Dirty Dishes (Luke 11:37-41)

A mother once lamented on Facebook, “I don’t know what’s harder: instilling good habits into my children or removing bad habits from them!” I bet all parents can think up one of those times raising their children. For my parents raising me, my parents struggled to get me to brush my teeth twice a day every day. I think even at one point we a chart to check off every time I brushed my teeth, and if I filled a whole month, I got some kind of reward, like my choice of video rental. Still, I preferred not brushing my teeth over choosing a movie rental. Every time my mother took me to the dentist, she would tell the dental hygienist to talk about my teeth brushing habits. My mother really didn’t have to tell her; she could tell just by looking at my teeth. She would always tell me, “Suppose for dinner your parents fed you a bowl of spaghetti, drenched in tomato sauce. Then for dessert you had ice cream, and for the following morning, you had your favorite cereal, but you had the same bowl. Would you eat out of that?!” Of course, I chimed in, “I don’t like tomato sauce!” but I could see the moral of the story. Eating with unbrushed teeth was like eating out of a dirty bowl. In the 21^st century world, such a bad habit only concerns hygiene. At most, people might stand away from you because of your bad breath. In the 1^st century, however, such a bad habit could bring into question your righteousness. Imagine someone calling you a morally bad person because of the way you clean or wash. Crazy, right? Don’t worry, Jesus found it crazy, too, and he addresses it in Luke 11:37-41.

While Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him, so he went in and reclined at table. – Luke 11:37

The scene opens with Jesus accepting an invitation to eat with a Pharisee at his house. While Luke does not give a name to the Pharisee, Luke wants his audience to identify this man as Pharisee. While Pharisees differed from the Sadducees in many ways, the big difference, in regards to this story, is the authority of the written law and the oral law. The written law refers to what Christians call the Pentateuch, which are the first 5 books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The oral law refers to the traditions and interpretations of the written law. According to the Sadducees, the written held the primary seat of authority, while the oral law held a secondary seat. According to the Pharisees, the written law had equal standing with the oral law. All God’s laws had equal standing with the Pharisees’ rules, according to the Pharisees. This will play an important role as the story continues (and if I may foreshadow more, the oral law concerns the external more than the internal or spiritual). Knowing the hostility between the Pharisees and Jesus, the reader might find it odd that a Pharisees has invited Jesus over for a meal. Some commentators, like Warren Wiersbe, suggest that the Pharisee might have wanted to watch Jesus more closely to hopefully catch him sinning in everyday life, but more probable Luke records this event at a time early on in the ministry, when the Pharisees are at least open to hear what Jesus has to say. In fact, in the 1^st century Jewish culture, Jesus should have felt honored that a Pharisee would invited Jesus to the Pharisee’s home for a meal because that meant the Pharisee felt impressed by the teachings of Jesus and wanted to hear more.

In the 1^st century Jewish culture, the Jews ate 2 main meals during the day. The Jews ate the first meal, called ἄριστον (áriston), around mid-morning, and the Jews partook of the second meal, named δεῖπνον (deípnon), sometime around late afternoon or early evening. If a Jew had a physically demanding job, he would also have a third, additional meal early in the morning to provide him enough calories to handle the tasks for the day. Since Luke 11:37 records the Pharisee asking Jesus to ἀριστάω (aristao), a verb form of the noun ἄριστον (áriston), the Pharisee probably invited Jesus to the mid-morning meal. A translation could accurately write that the Pharisee asked Jesus “to brunch” or “to lunch” with him. Also following the culture of the 1^st century, tables stood low to the ground, so people would recline next to the table to eat.

The Pharisee was astonished to see that he did not first wash before dinner. -Luke 11:38

The host feels astonished that Jesus did not wash, specifically his hands, before the meal, or his lunch. Before moving on any further, the modern reader should not think the Pharisees made this rule because they had a deep concern for hygiene. This had nothing to do with scrubbing dirt off of hands. In fact, the Greek word used in the Greek text is βαπτίζω (baptizo), from which the English gets word “baptize.” Thinking about immersion baptism would give a hint at the Pharisee’s practice. The Pharisees would dunk their hands in a large bowl or basin, and then they would lift up their hands in an upward motion, until the water ran down to their elbows. Again, this baptism of hands really didn’t wash them clean. In reality, their hands could be as dirty as before, except now they went from a dry dirty to clean dirty. For the Pharisees, washing hands brought the religious ceremonies of the temple to daily life.  As Christians, we believe that Jesus, as the perfect God-man, lived a sinless life, meaning Jesus did not break any of God’s laws. Therefore, we can assuredly assume that this washing of hands cannot be found in the Torah. Indeed, no Old Testament Law command such a thing; this washing is merely part of the oral traditions of the Pharisees. If anything comes across as odd, the reader might wonder if Jesus could have at least been courteous enough to follow his host’s house rules. In the Pharisee’s mind, because Jesus did not wash his hands, Jesus still was unclean and unfit to share a meal with clean Pharisees. Jesus could have been polite enough to make his host feel comfortable, but perhaps Jesus purposely left out washing his hands to teach the Pharisees a lesson.

