26. Mark 7:1-13: Tradition and God's Word
The two dramatic stories of a miraculous feeding and a sea walk have given some major clues as to who Jesus is even though the disciples don’t get it. Though scarcely as compelling, the inter-Jewish debate Mark narrates here follows the previous stories nicely. Mark has made huge claims for Jesus – the hugest! He is the messiah! Jewish leadership, however, were not going to take that claim sitting down. It’s not surprising, then, that Pharisees and scribes come to him to contest his spurious (to them) claims. They attack him on purity issues – the nest of traditions of washings before meals that marked Jews off from other peoples as Jews, God’s people. Jesus’ disciples apparently no longer observed these regulations or human traditions. Surely messiah would not condone such flaunting of Israel’s identity markers. He speaks for Israel after all. Indeed he does. And that’s just why his disciples engage in such scurrilous behavior. The issue here is who really speaks for I...