Tuesday in the 28th Week of Ordinary Time, October 12, 2021

Luke 11:37-41

After Jesus had spoken, a Pharisee invited him to dine at his home. He entered and reclined at table to eat. The Pharisee was amazed to see that he did not observe the prescribed washing before the meal. The Lord said to him, “Oh you Pharisees! Although you cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish, inside you are filled with plunder and evil. You fools! Did not the maker of the outside also make the inside? But as to what is within, give alms, and behold, everything will be clean for you.”

“A Pharisee invited him to dine at his home.”  The Pharisee here had listened to the Lord preach and was sufficiently impressed with him that he asked him over for dinner.  He issued no casual invitation, for providing hospitality for an honored guest, as Jesus was, meant a small feast that would have entailed hard work to prepare.  The invitation may in fact have been meant for dinner on the following day, the main meal of the day coming, as it did, in the afternoon.  The Lord Jesus accepted the invitation.  He always accepted invitations.  He even made as though to go to places to which a Jew did not go, the house of the centurion who had the dying slave, for instance.  He went to houses where he knew he would be treated poorly.  He went to great feasts offered in thanksgiving, as when he dined with Simon the (former) Leper after the raising of Lazarus.  A formal dinner offered the host the opportunity to gain in social status among his peers by the dignity of the guest and by that guest’s approval of the hospitality shown.  The guest gained from the honor shown to him and by the connections and friends he was able to make at the host’s house.  In pursuit of this, the guest tended to adopt an attitude favorable to host and fellow guests alike.  The Lord Jesus, however, is not interested in pleasing anyone or in conforming to any model.  His desire is to save souls.  He does not curb his zeal for souls nor does he moderate his teachings according to the occasion.  Setting ourselves before him is risky to our complacency. 

“He entered and reclined at table to eat.”  These words might seem to describe a very ordinary action, but we must keep in mind that the One who enters this house and reclines at table as though one of us is the Living God, who created heaven and earth, who himself upholds all the universe and provided the food for this dinner.  The others may gaze at him and wonder who he is, but he looks at them and knows them down to their atoms.

“The Pharisee was amazed to see that he did not observe the prescribed washing before the meal.”  Stone water jars held the water thought necessary for the ritual cleansing the Pharisees taught as necessary before eating.  Yet the rule they taught as normative for all Jews did not in fact apply to them.  It applied to the priests in the Temple.  The Pharisees deliberately interpreted this law and many others in order to make the Law seem to confirm their theology.  They thought they were right in doing this because of their certainty in their beliefs.  Down through the ages, humans have poked and prodded, twisted and torn at the Law of God in order to make it justify their ends, but they do this to their own eternal loss.  We are so blessed to know God’s commandments, for him to have revealed them to us, and to be given the grace to follow them.

“Although you cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish, inside you are filled with plunder and evil.”  The Lord compares the Pharisees with cups and dishes, implying that he himself is their potter, who can rightfully judge them.  Cleansing the “outside” means the skin of one’s hands, and, in the spiritual sense, the whole physical body of a person.  “Inside” means one’s interior life, the heart, mind, and soul.  The Lord says in general of the Pharisees that they “are filled with plunder and evil.”  He says “plunder”, that is, taking that does not belong to them — their position as teachers, primarily, but this also refers to their greed.  “Evil”, that is, an evil disposition whereby they look for ways to harm others and build themselves up.  “You fools!”  The Greek here can mean, You senseless men, foolish men, inconsiderate men.  In the context, all three meanings fit.  “Did not the maker of the outside also make the inside?”  That is, God knows the whole of each vessel he makes and that when he has finished it and set it down, it is good.  If he looks at it again, so to speak, and sees filth within it, he knows where this has come from.  “But as to what is within, give alms, and behold, everything will be clean for you.”  The Lord closes his remonstration with this aid.  Perhaps these words brought to the Pharisee’s mind a familiar verse of the Scriptures: “He who has mercy on the poor, lends to the Lord: and he will repay him” (Proverbs 19, 17).  The Lord says, “Everything will be clean for you” — referring back to the water for the ritual cleansing.  The practice of giving alms, whether physical or spiritual, acts as a bath for the soul.  Alms makes sanctity possible for us.