Inside Out (Luke 11: 37-54)

By now you know that every time Jesus took his place at the table, reclining with the other invited guests, he turned expectations upside down. At a Roman meal focused on honoring Roman gods and the Roman emperor, he challenged Roman society in a way that can only be called revolutionary.

Jesus challenged the entire structure and foundation on which Roman society was built. He welcomed uninvited party-crashers from the city streets as honored guests, much to the embarrassment of his hosts. It was thought that the presence of such riff-raff would make the formal gathering and all who attended unclean, but Jesus believed that just the opposite was true, that the uninvited guests were made clean by the faith that brought them into his presence.

In today’s banquet story, there is no uninvited guest. There is no unclean person from the street crashing the party. And yet, cleanliness and uncleanliness are again at the heart of the symposium conversation.

It begins when the host and guests at this particular banquet wash their hands. They didn’t do it for hygiene; they didn’t know about germs and bacteria and things like that.

But they still washed their hands to symbolize that, spiritually speaking, they were clean. They were pure. They were holy.

The Pharisees, in particular, took this ritual seriously. The host of this meal was a Pharisee, and many of the guests were as well. The Pharisees believed that only by maintaining their purity, holiness, and spiritual cleanliness would God take notice of them, and hopefully one day intervene and end Roman oppression.

So rituals like this were very important to the Pharisees, and they tried hard to get everyone else to perform the same rituals as they did.

But Jesus, quite conspicuously, did not wash.

And this was an insult to the host.

Why did Jesus not wash his hands? Was he against handwashing?  Did he like eating with dirt under his fingernails? Did he disapprove of handwashing?

I don’t think so. My guess is that Jesus thought handwashing was a good ritual, at least when done with proper intent…

I’m reminded of Alexander Campbell, that 19^th century minister who helped start the Disciples of Christ. He once refused to take communion in a church where he was worshiping. It’s not that he disapproved of communion; quite the contrary! Communion was vitally important to Alexander Campbell, and even today, in the movement he helped start, we have communion every Sunday. Many Protestant churches do not.

But Alexander Campbell believed that the way communion was practiced in that church and in that time, was wrong. In fact, in many ways, it was the opposite of what communion should be. And for that reason he refused to participate. For that reason, he walked out of church without taking communion.

Perhaps Jesus’s views on handwashing were similar to Alexander Campbell’s views on communion.

I think Jesus may have appreciated the idea behind the handwashing ritual, but the meaning of the ritual had become so perverted that he refused to participate.

When the host of the banquet noticed that Jesus did not wash, his eyebrows were raised and his mouth was open. It was offensive. Remember, at a formal banquet like this, everything was done in order to impress others. Jesus had been invited because the Pharisee hoped that he would contribute to the post-banquet conversation with his unique ideas on religion and the kingdom of God, thus impressing the guests who were present.

But one expectation all the guests had was that they would be dining with people who were, in all the important ways, like them. People who were holy; righteous; clean.

So when one of the guests refused to wash his hands – refused to demonstrate his cleanliness – they immediately began to second-guess their decision to attend this banquet. After all, they were in the presence of a man who refused to wash; and if he refused to wash, if he refused to demonstrate his cleanliness in this way, then they were dining in the presence of one who, they could only assume, was unclean. And a person who associates with the unclean becomes unclean himself.

To say that the host was amazed that Jesus did not wash is probably not enough. I think horrified might be a better word. He was horrified because by inviting a guest who refused to wash, he has contaminated all his guests with uncleanliness.

But what does it mean to be clean or unclean?

The 11^th point of the boy scout law is “A scout is clean.”

I think that I – like most young scouts who hear that for the first time – wondered why it’s so important to be clean. I mean, really: what does taking a shower every day have to do with becoming a man of good character?

But of course, being clean means more than taking a shower every day.  According to the boy scout handbook, “a Scout keeps his body and mind fit and clean. He chooses the company of those who live by high standards. He helps keep his home and community clean.”

Back in 1977, a boy scout in Baltimore, Maryland earned his Eagle Scout rank. His name was Mike Rowe, and he later became famous for hosting a TV show called “Dirty Jobs.”

When it comes to the 11^th point of the scout law, Mike Rowe says: “a scout is clean … but not afraid to get dirty.”

The Pharisees were afraid to get dirty. They misunderstood what it meant to be clean. They missed the point.

Jesus explained it to them. “You pay more attention to the ritual than to what’s really important. You pay more attention to the ritual than to what the ritual stands for. Ceremonial washing of hands, cups, plates, bowls, symbolizes the cleansing of one’s soul…”

The Pharisees are fools because they see the washing as an end to itself, rather than a symbol pointing to something deeper and more profound. From a spiritual standpoint, it’s not actually important whether one’s hands are clean or not.

