When you first hear the reading from Mark, you kind of feel what are they on about. Of course we wash our hands before we eat, its one of the first things we teach our children.

But the passage has more to do with observing rituals for the sake of it, than the need to be clean to avoid getting food poisoning. And one of the problem with ritual is that it marks people out. If we are not careful it can create an 'in' crowd, where those not 'in' can feel excluded. And the way we eat our food and what we eat can be a part of that ritual.

I can quite clearly remember the first time I tried to eat with chopsticks I found it impossible and still do, when we were in Hong Kong one restaurant (it was off the tourist/ex pat trail) had to find me a knife and fork. Balancing food on chop sticks is totally beyond me.

We can marvel at the way different cultures have adapted differently to the same everyday task, but of course we must never forget that in some cultures their traditions really are important, they are a part of their faith. And the food laws at the time the Gospels were written were a serious matter for Jews, and indeed still are today. But are all traditions in that category.

At the time of Jesus the Jews were struggling to keep their identity for the Roman empire was all powerful. Enforcing rules and regulations for maintaining purity was one way to maintain a sense of themselves as the people of Israel, they believed it was God's commandment.

For Jesus the food laws became critical arguing points, for they only applied to the Jews so they in fact excluded the Gentiles. But Jesus was revealing that the kingdom of God was not just for the Jewish people it was for everyone who wished to enter. A new identity was unfolding and it required a shift in understanding the purpose of the law.

But the controversy over food laws persisted, and in the early Church reflected tensions between Jewish and Gentile Christians that kept them from table fellowship together.

Today, there are other controversies which keep Christians  from coming to the table together, stop us from being that 'one body'.

Each of these areas of contention represent deeply held convictions about how we are to live. These convictions in part, tell us who we are. When they are challenged, we feel threatened, we become fearful Our world is changing and it is all too easy not to like change. And it is these thoughts which can all too easily lead to prejudice.

Last week at the Wholeness and Healing service I spoke of the need of praying for wholeness within communities and nations.

In the passage Jesus is reassuring his listeners that what they need to worry about isn't whether they get the rituals exactly right.What they need to
reflect upon is how willing they were to reach out to those who see things and do things differently.

And of course that is the message for us.We must be doers of the word, and not merely "hearers who ignore the message." Jesus challenges us to see beyond the differences that threaten to isolate us from each other. He calls us to be together at the table so that we can pray together to ask the Holy Spirit to help us to see all we have in common. We are called  together to gather to at the table to remember that we all depend upon the grace of the One who loves us.

We come each week to give thanks and to be sent out once again to love and serve the Lord. But how do we show it,  for it is useless if it is only with our lips and not in our lives? For if it is only with our lips and not with our hearts we are in danger of becoming 'unclean'. What and how we eat cannot make us unclean, what makes us unclean is how we look upon others, and we respond to them. For division, prejudice is not a part of God's kingdom.

Jesus challenged the purity laws so fiercely protected by the Pharisees and scribes for it is in the spirit of the law, not the letter of the law that God's  will is to be found. God's will has to do with caring for others, showing them God's love.

At the beginning of our training we went to the church of the others in our year. I shall never forgot the Sunday when our visit coincided with the celebrant being the Bishop of Fulham, a flying bishop. He and the incumbent were standing shaking hands with everyone until they discovered who we were. The Bishop literally dropped the hand he was shaking and they both turned round and walked briskly away.

Fortunately we were all ordinands and sure of God's love for us - so we didn't blame God or indeed the church at large, but think how behaviour like that must have on people on the outside, people who are feeling vulnerable. However, sinner that I am I am still angry when I think about it, and I take great care never to go to a church where I think I might be treated in the same way. So, how many people never come to church again after feeling rejected, we say God loves all his children and yet his Church chooses not to love everyone, just those they agree with.

What makes us Christian is not ritual or tradition what we eat or what we fear, it is our faith in the great redemptive love that calls us into being reconciled with one another. A common thread runs through the diversity of our response to that command.

So rather than the Church being seen, by those on the outside, as bigoted and prejudiced let us pray that one day when we sing 'They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love, they will know we are Christians by our love.' people of other faiths and no faith will agree, for Christians will truly show God's love to everyone.

Amen