Tuesday in the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time, February 10, 2026

Mark 7, 1-13

When the Pharisees with some scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus, they observed that some of his disciples ate their meals with unclean, that is, unwashed, hands. (For the Pharisees and, in fact, all Jews, do not eat without carefully washing their hands, keeping the tradition of the elders. And on coming from the marketplace they do not eat without purifying themselves. And there are many other things that they have traditionally observed, the purification of cups and jugs and kettles and beds.) So the Pharisees and scribes questioned him, “Why do your disciples not follow the tradition of the elders but instead eat a meal with unclean hands?” He responded, “Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written: This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts. You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.” He went on to say, “How well you have set aside the commandment of God in order to uphold your tradition! For Moses said, Honor your father and your mother, and Whoever curses father or mother shall die. Yet you say, ‘If someone says to father or mother, “Any support you might have had from me is qorban”’ (meaning, dedicated to God), you allow him to do nothing more for his father or mother. You nullify the word of God in favor of your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many such things.”

In this passage, Jesus does something both bracing and merciful: he exposes a subtle way the human heart can evade God while appearing to serve Him. The Pharisees are not villains in the crude sense. They care deeply about holiness. They have inherited a tradition meant to safeguard reverence, order, and remembrance of God in everyday life. Handwashing, purification, attentiveness to ritual — these began as ways of keeping God close.

But somewhere along the way, the means replaced the end.

Jesus does not criticize their concern for purity; he criticizes the direction of their concern. Isaiah’s words cut straight to the point: “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” What has gone wrong is not practice, but priority. Human precepts—originally meant to serve God’s command — have become shields behind which one can hide from the demands of love.

The example Jesus gives is devastating in its simplicity. A person declares his resources qorban, a Hebrew word meaning  “drawing near”. In a religious context this means to draw near to God in order to present him a gift. And in doing this the person is excused from caring for his parents. The act sounds pious. It even sounds sacrificial. But it empties the commandment—Honor your father and your mother — of its living force. God is honored in name, while the neighbor is abandoned in fact.

This is why Jesus calls it hypocrisy — not play-acting, but division. The lips and the heart are no longer aligned. Worship becomes something one performs rather than something one lives.

And here is the uncomfortable truth for us: Jesus is not warning us against tradition as such. He is warning us against using religion to manage God, to keep Him safely at a distance. Traditions become dangerous when they allow us to feel righteous without becoming loving, correct without becoming just, devout without becoming generous.

The question Jesus leaves us with is not, Do you keep the traditions? but rather, Do your practices bring you closer to God’s will — or do they protect you from it? Do they sharpen the demands of love, or soften them?

At its heart, this Gospel is a call to reunite what should never be separated: worship and obedience, reverence and mercy, doctrine and love. God does not ask for cleaner hands at the expense of a hardened heart. He asks for a heart so alive to His command that even the smallest actions—eating, giving, speaking—flow from love.

Jesus does not abolish holiness here. He restores its center. And when holiness is centered again on love of God and love of neighbor, worship ceases to be vain — and becomes true.