Clean Hands / Clean Hearts

The Normal Orthodox Faith invites us to confront the too-small mindset of the physical vs. the spiritual. The Faith insists that the physical and the spiritual are together!

After having lived through a pandemic that scared us all, the old wisdom of “wash your hands” took on a new urgency. Of course, modern medicine was completely transformed when we discovered that hygiene was key to patients surviving! Washing your hands keeps you healthy!

It’s a good thing.

And once again we see the parallel between the physical wisdom of disciplined behavior and the spiritual application of the very same wisdom. I wonder about the temptation to miss this connection between life's physical and spiritual dimensions. To be sure, it makes sense to me that a modern man is convinced that all there is to reality is what he can see. Someone religiously wedded to the scientific method of human reality will certainly downplay or even dismiss any notion of a “spiritual life.”

But I don’t understand how those who say they believe in Christ can miss this connection. How can a Christian who has as her heritage the theological depth, wisdom, and worship of 20 centuries of consistent Christian testimony miss such a vital reality? We are THE religion of the Incarnation, where God Himself married the physical to His eternal Divinity! The biggest hint in the universe is the nature of what God intended for us to know! For we Christians, there is no division between the physical and the spiritual.

Why do you think historic Christian worship has always been physical with candles, incense, icons, vestments, movements, Bread and Wine, and so on? We continue the work of the Incarnation by never falling back into that old, false division of the physical and the spiritual.

Perhaps this truth is so easily missed because so many followers of Jesus today are unaware of the history of the faith they say they believe. What a tragedy! What a shame!

Look at our lesson today in Matthew 15:12-21:

“At that time, the disciples came and said to him, ‘Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?’ He answered, ‘Every plant which my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.’ But Peter said to him, ‘Explain the parable to us.’ And he said, ‘Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach, and so passes on? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a man; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man.’ And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon.”

While I doubt the Lord is teaching His disciples that it’s OK not to wash their hands before eating, I think the bigger picture here is quite clear.

You see, the Lord considered the Pharisees “blind guides” not because they taught a strict observance of the Laws of Moses and Torah, especially the dietary laws, but because these Pharisees had forgotten the “WHY” behind all the wisdom of the Law and the Prophets. They had forgotten that the PURPOSE of all this wisdom was to clean the skin and the heart! To transform the soul of humanity into lovers of God and not mere lovers of their own selves.

There is a reason why it’s easier to “follow the rules” or “fight against the rules.” Both of these emotionally driven motives miss the point! The real work is on being wise enough, humble enough, and attentive enough to see behind the wisdom to the WHY. Why did God set up His creation the way He did? Why did God make humanity? Why does God send us prophet after prophet and, in the end, His own Son?

Because God loves us and intends to make us so much like Him that we are at home in His presence forever. That’s WHY! Get this, and your motivation for following Christ will forever be transformed from a Kindergarten motive of “I don’t want to get in trouble” or a Selfish motive of “I want to get the prize of golden streets” to one of genuine love for God and a foundational desire to be with Him.

St. Emilian succeeded St. Nicholas as bishop of the city of Cyzikos in Asia Minor in the 9th century. At this time, Islamic armies were terrorizing the Roman Empire, and the politicians of Constantinople fell into the heresy of iconoclasm in hopes of appeasing their Muslim attackers. At this time, the Roman Emperor was Leo the Arminian, and he persecuted the Orthodox for venerating the holy icons. He summoned the Orthodox bishops and instructed them to stop teaching the Orthodox Faith regarding the holy icons, but St. Emilian refused to agree. He preferred the true Faith to the shallow heresy of iconoclasm. This resulted in him enduring many tortures and, finally, exile, where he fell asleep in the Lord in 820 AD.

Today, do you catch yourself just going through the motions of prayer, fasting, and generosity in your life? It’s easy to fall into this trap of everyday living. The key to avoiding this is to keep before our eyes the reason for our disciplined life in Christ: to make us like Christ, to truly clean our “insides” as well as our “outsides.” Our timeless Christian faith marries the physical and spiritual aspects of humans to forever end the hypocrisy of “following the rules” while remaining broken and self-centered in our hearts. Anything less is ultimately a betrayal of the miracle of God becoming flesh for us in our Lord Jesus. Let’s have clean hands AND hearts! Let’s live a Normal Orthodox life!

P.S. As a valiant defender of the Trinity, the Church for which you suffered glorifies you with hymns, O Emilian, since you suffered for Her. Therefore we honor your memory. Deliver your servants from all assaults of the Enemy.

Fr. Barnabas Powell is the parish priest at Sts. Raphael, Nicholas, and Irene Greek Orthodox Church in Cumming, GA. He is also the founder of Faith Encouraged Ministries and produces the Faith Encouraged Daily Devotional on Substack.