GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 7:6
Playacting
 I watched a film recently—as they say, a real tear-jerker—and found myself tearing up, too. The actors did a fine job playing their roles. All the while I watched the film, I knew that none of the portrayals was existential; yet the actors managed to draw me into the plot, which is the skill of a talented performer.
 Jesus faced some of the same playacting from a delegation of religious authorities—Pharisees and scribes—who came from Jerusalem to check up on the new preacher. They saw Jesus’ disciples eating without performing their required ceremony of handwashing, and they pointed this out to Jesus before the audience. “And he said to them, ‘Isaiah prophesied correctly concerning you hypocrites, as it was written: These people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far distant from me.’” (Mark 7:6)
 Jesus defined his critics as “hypocrites” (ὑποκριτής, hupokrites—an actor under an assumed character, a dissembler). The word “hypocrites” has an interesting and revealing history. It began by meaning simply “one who judges.” It later came to mean one who answers in a set dialogue or a set conversation, that is to say, an actor. It finally means not simply an actor on the stage, but one whose whole life is a piece of acting without any sincerity behind it at all.
 The Jerusalem delegates were meticulous about performing their ceremonies—their religion—while their hearts could be filled with envy, jealousy, bitterness, pride, and hatred. None of the heart conditions mattered as long as they carried out the correct handwashing and observed the correct laws about cleanliness and uncleanness. They meticulously served God in outward things and disobeyed God in inward things—and that is hypocrisy.
 I read a story about a Muslim who was pursuing a man with an upraised knife to murder him. Just then, the call to prayer rang out. Immediately, he stopped, spread out his prayer mat, knelt, and said his prayer as fast as he could; then rose and continued his murderous pursuit. As with Jesus’ critics, the ritual—prayer or handwashing—was simply a form and a ritual, an outward observance—merely the correct interlude. These examples show the peril of identifying religion with outward observance, for it fails to focus on a man’s heart toward God and his fellow men.
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