Tuesday in the Eighteenth Week of Ordinary Time, August 3, 2021

Matthew 15:1-2, 10-14

Some Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They do not wash their hands when they eat a meal.” He summoned the crowd and said to them, “Hear and understand. It is not what enters one’s mouth that defiles the man; but what comes out of the mouth is what defiles one.” Then his disciples approached and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?” He said in reply, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.”

Leaders who depend for their positions on public opinion tend to tell their followers or subjects what they want to hear.  Lately, an enormous industry featuring pollsters, advisors, and speech writers, among others, craft messages for the leader to read off teleprompters.  Politicians use them, bishops use them, corporate bosses use them.  Many of the messages these important people deliver are basically interchangeable, with stock phrases and bromides that are proven to obfuscate the truth, lull suspicion, or convey no meaning at all while sounding meaningful and earnest.  We can even see examples of this in the pop music world.  Some years ago a European musician worked out with a computer the elements most common to the most popular songs.  He created an algorithm with it, and so today’s pop music is governed by this algorithm.  Enough variety can be added to the algorithm so that the resulting songs sound a little different from each other, but the distinctions are merely cosmetic.  The result is crass manipulation.

The Pharisees tended to operate in this way as well.  They insinuated their sectarian interpretation of the Mosaic Law into the lives of their fellow Jews by telling them that these were the “traditions of the elders”.  This phrase certainly sounds very nice and appealing.  Folks like to feel that they belong to a group and adhering to the “traditions of the elders” seems like a happy and safe way to do this.  The problem with what the Pharisees were saying was that they used this phrase to make it sound as though their “traditions” were engraved in the Law.  This desecration of the Law made life harder for the people trying to follow it, and even distorted their notions of God and justice.  Most importantly for the Pharisees, it left them in control of the people’s religious lives.  They cultivated an image for themselves as righteous, told the people what they wanted to hear, lulled them into a false sense of security, and then slipped their poison into their water.

“Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?”  The Pharisees demand this as though the “tradition of the elders” was the Law itself, but it is not. “They do not wash their hands when they eat a meal.”  This is a ritual washing, not one out of concern for hygiene.  It would take time to do and accomplish nothing, but the repeated action over time made it seem necessary, and in this way fortified the position of the Pharisees who mandated it.  “It is not what enters one’s mouth that defiles the man; but what comes out of the mouth is what defiles one.”  The Lord made this point very emphatically.  In St. Mark’s version of the story, the Lord explains this saying a little further.  Here, St. Matthew strips down the action so as to make the Lord’s teaching stand out clearer.  The disciples understand what he is saying and they worry that the Lord is provoking the Pharisees, whom they think he ought to win over as allies.  But the Lord has deliberately provoked them, publicly reproving them for their corruption of the Law.  What has he said?  First, he says that one ought not strive for the mere appearance of virtue.  Second, he says that the Pharisees, who pay such attention to outward ritual, do so in order to mask the defilement within them.  They put themselves forward as religious leaders with their special dress and smooth phrases, but they are not chosen by God to be the teachers of the people: “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted.”  They are not planted by God but by the devil: “An enemy has done this” (Matthew 13, 28).  “They are blind guides of the blind. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.”  The blind — the people with their scanty understanding of the Scriptures and the Law — seek a guide to help them on their road, but the guide who offers himself is also blind — the Pharisee.  He knows as little as the common people he purports to lead.  But he pretends to know more, and convinces the blind folks that he can assist them.  Disaster inevitably results.

We follow not only One who can see, but One who is Light himself.  We listen to him and follow him.  There are many around us, in and out of religion, who try to tell us what we want to hear in order to control us for their wicked purposes.  Only Jesus tells us what we need to hear.