The Catholic student ministry building where, many years ago, I was director of university campus ministry is located across the street from Hillel, the university’s Jewish student religious center.  The proximity of the two buildings allowed the Rabbi and I to collaborate on issues and activities that served the student population. 

One day, while I was meeting with the Rabbi, one of the campus ministers from a fundamentalist Christian denomination arrived with several large boxes of pepperoni pizza.  His student group had scheduled an activity on campus, but they had ordered much too much food for the event.  In a spirit of generosity common among young adults, they wanted to share the surplus with their neighbors.  I cringed, and the Rabbi rushed to remove the pizza from the Hillel building. 

The well-meaning Christian fundamentalist was unaware of the Jewish dietary laws’ prohibition of mixing dairy products with meat.  The pepperoni pizza was a generous gesture that was equally unkosher.  The dietary laws that make pepperoni pizza unclean are the same laws that precipitated the conflict between Jesus and the urban Pharisees in today’s Gospel reading, and those laws remain largely misunderstood by Christians. 

Christians often assume that the Jewish dietary laws originated with pragmatic concerns about health and hygiene, but this assumption is incorrect.   

According to the terms of the Sinai Covenant, the People of Israel were to be “a kingdom of priests, a nation set apart.” (Ex. 19:6)  As such, they were obliged to treat themselves, their activities, and possessions as “holy” rather than “profane.”  The distinction between “holy” and “profane” is equivalent to the distinction between “extraordinary” and “common.”  Under the Covenant with Moses, the Israelites were to live “extraordinary” lives, separate from the “common” world that does not know or serve the One, True God.  Even the food eaten by those faithful to the Covenant cannot remain at the level of the “common”; it is to be dedicated to God in a way that reflects the People’s devotion to God. 

The washing of hands, utensils, and other the objects mentioned in today’s Gospel were not hygienic practices; they were religious practices.  These were acts of consecrating one’s life and actions to God in order to bring honor to God’s holy Name.  Today’s first reading provides a description of the obligation to honor God by keeping the Covenant.  As the conflict described in the Gospel reading was about religion and morality rather than cleanliness, the distinction between what comes “from outside” a person and “what comes out of a person” is not a reference to physical realities but to moral realities. (Mk 7:18, 20) 

Jesus did not disagree with the obligations imposed by the Sinai Covenant; he taught and practiced an interpretation of those obligations that was suited to rural rather than urban life.  The conflict in today’s Gospel was not about keeping the Law or abandoning the Law; it was about the real differences between urban Jewish culture and rural Jewish culture.  The urban Pharisees in this Gospel reading were fully aware of these differences.  Although they found the rural practices to be somewhat less than adequate for themselves, they probably would have agreed with Jesus’ explanation of the legitimacy of those practices. 

The dietary laws facilitated holiness of life by leading an individual to consecrate her or his life to God’s service.  The goal of the kashrut laws, then, is not pragmatic, but to give public witness to God’s holiness.  Jesus illustrated this point by distinguishing between what comes “from outside” a person and “what comes out of a person.” (Mk 7:18, 20)   

There is an element of exclusivity in this distinction, but not judgmentalism.  One is obliged to exclude profane practices from one’s life in order to serve God appropriately.  Jesus wanted his disciples to understand clearly that moral impurity isn’t the result of the physical defects of the world, but rather the result of the moral defects that people permit in themselves. 

The Jewish dietary laws are no longer associated with Christian religious practice, but Jesus’ distinction between purity of life and impurity remains valid.  I’d like to paraphrase Jesus’ teaching about holiness of life: if you want to live a holy life, don’t internalize the profaneness of the world.  This requires that one avoids responding to evil with further evil. 

Take a few minutes to review the last twenty-four hours of your life.  Pay attention to the inevitable experiences of being insulted, ignored, or harmed by other people.  Holiness of life results from not allowing the immorality of the world to direct one’s thoughts, words, and actions. 

It’s very common to respond to violence with further violence and to return insults for insults.  This, precisely, is the point Jesus made to his disciples: it’s common, mundane, profane, ordinary, impure and, therefore, distant from God.  In Baptism, we are called to set ourselves apart from the world’s commonness and impurity in order to minimize the distance between ourselves and God.