He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: “‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’ – Mark 7:6-7

Today’s Scripture Reading (October 14, 2017): Mark 7

Apparently, in Illinois, a car must be driven with a steering wheel. And that is disturbing for all of us who would rather drive using a computer joystick. I am not sure of the reason behind the law. I have driven for several years, and I have always used a steering wheel, adhering to the Illinois law even when I am not in Illinois. But at some point in time, something happened that caused the State of Illinois to pass the legislation. So if you are driving in Chicago, make sure that the steering wheel is correctly installed on your car.

Cultures often have laws that make no sense. Sometimes the law is simply badly written, or they are given without adequate explanations. Often, laws are simply outdated, and the reasons for the law have been lost in the fog of the past. Or maybe the laws seem to be too obvious, like a law that says that a car must be driven with a steering wheel. But for whatever the reason, we look at these laws and are at a loss to explain why anyone would take the time to pass them. They simply seem out of place in our society.

At first blush, Jewish cleanliness laws do not seem to belong to this set of regulations. In our modern society, the concept of washing your hands before eating is clearly understood. We know that germs can crawl on our hands and we understand how sickness is transferred from one person to another. But the cleanliness laws of Judaism had been divorced from the idea of remaining clean. The idea that had pervaded the culture was that sin could be committed and then washed from your hands through a ritual cleansing. The problem is that this was never God’s intention. God had always wanted those who followed him to be different in nature, not just different in ritual.

And that was the point that Jesus was trying to make and that Isaiah had made centuries earlier. There was no ethical difference between the people of Israel and those from other countries. They were worshipful with their lips, but not with their lives. When they entered the Temple, they pretended to be something that they refused to be outside the temple walls. And the reason why all of this was okay in the society is that the people were willing to wash their hands.

God’s demands on us have not changed. He wants something different for us. We are a people who believe in grace, but not a cheap grace that comes with the idea of frequently washing our hands. Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “The Cost of Discipleship” wrote about that kind of grace. Cheap grace is grace that allows us to stay the same as we were before. Instead, Bonhoeffer advocated for a costly grace.

Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: "My yoke is easy and my burden is light."

Cleanliness laws had become absurd because they were separated from the life that God intended us to live – a life of following him which never leaves us the same, but instead prompts a change in us into a people of love and light, which is precisely what our world needs right now.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Matthew 16