A Year of Prayer: Season One Weekday Devotionalsনমুনা

The Jewish faith tradition had very strict instructions for washing bowls, hands, food, cutlery, and bodies. It was important for their religious practice and according to the rules of the Law that they be set apart, holy, and deeply cleansed. God’s will through the Torah—the first five books of the Old Testament—was that the people of Israel were to look like God, worship God, look to God, and love God.

These ‘rites,’ practical and supernatural postures before God, were part of a purification process that allowed God’s holiness to dwell among the people without breaking out because of sin.

Kind of like hand-washing and sanitising is now majority in the public’s language and consciousness, the Israelites had washing and sanitising across all aspects of community as standard practice.

But what does Jesus mean here when he strongly rebukes the religious leaders of the day, his people he’d come to speak to and save?

Perhaps these rituals and processes had become ‘empty gestures’ instead of proper worship. Rather than ‘coming from the heart,’ they had been reduced to obligation or force of habit. How can we know this? Jesus said this outward sanitisation and washing did nothing to cleanse the inward corruption eating away at their community.

The inside of a bowl or cup is what comes up against stains, remains, and debris. It is where all manner of contents are held and come into contact with. That’s the point of them - to hold things! But when they aren’t cleaned properly, they become infected, noxious and sick-making. If you’ve ever pulled a half-filled cup out from under a bed or behind a desk - you know exactly the feeling. Yuck.

Jesus here is saying that hearts and minds are made for filling. We are made for worship. We are made for cleansing. When we are filled with the right things and washed and cleansed by God’s grace, all will be right in our faith. But when we only care about appearing righteous or acting pious, it means that there is suddenly room for old things to fester and grow sickly, as the right cleansing no longer happens. We have become more hung up on appearing holy than practicing holiness.

This is a recipe for infection, and Jesus calls us to account for it quickly, to deal with it in his presence, so that we don’t become secretly sick while appearing publicly well.

Prayer: God, help me to be brave in this next season of cleansing. I come to you with my broken heart and sin and ask you to have your way. Fix, cleanse, and heal me by your grace and with your love so that I may feel refreshed and truly free.

Action: Sit and reflect for a moment on a time that was hard. Where could you see a ‘cleansing’ work?