In what the Pharisees would have considered an amazing display of chutzpah, Jesus, after accepting an invitation to go to a Pharisee’s feast, didn’t ritually wash his hands before joining the meal. This ritual washing or baptizing of the hands was not required by the Law of God. It was a part of the oral law tradition that the Pharisees (and others) believed was handed down alongside the written Law and was the authoritative interpretation of the written Law. The Pharisees and their kind were the guardians of this oral law tradition. They believed that meticulously keeping these laws was necessary, not only for their own purity but for the purity of Israel in preparation for the coming kingdom of God.
Jesus claimed to be a kingdom prophet, proclaiming, “the kingdom of God has drawn near.” The Pharisees are, naturally, interested in him and his message. They have been preparing for this for ages. They will be the aristocrats of the kingdom.
Jesus doesn’t share the Pharisees’ view of themselves, and he doesn’t capitulate to those rites that they believe make them a cut above the rest and heirs-apparent to the kingdom of God. In fact, Jesus flaunts his disdain of their hypocritical cleansings when he refuses to submit to their ritual conventions before the meal. Understand, what he did was like taking a bottle of bourbon to a temperance movement meeting. He purposely ignored their ritual to offend his host and give himself an occasion to pronounce judgment upon the Pharisee and his friends.
If someone does this in our circles today, we say that he isn’t very Christ-like. Snubbing your host and pronouncing woes upon him and his friends at the meal to which you were invited go beyond rude. It is downright belligerent.
There are times when the most Christ-like thing we can do in given situations is offensive and considered rude or barbaric by the Illuminati of the day.
This wasn’t a tactic Jesus used on every occasion. When dealing with humble, repentant sinners, he was compassionate and tender. He used it with the hyper self-righteous hypocrites who were, in good hypocritical fashion, promoting double standards. If this tact is over-used it comes across as shrill and the person using it is just a war-monger with a cantankerous personality. He is eventually ignored. But when strategically used by someone whose life isn’t characterized by abrasiveness, this type of holy rudeness can hit the proper mark.
There are some areas of the church today in which a little holy rudeness needs to be displayed; where we need to refuse to capitulate to the zeitgeist where it is floating around in our church culture.
One of those areas is the issue of racism. With Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality making inroads into conservative churches, certain groups of people are considered a permanent class of victims while others within the church are considered oppressors. This creates a constant state of tension and a no-win situation for the “oppressors” because just by being a white male, for example, you are a racist … even if you don’t know it. You are being judged by the color of your skin and not the content of your character. The other group can’t be racist because … well … they aren’t a part of that other group. It’s a double standard. There is no opportunity for unity because someone is always being oppressed.
What we are supposed to do now as denominations is to make resolutions every year to confess and repent of our sins of systemic racism. If you dare oppose this new ritual convention of continual groveling, you prove that you are a racist. You’re not properly woke. You didn’t ritually cleanse your hands when you came in. It is obvious that you are opposed to the kingdom of God. (Theopolis Institute has a conversation about this on their website. I highly recommend Rich Lusk’s response to Vincent Bacote.)
We are also being made to kowtow to the evangelical’s version of feminism. To prove our kingdom-of-God status, we must go through the ritual of affirming that women can do anything a man can do … and probably better if truth be told. To suggest that equalism (“humans are androgynous with different plumbing”) is a lie, that men and women are oriented toward the world differently, and that there are some places only men belong is barbaric and demeaning of women; certainly not what any real Christian would say. You had better baptize your hands at the font of feminism by showing how woke you are on social media, or you will be ostracized by the luminaries. You want to endear yourself to all the feminists out there, both men and women. If you question a woman’s responsibility in her choices, this woman who is uber-empowered but not responsible for the consequences of her choices—a double-standard—you are a misogynistic pig. This is especially true in the realm of sexual choices. We see it in the broader culture in the Harvey Weinstein case. Even though Weinstein is a morally repulsive human being, many of the women with whom he engaged in sexual sins made choices and don’t want to live with the consequences, a truth that his female attorney, Donna Rutunno, is making plain. But even questioning the responsibility in a sexual relationship is obviously a remnant of the sinful patriarchy. Men are always responsible for the sexual sins of women. And, sadly, this creeps into the church. If you question a woman’s choices, you are part of the problem. Wash your hands, Neanderthal!
Wherever these extra-biblical standards of cleanliness are demanded of us—and there are many more—we can be rude, refusing to wash our hands.