And the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness.” – Luke 11:39

There are 2 schools of thought on how to interpret the words of Jesus in Luke 11:30. The first interpretation, and most popular, is to understand the words of Jesus metaphorically. To criticize the Pharisee’s concern with cleanliness, Jesus makes an object lesson using objects present at the meal. When I worked for Child Evangelism Fellowship, training to become a summer missionary, my friends and I would play a game called “object lesson.” One person would name a random object, and the other person would have to someone connect it to sharing the gospel message of Jesus Christ. Apparently, this game is very biblical and very Christ-like, as Jesus does the same thing. Naturally, the Pharisees would have bowls and cups out as dishes to serve the meal. Jesus uses the bowl and the cup to draw comparison to the Pharisees. Just like a dish clean on the outside and dirty on the inside, the Pharisees’ rules had made their actions look righteous, but their hearts were still dirty with greed and wickedness. The metaphor works perfectly. If you think about it, when you use a bowl or cup, you only use the inside. The outside can be dirty, and it will not impact your dining experience, but if the inside is dirty, the disgusting, leftover and rotting food will ruin the taste.

Consider the following example. At the Holcomb home, we run the dishwasher right before we go to bed. Praise the Lord that it hasn’t blown up or caught on fire. I’m the first one to get up in the morning. I might start my morning by eating a bowl of cereal for breakfast. First, I check the cupboard for a bowl. When I find no bowl, it will remind me that we ran the dishwasher the night before, and all the bowls still reside in there. I open the dishwasher. Before I go on any further, I have to pause and explain my dishwasher philosophy, for my dishwasher philosophy differs from a lot of people. I’ve noticed a lot of people, after scraping the leftovers off the dish, procced to rinse the dish before putting it in the dishwasher. Not me, that’s the dishwasher’s job, not mine! I throw it right in the dishwasher. If the dishwasher misses anything, I will get it afterward. Remember that. I open the dishwasher and pull out the first bowl. I notice the first bowl has this big splotch or stain on the inside of the bowl. I’m going to think myself, “Yuck, that will touch the cereal, that will touch the milk, that’s disgusting.” I put that bowl in the sink, and I’ll wash it when I get home from work. I then grab the second bowl. This second bow has a splotch or a stain on the outside, not the inside. I will probably think to myself, “Well, the spot is on the outside. It won’t touch the cereal or milk,” and I’ll proceed to eat out from that bowl. Again, the inside is more important because I use he inside not the outside. To connect to the Pharisees, the Pharisees had taken the time to cleanse the outside, but the inside remained unclean. The Pharisees had forgotten to clean the most important part!

Let me sum up the metaphorical meaning with my own metaphorical paraphrase of Luke 11:39. It is as if Jesus says to the Pharisee, “You see these dirty dishes? Wouldn’t it be foolish if you only washed in the outside of the job and not the inside? We’d miss the important part because that’s the part from which we eat. But that’s exactly you’re doing! You ceremonially wash yourselves on the outside, but on the inside, you are dirty with greed and wickedness. You missed the most important part!”

Some scholars, however, argue the words of Jesus could be interpreted literally. To be fair to the Pharisees, the Pharisees didn’t invent this rule out of pure imagination. While the Torah has nothing to say about washing hands, the Old Testament Law, specifically Leviticus, had a lot to say about clean dishes. In Leviticus 11, the chapter about clean and unclean animals to eat, Leviticus 11:33-35 adds, “If one of them falls into a clay pot, everything in it will be unclean, and you must break the pot. ³⁴ Any food that could be eaten but has water on it from such a pot is unclean, and any liquid that could be drunk from it is unclean. ³⁵ Anything that one of their carcasses falls on becomes unclean; an oven or cooking pot must be broken up. They are unclean, and you are to regard them as unclean.” In Leviticus 15, a chapter about handling human blood and other human bodily fluids, Leviticus 15:12 reads, “A clay pot that the man touches must be broken, and any wooden article is to be rinsed with water.” The Pharisees knew the Law had a lot to say about clean dishes. In fact, these two Leviticus passages were on of the hot topics of the day! Some Pharisees believed that these laws referred merely to the cleanliness of the inside of the dish, whereas other Pharisees believed the outside could make the dish clean, even if the inside remained unclean (once again, reiterating that cleanliness here has nothing to do with hygiene, just ritual). Perhaps the Pharisees wanted to go above and beyond what the Torah required. After all, the dish could be clean, but if someone with unclean hands touched it, it would become unclean. They wanted to make sure their vessels remained clean by washing their hands clean. While the Pharisees remembered these laws, and they went above and beyond to follow the law, at the same time, the Pharisees lived lives full of greed and wickedness. Luke, in his gospel, will constantly call them out as lovers of money, who will go to great lengths, and even evil lengths, to obtain money (see Luke 16:14 & 20:47). The had ignored the laws against greed and wickedness, which greatly outnumbers the cleanliness laws.

