Friday 24 October 2025
"Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat.” (v. 2)
Background
Today's study begins with an escalation of what happened in chapter 12 of Matthew's Gospel where Jesus was challenged by local Pharisees about his disciples plucking grain on the Sabbath. Now the Pharisees have travelled some 80 miles to catch Jesus out. This was a significant commitment – presumably it took over a week to travel 80 miles each way. It is a clear indication of how concerned they were to discredit Jesus and put an end to his ministry.
They are clever people and they frame their accusation with a loaded question. It assumes guilt, and answering it directly will require admitting that his disciples are tradition breakers. The 'joke' version of a similar question in our culture is probably "When did you stop beating your ...?" These clever forms are accusations and are more about scoring points than getting to the truth.
Another difference from Matthew 12 is moving from a challenge based on the law (the Torah) to 'The tradition of the elders'. Washing your hands before you eat wasn't a requirement in Scripture, instead it was part of the oral tradition created by the religious leaders following the return of Judah from the Babylonian exile. The goal was admirable, to avoid another exile by ensuring God's commandments were kept. The tradition did that by setting a moral code boundary fence that kept you from transgressing God's law because you came nowhere near it. If God's law was that you must not break the speed limit on motorways, then the tradition was like saying you must not use motorways because then you can't break the speed limit on them.
Over time the tradition of the elders became more important than Scripture, after all if you keep within the outer fence you don't need to worry about going beyond the inner fence. In the process it moved power to those who decided and adjudicated what the tradition was and how it was applied.
Jesus avoids the Pharisees trap and rejects the way they have framed the question. He goes straight to Scripture "Honour your father and your mother" (v. 4) (Deuteronomy 5:16) and "whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die" (v. 4) (Exodus 21:17; Leviticus 20:9). Then he accuses them of using the tradition of the elders to bypass God's commandment to honour their parents, citing a practice in which people would say their money was 'given to God' and therefore not available for their parents.
Jesus had played a trump card and he rammed it home by directly calling out their hypocrisy quoting Isaiah 29:13.
We are often guilty of presenting the Pharisees as terrible people, and yet we fail to recognise how similar our own behaviour often is. One simple example would be to ask how many churches have squirrelled money away in building funds so that it can't be used to feed the hungry or be 'lost' to support other churches? If I'm honest I can find plenty of personal examples where I justify my own choices rather than follow the teaching of Jesus.
Yet, I don't think Jesus is attacking us for our failings, instead he is calling out our manipulation, our deceit and our hypocrisy. Our society is riddled with this. For me the relevance of this is Jesus challenging us to look behind the expectations and norms of Church and society to check if we actually following his teaching.
To Ponder:
- Which traditions and expectations are put on you that do not follow the teaching and example of Jesus? What needs to change?
- What might help us ask 'who benefits' when we are told we 'should' do something?
- How can we challenge scapegoating and see what is behind it? For example, blaming migrants for housing shortages or trans people for violence against women?
Prayer
Holy Spirit, we need your presence, your wisdom and your guidance to set us free, to go deeper, to dare to ask and wonder, to challenge, and to act. Come and be seen living in us, that others might find love and hope. Amen.
Bible notes author: The Revd Dave Warnock
Dave is now a Methodist minister without an appointment. He and his wife Jane are finishing a very extensive refit of a 1977 sailing boat so they can sail around the world for five years as sustainably as possible. The intention is to model sustainable living and help encourage connections between sustainability and faith. He wants to move from negative to positive impacts of sailing on vulnerable coastal communities. See their blog and YouTube channel