The Pharisee was amazed to see
that he did not observe the prescribed washing before the meal.
Externals are easy to see and easy to clean. The world provides ample motivation for us to keep externals in order. Peer pressure teaches us how we ought to look and behave so much so that it sticks with us when no one is looking. So much of our attempts at being good are really acts of performance for someone else.
Although you cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish,
inside you are filled with plunder and evil.
You fools!
The inside is harder to assess and harder to change. If we look the part of a faithful Christian we may win the approval of others and even convince ourselves that we are where we need to be. We can look like Christians on the outside and still be fairly selfish on the inside. Yet although we may act selfish it is not who we are as Christians. We have been given new life and a new identity in Christ. We need to allow that seed to work its way through the soil and out into the world. We need to let the new reality that is inside of us get out.
Did not the maker of the outside also make the inside?
It seems more controllable and therefore easier to go in the opposite direction. We hope that by external appearances we can polish our way to clean hearts. But this can never work. Jesus is the only one who can transform us and he always begins at the most fundamental level of mind and heart.
But as to what is within, give alms,
and behold, everything will be clean for you.
Jesus calls us to give alms to be clean. He knows that there is a way in which alms can be given without love, which does not help (see First Corinthians 13:3), but is instead asking us to have "faith working through love." How might these two loves look different, the one which gains nothing, and the one which makes all things clean for us? The one which does not profit is external and based on self-image and perceived reward. The other is Jesus loving others through us, only possible for minds and hearts renewed by faith.
None of us loves perfectly. All of us have room to let Jesus transform us more and more. But the ingredients are already within us. We do not need to despair about difficulty. Christ himself gives us the freedom to love. By his Spirit in us he himself makes us to stand.
For freedom Christ set us free;
so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.
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