So what, right? Who cares if they wash their hands? What's the big deal, anyway? Well, the Pharisees and scribes were really upset about this hand-washing issue not for sanitary reasons but because it defined who was an observant Jew and who wasn't. If you followed these traditions, you were a good Jew, as opposed to all the bad Jews out there who didn't wash their hands, didn't keep kosher, but assimilated with the Gentiles and collaborated with the Romans.

Ever since the Babylonian captivity, Jews were more often a conquered people than an independent nation. We all know that in Jesus' time, the conquerors du jour were the Romans, with their many gods and goddesses and the cult of Emperor-worship. The best way for a Jew to climb the social ladder or get political preferment was, as it still is in many places today, to assimilate. Those who did so, however, were regarded by the religious authorities as heretics, outcasts, traitors to their nation and to their God. So when the Pharisees and scribes see Jesus' disciples not observing the tradition of the elders, they begin to wonder whose side Jesus is really on-is he content to let his followers blend in with the Gentiles? There's a standard to be kept here, and he's not toeing the line.

The Pharisees and scribes thus ask a perfectly reasonable question of Jesus: "Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?" Jesus' reaction is anything but reasonable. In fact, he just about blows his top. He says: "Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, 'This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.'"

It's here that Jesus' brilliance comes through. He knew that since scribes spent many years studying the law and the prophets, any scribe worth his salt would remember that in context, the full scripture reads: "Because this people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me-in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines-therefore I will again do amazing things with this people, shocking and amazing. The wisdom of their wise shall perish, and the discernment of the discerning shall be hidden." Jesus wants the Pharisees and scribes to realize that they are getting distracted by issues of ritual purity and missing the "shocking and amazing" thing he is doing right under their very noses.

Over the past three weeks, you've heard three different sermons from three different preachers about the events of General Convention. I am beginning to think that just as the Pharisees and scribes were distracted when they focused on the issue of ritual purity, so we, too, are in danger of being distracted from the things God is doing in our community and in the world when we focus solely on issues at the expense of mission.

It is what we do, what we say, and how we think that sets worshippers of the True God apart from idolaters. By focusing on issues, we devalue our relationships with each other in Christ. We tend to reduce people to their positions, rather than realizing that we all have the right to be heard and the responsibility to listen.

The Pharisees and scribes thought that if they enforced the tradition of the elders, they could distinguish between who was faithful and who wasn't. But they were wrong. The only difference between a hand-washer and a non hand-washer was that the one was faithful to the Pharisaical party and the other wasn't. It didn't answer the question of whether one or the other was faithful to God. In fact, it begged the question by assuming that observing tradition was equivalent to worshipping God. What they should have been doing instead was paying attention to how God was calling us to relate to one another.

Jesus' response to the Pharisees and scribes reframed the issue entirely; in fact, it set the issue aside and refocused his hearers on what God was doing among us rather than on what we were doing to each other. His message swept away all questions about who was in and who was out, and revolutionized the way that Jews and Gentiles were called to relate to each other-as children of God who have equal access to redemption through Jesus Christ. We, too, are called to relate to each other-to all others-as people whom God loved so much that he sent Christ to dwell with us. God is still working wonders among us. The question is: Will we be too distracted to notice?