I’m not talking about hygiene here. From a spiritual standpoint, what’s important is that the handwashing reminds you to consider how clean you are on the inside. You don’t wash your hands to show off to the world how clean you are. You wash your hands as a sort of silent, personal prayer, expressed symbolically.  Washing your hands is meant to make you pause and be present, be mindful, be aware of your own spiritual state.

In the same way, many Christians throughout the world are currently doing things like fasting or abstaining from certain types of food, for Lent. They’ve given up meant, or chocolate, or alcohol, for these forty days leading up to Easter.

Fasting like this is good all on its own, and can provide benefits to one’s health. Just like handwashing.

But from a religious standpoint, there’s more to it than that.

The point of fasting or abstaining is to draw a person’s attention to matters of faith, to make a person more aware of the cleanliness of one’s soul, to focus on gratitude and one’s dependence on God.

If you are abstaining from certain foods without focusing on these spiritual things, then it’s just a diet. And a diet can certainly be good. But it’s not a spiritual practice. Just like cleanliness of one’s body, or cleanliness of one’s hands or one’s bowl or one’s cup, is good… but by itself, cleanliness is not a spiritual practice.

And focusing only on the cleanliness of the hands or the bowl or the cup – the cleanliness on the outside – misses the point.

Jesus says: “take care of the things that are on the inside, and then everything will be clean for you. If you are clean on the inside, you don’t have to worry about what’s on the outside.”

So, again, Jesus reverses the direction of flow. The Pharisees thought that if they focused on the outside, the inside would become clean, but Jesus says focus on the inside, and that will make the outside clean.

The Pharisees thought that having an unclean person in their midst would make them unclean, but Jesus says having an unclean person in your midst gives you the opportunity to make them clean by ministering to them with compassion, which will keep you clean as well.

Everything’s backwards with Jesus. Everything goes in the opposite direction from what those around him expected.

Another spiritual practice that we engage in is giving tithes and offerings to the church. Why do we do this? Why do we give ten percent of our income – ten percent of all we have – to God? Couldn’t God, if God wanted to, accomplish God’s goals without our gifts?

Of course God could. But our act of giving is just the outside, visible action, and what happens on the inside is just as important, if not more important, than what happens on the outside.

When we give, we learn about justice. We learn about love. We help build the kingdom of equality, the sharing society, the beloved community. That’s the deeper significance associated with giving.

But some aren’t interested in sharing or loving. Some aren’t interested in justice, or what’s right in God’s eyes. Some are only interested in going through the motions, and they give, not because God calls them to share and to love, but simply to make themselves look better in the eyes of others.

What you should do is give, and let your giving teach you to love, and share, and to work for what’s right. Give, and in giving, learn to be grateful. Give, and realize that in a world of inequality and injustice, you can make a difference in the world by how you live and by how you love.

In all these meals, Jesus upends the Roman world. It’s a paradigm shift, and paradigm shifts don’t come easy. When all of society is based on the idea that the world is flat, the person who comes along and says that the world is round is going to have an awfully hard time convincing people.

The gospel of Luke presents numerous stories of Jesus attending a banquet, and shocking his host and the other guests with his ideas of the kingdom of God.

Good news comes from God, not Caesar.

In God’s kingdom, the uninvited guests are welcome and honored.

Those who are first in this world will be last in God’s kingdom, and those who are last now will be first.

The washing rituals are about what’s on the inside, not what’s on the outside.

Every time Jesus spoke, people’s heads were reeling. In our staff meetings here at church we’ve been talking about the changes to our congregation – changes to worship, changes to the look of the building… so many changes – and the difficulty some are having adjusting to all these changes. And we’re trying to slow down a little on all the changes, to give everyone a chance to catch their breath.

But all these people Jesus dined with never got that chance. Every time Jesus talked, their world got turned upside down.

And for we who gather every week around this banquet table…something we do in remembrance of Jesus… it’s so easy to see how so much in our world is also in need of being turned upside down. There is injustice. There is inequality. There is racism and prejudice. There are increasing burdens being placed on the poor, and greater protections for the rich. There is injustice in our prison system, our immigration system, and our health care system. Every day, violence is committed against the earth itself.

Meanwhile, we are gathered here, around this table, where Christ is present. At this table, Christ speaks to us, calls to us, just like he did to people who gathered with him at the table 2,000 years ago. At this table, he challenges us to make God’s kingdom present, on earth as it is in heaven, now, in our time.

It’s a call to revolution, to turn the world upside down.