2026-08-16 Mt 15 10-28 That’s Next to Godliness?
Scripture 1: Isaiah 56:1, 6-8
Scripture 2: Matthew 15: 10-28
So What IS Next to Godliness?
Cleanliness is next to godliness. Right? Right?
Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat.” Matthew 15:1-2.
Who would have thought washing your hands was a theological debate? Important enough to make the Bible? But peel back a layer, and you’ll see.
Cleanliness. And godliness. There IS an arguable connection. The arguments never end. Not now. Not then. Just ask Jesus.
—
Back in the 1900’s, when I was but a sooty waif, I thought this obsession with cleanliness was just my grandmother, being primitive. Raving about the good old days of lye soap. Now with bleach! You’re healthier without that top layer of flesh.
Purel? Ha! Compared to the old soaps, Purel is the Bud Light of antiseptics. You know what really cleans you? Leeches.
Remember back in our COVID era? When we were afraid to touch anything? Or anyone? Nothing says “Hello, glad you’re alive” like a heartfelt elbow tap. Carrying a pool noodle to maintain distancing, and to swat people who get too close. Spraying down our groceries. Oh COVID.
We’d stand under the instructional hand-washing signs, soaping up like a surgeon, singing the Happy Birthday song, twice. In Tennessee they told us to sing the chorus of Jolene. That’s two songs ruined.
For almost part of a year, we acted like we really believed “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” We were so close to God. About 6 feet.
In Matthew 15, we step once again into this debate between dirty hands and clean hearts. This time it’s between Jesus and some other Jews, the white-glove Pharisees. On the surface, it’s about cleanliness. But on a deeper level, it’s godliness. And purity. Of hands. And blood. And hearts. Purity of souls.
Even in the Bible, they were having the same fights that went around during COVID. They keep going around and coming around. Questions about the under-stuff, the stuff that doesn’t wash off. The ugly biases. The stains of prejudice. The dirt that never goes away.
Matthew 15 puts its finger on some really foul stuff. The same kind of stuff we hear online and feel in our squeezy stomachs. From TV talkers, or rally rousers. Shakedowns at checkpoints. And those times when we get mad when ask for another fork and the person waiting the table can’t understand us.
Matthew 15 asks, Who’s clean? Who's godly? Who's in? Who's out? Who’s a dirty foreigner? And if that’s what they are, then what percentage of our goodness do they deserve? How far do we socially distance them from our brand of salvation?
Cleanliness. Godliness. They were biblical issues for Jesus. For us, too.
—
Some of you remember the Handwashing Song from the happiest rock band ever – The Wiggles.
Before you eat food…
After you play with animals…
And after you use the toilet…
Wash your hands!
It’s no “Fruit Salad.” But it gets the point across.
For Jesus, washing your hands was the Law. It was holy.
Back in Temple times, priests were required to ritually wash their hands before eating sacred offerings to maintain spiritual purity on behalf of all the people.
In 70AD, the Romans flattened Jerusalem and burned the Temple to the ground, except for one wall. The rabbis decided to keep the faith alive. They said all Jewish people should ritually wash their hands before breaking bread. This way every home becomes a sanctuary and every meal is holy. They said we are not animals, so we shouldn’t eat like them. Be godly. Be clean.
In English, the handwashing blessing goes: Blessed are You, Infinite One, who makes us holy through our actions and honors us as we raise up our hands.
After Jesus, when the early church was growing, there were converts. “Foreigners” who didn’t grow up with Jewish decency and order. Even handwashing was “foreign” to these “beastly” people.
Churches asked, “What if they don’t do things OUR way? Can they still be members?”
Like, what if they weren’t dunked when they were baptized? What if they think trespassing is worse than debt? What if they don’t read the King James Version? What if their sanctuary has carpet? Well, obviously. Won’t be seeing THEM in heaven. Hope y’all’s rugs are flame-retardant.
Jesus looked at what was under the rug. He saw the dirt under the pointing fingernails. His point, and the dilemma his followers faced, was, what’s really important? How do you save the baby if the bathwater gets thrown out?
Rituals are important. Handwashing is important, in ways Jesus couldn’t begin to understand nearly as well as The Wiggles. Rituals are important. But which nes are essential? Are any?
And this is what the early church was trying to figure out. Along with pricklier issues. Like, circumcision, and women.
Yes, wash your hands. Do it well. Do it with God’s blessing.
But is that where the real dirt hides? Your dirt?
How clean do you have to be?
And still be godly?
And not some… animal?
—
But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
What???
Jesus! Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?
I think it’s important to remember: The gospels aren’t documentaries. They had no court reporters, no subtitles, no transcripts, no bodycams. We Presbyterians affirm, the Bible and Matthew’s version of the gospel is “the unique and authoritative witness to God and God’s activity in the world.” Matthew contains truth. But each gospel writer weaves their facts into a story of a bigger truth.
In this story, Jesus is just plain rude. Kids, don’t be like Jesus in this one. What Would Jesus Do? Well, don’t do that.
I think what Matthew is trying to say is that sometimes the followers of Jesus treated foreigners like dogs. They, like the finger-wagging Pharisees looked at this woman and her demon-possessed child, and thought,
“Animal.” “Filth.” “Probably never even washed a hand.”
And, given the times, the place, the sanitation, the absence of germ theory and basic scientific knowledge, the disciples’ assumptions may have been right.
But, there is larger truth in this story of cleanliness and godliness. The woman herself points it out.
She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”
She - a woman, a foreigner, life source of a demonic child – this dirty Canaanite woman corrects Jesus – JESUS! She changes his mind, opens his mind.
The truth that fills the dining room is that her station, her status, her race, her and her daughter’s gender, their cleanliness, their lack of godliness, their impurity, their demonic spirits – none of it – none of it disqualifies them from the healing mercy of Jesus Christ Our Lord.
As Paul writes in Romans 8: Nothing – nothing – can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus Our Lord.
And this unnamed woman and her daughter prove it.
Nothing – not us – not even Jesus himself – can separate us from the healing, the life, the holiness God bathes us with. From birth to death and every beautiful spring shower in between.
As we read in Isaiah:
for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Thus says the Lord GOD, who gathers the outcasts of Israel: I will gather others to them besides those already gathered.
There are no strangers, no outcasts, no dirty foreigners in the Kingdom of God. Everyone has a place. Everyone is bathed clean in God’s love.
Cleanliness. Godliness. For all.
The final word in this story says just this. The story finishes by saying: And her daughter was healed from that moment.
It sounds like the followers of Jesus, and maybe Jesus himself, in that moment, received some healing, too.
The cleanliness wasn’t NEXT to godliness.
The godliness IS cleansing.
And that’s next to nothing else.
[eos]
