Ritual Abuse

The scriptures referred to are Mark 5:21-43.

Bathtime, bedtime, story: that's the usual ritual with a kid. And when you read a child the same story every night, or chapters of the same book, and you do voices for the characters, you have to be consistent. Your audience demands it. So the character with a querulous high-pitched voice had better not switch to a low gravely voice. If you do that, it spoils the ritual. And children are very conservative when it comes to rituals.

We all love rituals. We are exposed to them and we adopt some of them. We even create our own. Rituals are comforting. They give us stability in a changing world. And sometimes they are smart and efficient ways to do things. The checklist a pilot and copilot go through before every flight is both a ritual and a vital safety measure. The problem is there are 2 ways in which you can mess up a ritual. One is by not doing the ritual correctly, like, say, skipping steps. The other is to be so wed to the routine of observing the ritual that you forget its purpose, like absent-mindedly checking something off rather than stopping the ritual to see, say, why the light didn't come on immediately when you flipped the switch, or why, while on, it is flickering a bit. In that way a ritual can anesthetize you to what it actually going on and the whole reason for the ritual.

My videos of me reading the Bible on Facebook are getting shorter. That's because I am alternating between chapters of Joshua, which are mostly narrative, and the Psalms, which are fairly straightforward expressions of common emotions. When I was reading the Torah, the first 5 books of the Bible, I usually had to make lots of clarifying comments at the end to explain things involving translation, culture, and the various rituals. Of the 613 commandments in the Torah, more than 200 apply to the temple, the sacrifices, the priests and Levites. In addition, there are about 40 relating to the dietary laws, and several that have to do with what the Israelites should wear, how to maintain and restore ritual purity, festivals and holy days, not to mention civic laws for the ancient kingdom of Israel. Some are classified by the rabbis as chukim, laws which Jews observe even though there seems to be no logical or ethical reason for them. By the way, only 28 of the 613 commandments, or 4.5% of them, have to do with sex, mostly prohibiting all forms of incestuous relationships. All in all, about 1/3 are ethical rules which are directly applicable today or can be used to derive ethical principles, such as those about how judges, leaders and business owners should conduct themselves in performing their jobs and duties.

The reason I am bringing this up is that in our gospel today we see 2 instances of Jesus breaking laws set down in the Torah. In the first instance he is touched by a woman who suffered a flow of blood for 12 years. And according to Leviticus 15:25-27, not only would she be unclean, anything and more importantly anyone she touches is ritually unclean. That's probably why she simply tried to touch Christ's clothes. Still Jesus should have bathed, washed his clothes and remained ritually impure till sunset. Which is why she was trembling with fear when she confessed to him what she had done. But instead of being angry, Jesus says, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

And instead of then going through the ritual cleansing, Jesus continues to the next person who needs him, in this case a deathly ill child, though by the time he gets to her she has expired. Now if touching a bleeding woman would make Jesus ritually impure till evening, touching a corpse would make him unclean for an week! (Numbers 19:14-16) Yet Jesus takes her by the hand and tells her in her native Aramaic to get up and he restores her to life.

The point is that Jesus puts God's ethical laws before the ritual ones. To heal and to save lives are more important than rituals and supersede them. Breaking ritual laws for reasons of mercy do not dishonor God. Indeed as Jesus says in regards to the man born blind, the works of God are displayed in his healings. (John 9:3) Jesus glorified God by what he did (John 17:4) even if he did not follow every rule in the law of Moses.

And yet some Christians, though freed from the ritual parts of the law (Romans 3:28), often put technicalities above acts of mercy and grace. As Jesus bluntly put it to his critics: “Woe to you, experts in the law and you Pharisees, hypocrites! You give a tenth of mint, dill and cumin, yet you neglect what is more important in the law—justice, mercy, and faithfulness! You should have done these things without neglecting the others. Blind guides! You strain out a gnat yet swallow a camel!” (Matthew 23:23-24)

Jesus is not deviating from God's values when he does this. In the very first chapter of Isaiah, God says, “Do not bring meaningless offerings; I consider your incense detestable! You observe new moon festivals, Sabbaths, and convocations, but I cannot tolerate sin-stained celebrations! I hate your new moon festivals and assemblies; they are a burden I am tired of carrying. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I look the other way; when you offer your many prayers, I do not listen, because your hands are covered in blood. Wash! Cleanse yourselves! Remove your sinful deeds from my sight. Stop sinning! Learn to do what is right! Promote justice! Give the oppressed reason to celebrate! Take up the cause of the orphan! Defend the rights of the poor!” (Isaiah 1:13-17) Later in Isaiah he says of his people, “They lament, 'Why don't you notice us when we fast? Why don't you pay attention when we humble ourselves?' Look, at the same time you fast, you satisfy your selfish desires, you oppress your workers. Look, your fasting is accompanied by arguments, brawls, and fistfights. Do not fast as you do today, trying to make your voice heard in heaven....No, this is the kind of fast I want. I want you to remove the sinful chains, to tear away the burdensome yoke, to set free the oppressed, and to break every burdensome yoke. I want you to share your food with the hungry and to provide shelter for homeless, oppressed people. When you see someone naked, clothe him! Don't turn your back on your own flesh and blood!” (Isaiah 58:3-4, 6-7) The empty performance of rituals doesn't impress God. He wants real acts of goodness.

