Be Clean Inside

Read Luke 11:37-13:17
 
Luke 11:37-41 As Jesus was speaking, one of the Pharisees invited him home for a meal. So he went in and took his place at the table. 38 His host was amazed to see that he sat down to eat without first performing the hand-washing ceremony required by Jewish custom. 39 Then the Lord said to him, “You Pharisees are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy – full of greed and wickedness! 40 Fools! Didn't God make the inside as well as the outside? 41 So clean the inside by giving gifts to the poor, and you will be clean all over.”
 
TWO things here challenge our views of cleanliness at mealtime. First, Jesus doesn’t wash his hands. Why not? The Pharisees are adamant he does so. This seems appropriate to us. But Jesus rebukes the Pharisees. Here’s how we understand the Pharisees’ challenge and Jesus’ rebuke.
   Washing one’s hands before a meal was not a common practice in this culture. Jesus was following normal mealtime habits. On the other hand, the Pharisees lived under certain rules they had developed in their tradition. Remember the Pharisees were well-intentioned men who desired to protect God’s laws from foreign desecration. But, as too many churches do today, they created rules that became restrictive threats against God’s gracious laws. One of those laws required the Pharisees to diligently wash their hands and the outside of their cups. That seems good. But then we see the second objection we might have to their cleanliness rules. The Pharisees’ law permitted the cup’s inside to remain unwashed! A cup, then, could be outside clean and inside dirty. That’s how Jesus saw the Pharisees - outside clean and inside dirty.
   The Pharisees were so chained down in their “do-this-do-that” traditions, they could not see Jesus was God’s active Word come from heaven to fulfill the law they claimed to defend.  Jesus’ angry rebuke called them to wake up to the truth. “Fools! Didn't God make the inside as well as the outside?” Self-righteously, they gazed onto the righteous Christ with their stained hearts. They are the people today who cling to church rituals and rules that lift up leaders while hiding Jesus.  
   Jesus urged these religious leaders to get clean. To do so they would need to rise from the table and put God’s law into action.
   Jesus wants you at the table of grace with him. There is a right, clean way to be his disciple. Being close to him, you will know what to do.