to them—they washed when they woke up. They washed  before eating. They bathed once a week before the Sabbath. That  washing set them apart from others in their day. (They probably  smelled better than the Romans and the Greeks as well.) They were  comfortable with their nice balmy shower. Then Jesus startled them  up with a blast of cold water. They cried out, “What? Your disciples  don’t wash?” 

Jesus didn’t say, “Don’t wash.” He said, “Don’t be satisfied with  external washing only.” In the Beatitudes, he also said, “Blessed are  the clean of heart, for they shall see God.” Clean is good. 

Seasons of blessing flow upon us like a nice warm shower. Times  of trial, on the other hand, wake us up. Hardships can be more than a  sudden blast of icy water. Sufferings can rip us apart. Our true character  is revealed in times of trouble; we can no longer bask in ease. 

Jesus calls us to a cleanliness that is deeper than soaping our  shoulders in a warm shower. Jesus asks us to allow the Holy Spirit  the Sanctifier to flood us, to purify us, to wash us from the inside  out: as St. James says, to do justice, to walk blamelessly, to be doers  of the word and not hearers only, to care for widows and orphans,  to keep ourselves unstained by the world. Clean is good. Jesus says,  “Be holy.” Nothing less.

Consider/Discuss 

  • What? Don’t wash your hands? In our world, “Wash your hands” messages  are still everywhere. Yet in the ancient world, hand washing and other  hygienic practices were rare. It wasn’t until the nineteenth century that a  Hungarian doctor discovered that washing his hands between treating new  mothers increased their survival rates—he was considered to be an oddball.  How does this passage strike you, that Jesus’ disciples didn’t wash their  hands? How much knowledge about disease transmission do we take for  granted? 
  • Holiness—where have you seen goodness and kindness in ordinary life,  a robust “doing” of the word rather than “just talking about it”? Who do  you know whom you’d consider a “clean” or “pure” person as St. James  defines it, by the way that person treats others? 

Living and Praying with the Word 

Holy Spirit, you are the one who sanctifies. You are the one who  makes us pure. You are the source of our holiness. Wash us clean.  Scrub out the gunk that blocks your love from flowing through us.  This world needs your strength and your power. The world in which  we live needs your goodness and your care. We cannot do this on  our own. Sanctify us for this task.

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