37 Now as Jesus spoke, a certain Pharisee asked him to dine with him. He went in, and sat at the table. 38 When the Pharisee saw it, he marveled that he had not first washed himself before dinner. 39 The Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the platter, but your inward part is full of extortion and wickedness. 40 You foolish ones, didn’t he who made the outside make the inside also? 41 But give for gifts to the needy those things which are within, and behold, all things will be clean to you.”

Luke 11:37-41 - World English Bible

When Jesus dined at a Pharisee's home, he skipped a ritual cleansing. Such washings imitated the mikveh, a ritual immersion that symbolized a break from the profane world of daily life and prepared the Jew for dining in the Lord's presence. Mikveh baths were common in the homes of Palestine at the time of Jesus and played a central part in the daily rhythm of Jews. Yet, the Lord did not even wash his hands as an act of kosher and this caught the Pharisee by surprise.

At this point, Jesus launched into a tirade. He criticized the Pharisees for emphasizing external behavior over intent, ritual over purity of the heart. But, implicitly, his critique ran deeper. Such washings marked the profane from the sacred, the time of ordinary activity from that of worship, “my time” from God's time. Jesus considered such demarcations useless. There was no such thing as “my time.” There was only God's time. In terms of the Kingdom, either the believer lived in the presence of YHWH every moment of the day or he did not live in God's presence at all. How does one live as if the Kingdom were present? Act with mercy.

How have you acted with mercy today?