9 And he continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe[c] your own traditions! 10 For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and mother,’[d] and, ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’[e] 11 But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is Corban (that is, devoted to God)— 12 then you no longer let them do anything for their father or mother. 13 Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.”
6th September 2024, Horsham
The word ‘Corban’ is a bit tricky, but suffice to say it was a term which was used to declare something as dedicated to God. The term doesn’t appear in the Law of the Old Testament. The concept which it refers to appeared over time as the Jewish teachers developed a detailed oral interpretation of God’s law which created regulations intended to ensure compliance with the Law – the goal of all good Jews.
Jesus reminds us that in God’s law, as given to Moses, the Ten Commandments require that we honour our father and mother. He also points to Leviticus 20:9, where we read that anyone who curses their father and mother is to be put to death. This sounds incredibly harsh to our ears, but of course the purpose of any Law is to say ‘don’t do this’. The ‘death penalty’ simply says ‘No – really! don’t do this!’. Most people would naturally respect and take care of elderly or infirm parents and, uncomfortable though it is, we need to acknowledge that the culture in which Moses lived, execution was much more accepted and practiced as a punishment than it is in ours. If you sought to live within God’s law, abusing your parents in any way would be inconceivable. The underlying point is that there was a family responsibility to look after those who were struggling or unable to look after themselves. That was a practice based on love and was always God’s plan.
Jesus is pointing at a practice which meant that in order to avoid providing support to parents, one might declare that the resources which should have been used to support parents is Corban – dedicated to God. The declaration was an oath before God which once declared, could not be revoked. It’s like saying, sorry you’re living in poverty and unable to survive Mum and Dad, but all my stuff is dedicated to God so I can’t help you out.
There had developed a belief that the way to be a good Jew was to live in obedience to every requirement of the detailed interpretation of the Law which had developed into the oral tradition. Jesus is condemning the practice of allowing our own rules, regulations and traditions to take supremacy over God’s law.
‘Jesus was attacking a system which put rules and regulations before the claim of human need. The commandment of God was that the claim of human love should come first: the commandment of the scribes was that the claim of legal rules and regulations should come first. Jesus was quite sure that any regulation which prevented anyone from giving help where help was needed was nothing less than a contradiction of the Law of God.’ (i)
How does this affect us? We can miss the fact that some of our own spiritual practices are based on tradition rather than Scripture itself. We can find ourselves feeling offended and argumentative when other Christian’s don’t do things the way we do and question our own way of doing things. The challenge for us is to discern which parts of our own practice are based on tradition rather than Scripture, and not allow our traditions to dominate our faith.
‘Part of being a Christian is to learn the art of spiritual discernment. And part of that art is learning to understand scripture, and to test human traditions against it.’ (ii)
(You may also be interested in Laws, Traditions and Misunderstandings (1): Mark 7:1-8)
Richard Jackson, West Sussex: LifePictureUK
(i) William Barclay: New Daily Study Bible; The Gospel of Mark, Kindle edition, loc 3516
(ii) NT Wright: Mark for Everyone; p88
Timely reminder