To review the literal interpretation, may I offer another paraphrase, with a little sarcasm. Imagine Jesus sarcastically saying, “Congratulations! You found some unknown, obscure law in the Torah, and you made sure you followed it to the letter, dotting every i and crossing every t, yet the Law has so much to say against greed and wickedness, and you managed to ignore all of them! But hey, as long as our dishes our clean, who cares if our greed makes the poor poorer!”

“You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also?” -Luke 11:40

In Luke 11:40, Jesus calls the Pharisees ἄφρονες, (aphrones), or foolish. The Greek language has a couple ways to call someone foolish. The UBS Handbook on the Gospel of Luke defines ἄφρονες, (aphrones) as “indicating culpable ignorance and carrying a strong note of reproach.” If I may paraphrase, ἄφρονες, (aphrones) means “someone is so stupid he should be apologizing for it because he has willingly chosen ignorance.” Jesus doesn’t mind calling the Pharisees such a strong, negative word because the Pharisees stand fully guilty. They have chosen to ignore their sins of greed and wickedness, and they have instead chosen to pride themselves in ritualistic washing of hands.

For the subject of his next sentence, Jesus uses the generic pronoun “he.” Does the “he” refer to the potter who made the dishes or the Lord who made humanity? This ambiguity leaves room for double meaning. Just like the potter of a clay vessel creates the both inside and outside of the vessel with one lump of clay, so the Lord, the potter of man, has created both the internal of the external of the person. Therefore, the Lord who created both the external and internal has the authority over both the external and internal alike. Here, Jesus insinuates a command to clean both the internal and the external.

“But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you.” -Luke 11:41.

If the Pharisee did not catch the implicit command Jesus provides, Jesus gives the Pharisee an explicit command, which will solve the inward uncleanliness. Translation and interpretations of Luke 11:41 have caused problems for scholars. Most scholars believe that when Jesus spokes this sentence in Aramaic (the native tongue of the land during the 1^st century), he probably included some wordplay, which does not translate well into Greek. Most Bible translations, like the English Standard Version (ESV), the Kings James Version (KJV), the New King James Version (NKJV), Revised Standard Version (RSV) and New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) translates the command as “give [as/for] alms” that which is within, and that will make the unclean clean. The solution makes the perfect sense. What made the Pharisees internally unclean was greed, the selfish desire for more than what is needed. The instructions Jesus provided encourages the Pharisees to a life of charity instead of a life of greed.  If the Pharisees change their heart from a greedy heart to a charitable heart, they will willingly and easily give alms, thus cleansing them. Instead of their greedy heart storing money to live a wealthy life, the Pharisees’ charitable heart will give their money to the poor and other people in need. Now the Pharisees will truly grasp God’s Law. They Pharisees thought they upheld the Law better with their traditions and interpretations, but they were having an adventure in missing the point. God gave the Israelites the Law so the Israelites could live together as the people of God. Giving alms benefited the community of God’s people, but ceremonially washing hands didn’t do anyone any good. Jesus challenged the Pharisees to think of the true heart of the Law, not some interpretation to make them feel comfortable about themselves. Then their outward appearance would accurately reflect they had the right relationship with God and His Law internally.

In light of the metaphor of cups and dishes, the command Jesus gives has even stronger meaning. Jesus might have referred to the food and drink in the dishes and cups. No doubt the Pharisees probably brought costly foods and drinks to the lunch. Jesus saw right through the expensive presentation. Jesus knew the money paying for the luxurious meal came about through the Pharisee’s greed. For their first step of changing the Pharisees’ hearts from greedy to charitable, the Pharisees should use their money to give food to the poor of needy, instead of using their money to buy expensive foods to show off to guests.

