22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

In order to understand what is going on in this story, we need to realize that it is to be read in the context of what has come just before it, namely the feeding of the 5000. It is no accident that purity laws in Jewish customs and traditions revolved around food and eating. It is a very sensitive and potentially dangerous time. The corona virus that likely originated in an exotic food market in Wuhan illustrates this point eloquently. Thus Jews were very careful about who they broke bread with and about how they did it. Their complex purity laws would have rendered a meal for 5000 people out in the open air completely unthinkable. Where would you get all the water to allow these people to perform the necessary ablutions?

A story is told of a Jewish rabbi who had been imprisoned and was on a very meagre rations of food and water, but enough for him to survive on. He was however inexplicably becoming weaker and weaker, and the guards eventually had to call in a doctor to examine him and find out what was wrong for fear that he would die otherwise. The doctor concluded that he was dehydrated. The guards were surprised at this because they were giving him enough water for him to remain adequately hydrated. The doctor instructed them to watch what he did with his water at his mealtimes because it was clear to him that he was not drinking it. Sure enough, when they watched him at his next meal time they observed that the rabbi was using most of his meagre water ration to perform the required ritual washings of his hands before a meal, and thus was not left with adequate water. A really strict Jew would rather die of dehydration than eat with unclean hands.

This was the stark choice that would have often faced jesus and his disciples and the especially the crowds as they frequently had to eat out in the open, far away from any stable water sources that would provide them the necessary water for the purity rituals demanded by their traditions. So the choice was either observe the tradition and go hungry – or eat and ignore the tradition. When the Pharisees heard of the meal for 5000 people that had just happened, they were probably aghast – that this person who claimed to be a prophet and a holy man had just led 5000 people to contravene purity laws. They then catch Jesus and his disciples doing it again just a few days later and decide to corner him on this.

The reason that they were so aghast is that these purity laws that the Jews had were not only for their own internal spiritual purity – but they were also supposed to be one of their major identity markers, something that distinguished them from the pagan people that surrounded them. This was very important, for if Israel was to be a light to the other nations, and a witness to the holiness of their God YHWH, then it was important that they be able to witness this holiness and purity to other peoples. For Israel, their holiness came from being set apart from the other peoples, and the way that they maintained this distinctness was through boundary markers that emphasized that they were not like other people, that they were a pure and holy nation who did not eat with dirty hands.

Jesus doesn’t reject their aspiration to be pure and holy. He considers that this is vital, but he tries to reformulate their idea of how to show this holiness and purity. He tells them that it is not what goes into a person that makes them unclean, but rather what comes out of a person. Furthermore, I think that through the feeding of the 5000, Jesus also redefines holiness not as exclusion, but rather as inclusion. I think that this point is even further emphasized when we consider that the feeding of the multitudes in both stories in Mark takes place on the border with gentile territory. After both stories (Mk 6: 30-44 and Mk. 8: 1-10) Jesus departs from Jewish areas and makes a foray into Gentile territory. It is almost as if he is using the feeding of the multitudes as a prelude to a far more inclusive proclamation of the Kingdom to the Gentile peoples.

What makes us clean, therefore, is taking away the obstacles that stand in the way of us all celebrating together. The feeding of the 5000 was made possible by Jesus’ decision to ignore the rules about ritual purity and by encouraging people to eat with unclean hands. Imagine if Jesus had wanted to perform this great sign of God’s providence and largesse, but had let the rule about not eating with unclean hands get in the way of such a great celebration. That would have been a great loss indeed, and so of course Jesus realizes that we should not let man-made precepts and laws get in the way of the communion that God wishes to usher us into.

I would like to conclude with a personal example which happened a number of years back when I was chaplain to a certain youth group in Zimbabwe. There were about 20 youths in this group and we had gone on a pilgrimage to Malawi. On the first day of our trip we were welcomed by the youth of a certain parish in quite a poor semi-rural area on the outskirts of Blantyre. They welcomed us with much joy, dancing celebration and prepared a meal for us. A couple of days later we were due to go to the shores of Lake Malawi for a day to be spent on the beach. As it was at least 150 miles away from where we were staying and we were not sure of being able to find a cheap restaurant nearby, we decided to shop for a picnic lunch in town the day before and then have a picnic on the lakeshores. At the last minute the parish priest, to whom we had mentioned these plans, decided to hire two small buses and send some of the youth from his parish to join us on our day at the beach. We had made a vague plan to have an open-air mass on the lakeshore and then have our lunch. Talking to the leaders of the youth from this other parish, I established that they had not actually brought lunch. I saw that if we were to celebrate mass together, we would have to share our lunch with them – but coming from a Western perspective – we had calculated exactly the portions for the lunch according to our number of 20. My Western tradition and background did not permit me to think outside the box and see how a slice of polony could be divided into two, or even three. A roll could be cut in half, so that each person gets a share. Instead, I decided that it would just be best if we had our lunch separately and then had mass when we got back home. So it was that we simply ate our lunch apart and then met together to play volleyball.

Later it occurred to me that I had let my Western tradition get in the way of a chance to bring about communion – both sacramental communion in the celebration of the Eucharist together, but also communion in terms of fellowship. The Shona have a saying – ukama igasva inozadzikiswa nekudya. Relationship is a clay pot that is filled by eating. We should not let tradition get in the way of hospitality. The Shona tradition is very different from the Western tradition that is so obsessed with the exact right portions for each person. In the Shona tradition, there is always enough for everyone, in fact in the Shona tradition, food is not served on individual plates, everyone eats from the same plate. In this sense, it is the relationship that determines the meal, and not the other way around as it is sometimes in the Western tradition where the meal determines the relationship – and if there is not enough for everyone, then relationship gets short shrift. This incident at Lake Malawi left a profound impression on me and left with the resolution that going forward I would always seek to use my priesthood to be an instrument of creating relationship. Like Christ, we are all called to use our common priesthood of the baptized to bring people together around the tables of our food and friendship.

Questions for reflection

1. How do I seek to set myself apart from others and show that I am different as a follower of Christ? Do these ways bring me closer or set me further away from others?
2. Are there any ways in which my own culture and traditions pose an obstacle to me and my community experiencing the fullness of communion that Christ wishes to bring me?
3. Have I recently seen someone taking the courage to go against tradition in order to be more inclusive? Did that leave me inspired or condemnatory?