In Luke's version of Jesus' scathing critique of the so-called experts in the law, one of the things he says they neglect is love for God. (Luke 11:42) And remember, when asked to pick out the greatest of the 613 commandments, Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:5, saying, in essence, we are to love God with all we are and all we have. And he throws in, unasked, the second greatest commandment, from Leviticus 19:18, that we must love our neighbors as we do ourselves. Why? Because, as the Bible says, we are created in God's image. And so, as Jesus said, what we do to others, no matter how destitute, disabled, disadvantaged or despised they are, we do to him. (Matthew 25:40)

In Mark's account of the pronouncement of the 2 greatest commandments, Jesus says, “There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:31) What I can't figure out is why people who supposedly know the Bible forget this verse. Jesus is saying that above all of the laws in the Torah, above every commandment of God and definitely above any law of man, stand these two: to love God and to love other human beings.

And yet we have so-called Christians who want to demote these two commandments, if not repeal them altogether. Because there are other laws they like better. Some, such as the Westboro Baptist Church, want to put the prohibition on homosexual acts, mentioned only twice in the Torah, and at most 7 times in the entire Bible, ahead of everything else. And there are some who wish to put abortion, which was known in Biblical times, but is nevertheless mentioned nowhere in Scripture, ahead of every other commandment. And that despite the fact that neither of these two are mentioned in the Ten Commandments, nor even by Jesus. Again, what Jesus does say is that above all else we are to love God and love other people.

Jesus also says that these two great commandments underlie all the other ones. (Matthew 22:40) In other words, the other commandments depend on and can be seen as expressions of the two commandments to love. And that is easy to see in the commandments not to lie, steal, cheat, harm, or exploit others. It is obvious in the commandments to treat foreigners as fairly as we do native-born citizens, to give to and to uphold the rights of the poor, the fatherless, the widows, and the disabled.

It's also easy to see that much of the ritual law in the Bible cannot be fulfilled now. There is no temple and there are no sacrifices. Jesus' death on the cross ended that. There is no more requirement that followers of Jesus observe the Jewish dietary laws. About all that's left are the ethical laws, which govern how we treat God and each other. And that's what's essential, says Jesus.

In Mark chapter 7, Jesus looks at the ritual laws and traditions, like the dietary laws, and says, “'Don't you understand that what goes into a person from outside cannot defile him? For it does not enter his heart but his stomach and then goes out into the sewer.' (This means all foods are clean.) He said, 'What comes out of a person defiles him. For from within, out of the human heart, come evil ideas, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly. All these evils come from within and defile a person.'” (Mark 7:18-23)

So why do some Christians ignore this and get more hot and bothered about Biblical technicalities and things not mentioned by Jesus or not mentioned in Scripture at all? Because it is easier to observe such external things than to love others self-sacrificially as Jesus loves them. It is easier to pass laws that penalize marginalized people than to help the poor, the sick, the disabled, the mentally ill, the homeless, the immigrant, the outcast, the mother abandoned by her partner, the child without a father, the person with an addiction, and the worker who is being exploited. These aren't political issues, by the way. They are mentioned more than 800 times in the Bible. These are the people in whom we are to see Jesus and toward whom we are expected to act just as we would toward Jesus.

In his only parable detailing the criteria for the last judgment, Jesus only mentions sins of omission, specifically not helping those who need it. (Matthew 25:31-46) But aren't we saved by grace through faith? Yes, but what is the nature of being saved? Is it a mere technicality or matter of reclassification—you've gone from Team Satan to Team God? No, it is to be transformed into a new creation in Christ. (2 Corinthians 5:17) It is to become ever more Christlike, having the mind of Christ (Philippians 2:5) and the Spirit of Christ. (Romans 8:9) Good works don't save you but those who are being saved naturally do good works. They are the signs of spiritual health. You cannot go to heaven, that is, you cannot bear to be in God's presence, if you are a selfish, hateful, violent, greedy, envious, arrogant, or deceitful person. Because God is love and those qualities do not come from love and cannot be reconciled with real love. It would be intolerable—for you! In the presence of the holy, purifying fire of his love, you'd probably go up in flames.

As John says, the person who does not love does not know God. (1 John 4:8) Jesus said, “On that day, many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in your name, and in your name cast out demons and do many powerful deeds?' Then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you. Go away from me, you lawbreakers!'” (Matthew 7:22-23) Now based on what we have learned, what laws did these people likely break? The 2 greatest ones, to love God and to love our neighbor. Or how about this one: “A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” (John 13:34) In other words, love as Jesus does, putting aside rituals and technicalities when they get in the way of forgiving, healing, and helping the people Jesus died for.