What makes us spiritually clean or defiled? In the Old Testament there were a whole bunch of laws regarding what was clean and unclean. By eating the wrong foods, or engaging in wrong practices, people became unclean. By contrast, avoiding certain foods or practices kept people clean.

The hand washing ritual of the Pharisees was based upon serious devotion to those laws. Jesus' disciples did not practice the man-made religious rule, and they were criticized for it. In Matthew 15:10-20 Jesus shocked his disciples by his blunt and provocative statements to the Pharisees and then his explanation of that in private.

Firstly, Jesus strongly implied that these highly respected religious leaders were not "planted" by his heavenly Father and would simply be uprooted. He flatly declared that the disciples should ignore those "blind guides." Rather than being overly concerned with fastidiously adhering to religious rules of ritual cleanness, Jesus pointed out the more important spiritual cleanness.

Jesus did not ignore the root of the Pharisees' ritual, the clean and unclean laws of the Old Testament. Rather, he pointed to their real purpose, to teach us about being spiritually clean in our hearts. Fastidiously following the Old Testament food laws did not guarantee a clean heart. What goes into our mouths does not defile us spiritually. However, the words we speak do defile us, because they come from our hearts. Our impure human hearts produce evil ideas, murderous thoughts, an adulterous way of thinking, other sexually deviant ideas, thievery, lies and slander.

Jesus concluded his explanation by returning to the ritualism of the Pharisees. Rather than enhancing the commandments of God, religious ritual can tend to distract us from the matters of the heart. Our religion becomes only a fastidious following of the ceremonies themselves. The Pharisees had elevated their religious observances to a level equal with or higher than Scripture itself. Does that sound all too familiar? We Christians of all traditions, ancient and modern, need to examine ourselves to see if we are guilty of this error.

The point of our faith is not the outward religious stuff that we do, the superficial religious "show." Our human tendency is to turn Christianity into empty rituals, like the religion of the Pharisees. Often, rather than being helpful, those things can distract us from what God considers to be far more important, changing hearts from defiled to pure. Where is our focus, on religious formalities or on letting God wash our hearts clean?