Note that verse 42 ends with Jesus saying, “everything is clean for you.” Let’s clarify what Jesus does not mean by these words. Jesus does not axe any Law in the Torah. Jesus does not claim that the good work of giving would provide penance for their sin. What Jesus wants the Pharisees to do here is to work on cleansing the inside so thoroughly that the overflow of the internal cleansing will also clean the outside. Instead of washing their hands, Jesus wants the Pharisees to wash their hands. If anything, Jesus might suggest that if the Pharisees can internally clean their heart, the internal cleansing will flow out to cleanse them externally, meaning all those extra laws and rules and external cleansing will no longer apply because it will come naturally. The Pharisees could truly eat with clean hands, not because they washed their hands, but because their hands did not partake in any greedy money grabs. After all, external cleansing without internal cleansing is a superficial cleansing. The Pharisees were guilty of exactly that superficial cleansing. The Pharisees did practice the giving alms, but once again, the Pharisees concerned themselves more with external than the internal. Jesus wants the Pharisees to give their hearts with alms, displaying a genuine concern for the poor, instead of simply giving because the Lord commands it in his law.

When Christians reads a pericope about Jesus in Gospels, temptation easily comes to put themselves in the place of Jesus. In reality, Christians might better put themselves in the place of the Pharisees. When Christians read Luke 11:37-41, they have to take a seriously look at themselves and wonder, “Am I making the same mistakes as the Pharisees?”

Do I concern myself more with my outside than my inside? Luke 11:37-41 exposes several dangers of focusing on the external over the internal. Concerning ourselves with the external over the internal will leave the Christian with an unhealthy view of God, of others and of the self.

As born-again Christians, with the blood of Jesus justifying us and the Holy Spirit sanctifying us, Christians strive to think and feel with God. The Bible clearly states how God does think and feel about this. In 1 Samuel 16:7b, the Lord has to remind his prophet Samuel, “For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” When Christian look at the inward, they see things as God see things. When Christians look more at the outward, they do not reflect Christ.

When Christians focus on the outside over the inside, Christians don’t see humanity, the creation God made in his own image, as God sees it. That’s a shame because it can cause Christians to miss out on God moving out on people. Let’s think back to the illustration of the bowls and cups. We know metaphors of bowls and cups which are clean on the outside but dirty on the inside represent people like the Pharisees, who hypocritically make themselves look good on the outside while they remain wicked on the inside. What about, though, a bowl or cup that is clean on the inside but dirty on the outside? Who would that represent? Does such a person exist? I suppose that this person is a newly born-again Christian. He or she has received the gospel message, and he or she has received it with great joy. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross has justified that person from all sin, and the Holy Spirit has begun sanctifying the person, giving them a pure, clean heart. Addictions and habits from the old, sinful nature, however still can be found ingrained in the flesh. That’s the person who is like a bowl or cup clean on the inside but dirty on the outside. Imagine if the Christian saw that person based on the outward appearance. The Christian might disregard the person as sinner, stuck in his sinful nature. The Christian might not approach him or her, or worse, not allow him or her into the church. If the Christian, however, can look at the person like God does, the Christian will see a person seeking to reflect Jesus. Not only should that cause the Christian to praise God for saving another soul, it should also cause the Christian come alongside the struggle newly born-again Christian to help him or her fight addictions and other sinful habits.

When a Christian concentrates on the outside more than the inside, it does not allow the Christian to properly self-evaluate spiritual growth. This is how tradition, which is a spiritual experience has passed the test of time, gets turned into a dogma, a tradition followed merely for the sake of tradition. The Christian finds himself or herself practicing the spiritual discipline just because that’s just what Christians are supposed to do. The Christian now focuses on what he or she is supposed to do for the spiritual discipline, instead of who he or she is supposed to become through the spiritual discipline. If not done properly, this can leave the Christian in a worse condition. The Christian now tries to cover up internal sin with more external good deeds, instead of changing the heart. Consider, for example, a child with a dirty mouth spewing foul words. A parent might choose to punish the child by washing his mouth out with soap. Now I get that the punishment comes from the nasty taste of the soap bar will discourage the child from cursing, but it doesn’t matter what brand of soap the parent uses, no soap brand can make the child stop cursing. The child has to make a change within the heart, and that internal change will lead to, not just action, but habit. In the same way, if think the problem lies in their outward actions, the problem will never be solved because they are not fixing the root of the problem. Instead, Christians need to spend time cleaning their heart and the mind, the thoughts and the feelings. Then, the outward actions will follow. Listen, I get why C.S. Lewis said in Mere Christianity, “Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.” He feared that if Christians wait to act loving until they felt loving, they would never get around to actually loving. My fear, however, is that Christians will fall into the same trap as the Pharisees. They will look loving on the outside, but on the inside, they will be filled with wickedness. I would expect those Christians to get the same reaction from Jesus as the Pharisees did.