When we last left the Gospel of Mark, we were detouring into the 6th chapter of John and the feeding of the five thousand, followed by the stilling of the sea – episodes also found in this same sequence in Mark. Hence, the logic of the lectionary detour.

This in turn provided the occasion to hear John’s Gospel for five Sundays running, and the 6th chapter’s eucharistic-themed discourses on the bread from heaven, the true bread, the bread of eternal life, the bread of the flesh of the Son of Man who will ascend where he had descended. To the bafflement of those needing the Spirit’s aid, to comprehend rightly and be nourished. “To whom shall we go, for you have the words of eternal life.”

Alongside these readings we have followed the Letter to the Ephesians to its final verses, and selections from 1 and 2 Samuel, concluding with David’s death and Solomon’s succession as related in the opening chapters of Kings.

For this Sunday, then, we begin a fresh cycle in Track One, now through portions of Song of Songs and Proverbs, works traditionally associated with Solomon in the history of Jewish and Christian interpretation. In the former, Proverbs represents the education of the young and so needing-to-be-wise king; Song of Songs, his life renown for wives without number and love; and Ecclesiastes, his aged wisdom: having been given the things he had set aside for in asking God for wisdom, that is, wealth and long life, the receipt of them, the surfeit of success and riches without end. Requiring a different kind of mature wisdom.

In Christian circles, following Origen’s early reading, a slightly different route leads from Proverbs to Ecclesiastes and then the Surpassing Song, representing growth in wisdom: rules (Proverbs), exceptions to rules (Ecclesiastes), and heavenly song, built upon and soaring above, earthly wisdom, in the realms dominated by God’s love inside of his very life, the source of love.

Our other fresh start is in the Epistle reading, as we leave Ephesians and enter the Epistle of James, one of the general epistles alongside those of Peter and John.

Our paired OT reading, coming alongside the Gospel lesson, is taken from Deuteronomy, the 4th chapter. Since this is the focus of the Sunday lessons, we will start here and fan out from there.

The movement of Mark’s Gospel at this juncture is from the famous healings of Jesus, with which the 6th chapter concludes, to a confrontation story in chapter 7, between Jesus and the Pharisees. The thread of continuity, presumably, has to do with Jesus and stricter Jewish traditions, with which he is in conflict, and his wider mission to all the world, Jew and Gentile both. This was foreshadowed in the dramatic raising of the centurion’s daughter and the women with the flow of blood in Mark 6—two kinds of uncleanness Jesus enters and redeems—and it will pick up again next Sunday in his encounter with the Syrophoenician, Greek—Mark’s word for Gentile—woman.

In this sequencing we balance two truths, central to who Jesus is. He does not reject the centrality of Jewish election and he robustly defends his mission to his own people. But at the same time he rejects misunderstandings of the law of God, not just those that reduce the realm of God’s saving purposes in giving the law, but also and especially those which make the law’s good purpose crushed under human tradition, which purport to guard it. And in so doing they crush its spirit and purpose.

We will have more to say about the encounter with the Syrophoenician next week, but want to note how that rather brusque encounter and exchange forms a counterbalance to our story for today: the condemnation of the Jewish leaders and their teachings concerning ritual washing and purification rites more generally.
It is clear from Mark’s summary that he regards the rejection by Jesus of the traditions of the Pharisees as just for that reason: they are traditions handed down and not central to the law’s own letter and intent. The quoting of Isaiah places him, Jesus, solidly within his own people, in the tradition of the prophets. They condemned lip service and the teaching of human precepts instead of commandments of God. His is not condemnation of the law but rather its manipulation to human purpose.

Hand washing has taken on a pre-eminence in the course of time that served to distinguish those who followed these latter, stricter teachings, from those who did not, even if done to guard—so it was claimed—the law’s letter, adapted to changed circumstances.

The reference to “all the Jews” must be an oversimplification so said in address to non-Jews in the audience so as to make the point, as well as to us, non Jewish readers of Mark’s Gospel. That is, the crowd of us all to whom the wider principle of the source of uncleanness is directed, as coming from within, from inside all of us, a nd not from hands or pots.

Our reading leaves out a clarifying example, in vv 9-13, where the law as directed toward care of parents has been set aside in appeal to a principle of dedicatory giving. Jesus is noting where stricter rulings, and more expansive ones as well, only encumber or hinder the law’s purpose and serve to make unnecessary distinctions and divisions. The Pharisees and Scribes are noting defiled hands and yet that on the basis of a defiled and manipulative heart, at work in all of us. A heart Jesus is coming to replace with a new heart of life in him.

Deuteronomy underscores the point. The Law is God’s righteous gift, above any and all laws of nations, above the commonsense of a Saul or the scrupulous fencing of the Pharisee or the “thou shalt not touch it” exaggeration of Eve. It is not to be added to or subtracted from. The law originates in an act of love and election, and is to be understood on the same terms. “For what other nation has a God so near to it as the LORD our God.” A nearness of love, the nearness of Jesus himself at the heart of the Law and revealing its true purpose before those who for whatever reason have added or subtracted.

The love of nearness and election lies at the heart of the Song of Songs, and our passage depicts this in terms of wooing and courtship. Distance overcome. Arise my love, my fair one, is the twofold refrain, the voice of the lover for the beloved, and the acknowledgement and the treasure of that.

The psalm chosen in response speaks of a noble song composed for a king, whom God has blessed richly. “God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above all others.” Here we see prefigured the love of God for his only son, the love of song, the love of lover and beloved. The love that permits Jesus to see to the heart of the law, beyond subtraction and addition, and to speak forth its true intention, and clear away the rubble. What is unclean comes from the inside and works its way into the world, infecting us and making the law a stumbling block – as Paul will later amplify the point.

The truth-speaking heart to which psalm 15 refers must be an implanted heart, and the blameless life a gift from the only man capable of giving it. James cannot state it more clearly in his opening chapter.
Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

And
welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.

This is new birth, first fruits, implanting, gifting, perfect because coming from the Father, whose only beloved son has won this through his perfect fulfillment of the law. We look now into that law, that law of obedient love in the son, and receive from him the capacity to be doers of the word and not mirror-gazing hearers only.