15th Sunday after Pentecost Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Context

Ritual Purity

The most important broad contextual issue to address with this passage is the concept of ritual purity, and the ways in which this served as a boundary and identity marker for first-century Jews. This can be illustrated through Old Testament examples, examples of particular rabbinic purity rules from the Talmud, or by explaining how tendentious these purity laws were in dividing Jews and Gentiles in the early church (perhaps using the debates at the Acts 15 Council at Jerusalem as an example).

It can be easy for 21^st-century Christians to miss how important and divisive these rituals were as the first-century church sought to understand its identity. It may be instructive to draw a…

1. Do you feel like you've ever been judged by people because you did something that was not wrong, but not traditional?

2. What's more fundamental to the way you think and feel about church? If you kept the "trappings" and traditions of your particular congregation — the place you meet, the order of the service, the style of the songs/music—would it still feel like "church"? What if you changed the substance itself but kept all the trappings?

3. Think about some of the traditions in your church. (You may need to remind those in some more contemporary and/or casual congregations that just because their pastor doesn't wear a robe, there's no processions, or incense, or any of that that churchy stuff, that they…