Jamelle Bouie wrote an opinion essay in the Times a couple of weeks ago that really touched my heart. It beautifully articulated what I have been feeling about the broken state of affairs concerning this country’s response to the pandemic. In his piece about vaccine hesitancy he observes that we have lost the ability to respond communally to social problems like this health crisis, instead declaring the primacy of our individual agency and personal freedom; the idea that wearing a            mask or getting a vaccine are matters of personal and private choice rather than something we do for the wellbeing of our community. In a nutshell Bouie writes that since the 1980’s we have increasingly become individual creatures subject to the market and its vicissitudes rather than fellow citizens with mutual responsibilities and obligations. We’re losing our capacity for interdependence.

He writes, “…this is the society we have built, where individuals are left to carry the burdens of life into the market and hope that they survive. This so-called freedom is ill suited to human flourishing. It is practically maladaptive in the face of a pandemic.” He finishes his essay, “When you structure a society so that every person must be an island, you cannot then blame people when inevitably they act as if they are. If we want a country that takes solidarity seriously, we will actually have to build one.”

That’s a tall order.

It seems counterintuitive to ponder Bouie’s concern for our society’s health in the context of today’s Gospel encounter between Jesus and the Pharisees in which he criticizes what seems to be their overemphasis on hand washing and purity rituals. But actually the issues and questions raised are the same: How does what we do mirror who we are? How do we live authentically into our identity as children of God and members of community?

Our current COVID context may well have us feeling more sympathy for the Pharisees than we might have had in pre-pandemic times. And that’s not really a bad thing. Tempting as it is to see this story as a Jesus/Pharisees binary, there is more nuance here than there seems to be at first glance. There is more gray than black and white in this picture.

First, it is important to remember that, for the Pharisees, faithfulness to Torah was of utmost importance. Biblical storyteller Richard Swanson describes their motivation for ritual practices, not as part of a quid-pro-quo of earning God’s approval, but as a response to God’s care for Israel: He says, “Torah observance…offers a witness to an exhausted world that there is a God who is stable and orderly and loving.” And it is here that we must begin. Ritual practice is intended as witness to God’s goodness—as manifestation of right relationship with the Divine.

That being said, the washing of hands before eating, which is the focus of the conflict in the story, is not in itself a Biblical practice. What is Biblical is the practice of the washing of hands and feet by the priests before they served at the altar, which extended to washing hands before eating the food that had been sacrificed. Which then was interpreted by some, including the Pharisees, as the need for everyone to wash hands before eating, because in Exodus God called God’s people to be “a priestly kingdom and a holy nation”, perhaps comparable to the Protestant concept of the priesthood of all believers. The idea here that hands should be undefiled, as in not physically dirty, is an inexact translation of the Greek koinos, which means “common”. Hands should be washed in order to be sanctified, not common or ordinary, before eating. Ready to serve God as part of God’s priestly kingdom. The Evangelist’s assertion that all Jews followed this practice and rationale may be an exaggeration for the sake of his argument. Regardless, the conflict is stated clearly, but now perhaps we can hear it from a more enlightened perspective:

“Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”

Jesus wastes no time in calling them hypocrites. Play actors, role players, inauthentic. He throws Isaiah at them: “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”

Given what we now know about the Pharisees’ practice—that it was rooted in a relationship of gratitude to a caring God and that it called the people of Israel to serve as holy people—there is tension here. To what is Jesus objecting?

The Evangelist has put us in a risky spot. We have been tempted to cast the Pharisees in the wrong because they are opposed to Jesus, and to see Jesus in the right, because, well, Jesus. But this stark binary doesn’t work, and here’s why:

The Lectionary has excised part of the passage, in which Jesus argues that the Pharisees have misinterpreted the law to suit themselves regarding family obligations, specifically children’s financial responsibilities to their parents. Which is why he quotes Isaiah further, saying, “…You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” In other words, you have abandoned ‘Honor thy father and thy mother’ for your own convenience, shame on you.

So maybe that’s it—The Pharisees’ misinterpretation of the Law to suit themselves made them hypocrites in Jesus’ eyes. But. Swanson points out that not long before this encounter Jesus had disavowed his own family when preaching in his hometown, saying, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” The Evangelist shows us that Jesus will stand up for family as a concept against the Pharisees, but not necessarily for his own blood relatives in his hometown. Can we keep these two episodes isolated from one another—which would be easier and more comfortable–or do we need to hold them in tension, and hold Jesus to account? This is not the only time in Mark’s Gospel that we see Jesus in a more human light. It’s something to think about.

It’s tempting to let Jesus off the hook so he can have his speech and get the last word, but perhaps it’s more interesting to ponder the fact that Jesus and the Pharisees may actually be in violent agreement.

If we can step away from caricature and grant the Pharisees the dignity of the roots of their own spiritual practice, and if we can grant that Jesus’ criticism has a point but at the same time acknowledge the tension of his internal inconsistency, then perhaps, from a more nuanced perspective, we are ready return to our original questions.

How does what we do mirror who we are? How do we live authentically into our identity as children of God and members of community?

Jesus speaks of the heart, as does James in his epistle.The physical heart represents the spiritual core of our identity; the root of every intention, saintly or sinful. And the list that Jesus offers in this story primarily concerns behaviors that affect the community–something done to a person or group. Pride involves contempt for another, avarice involves wanting more at the expense of another, and so on. What we do ripples out from our heart, even when we think that what we are doing is personal and private.

What do I see when I look in the mirror? Do I see myself alone, an island among islands, distinct and independent from others, accountable chiefly to myself and maybe my like-minded tribe? Do I see one whose spiritual well-being is between just me and the Divine, irrelevant to society and the world around me?

That reflection is the way to a hardened heart.

The authentic spiritual life begins with a heart broken open by love and, often, suffering, which invites our hearts into compassion and humility. The authentic spiritual life, and everything that we do as part of that, mirrors the love and vulnerability of the God who created and liberated us. Our sacramental life—the ritual practices of the Christian household—stems from and is a response to our relationship with God. And by necessary extension, if our hearts are open, we are drawn out of ourselves into a life of interdependence and solidarity with the world around us. Eucharist sends us out into the world to love and serve the Lord. Baptism indissolubly marks us as Christ’s own and welcomes us into the household of God, lovingly bound in community by a Covenant that calls us to seek Christ in all persons and to respect the dignity of every human being. A Covenant that calls us, in the words of Mother Jones, to weep for the dying and fight like hell for the living.

This reflection of an authentic spiritual life is crowded, complicated, and whole. It is anything but solitary. Jesus issues a heart-opening invitation to remember our interdependence. If we accept his challenge, we can begin to build the world we say we yearn for.