The issue in this section of Mark’s gospel revolves around the ritual purification of hands, cups, kettles, etc. By following the exterior ritual, a person was guaranteed interior purification—no matter what the person’s motivation was for performing the ritual. Underlying and closely tied to the ritual question is the more important question of observance of Jewish purification rituals by the Gentiles.
In this passage, Jesus challenges the basic presupposition of the purification rituals. His disciples eat without washing their hands because it is not the ritual that makes a person clean or unclean. Just to engage in the ritual for the sake of being able to say that one has kept the ritual is not the type of worship that God wants.
This is hypocrisy. Jesus cites Isaiah’s prophecy: “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines mere human precepts” (vv 6-7). The purpose of the ritual has been lost; God’s commandment is disregarded in favor of human tradition. In other words, the real intent of the law has been abandoned for the sake of merely keeping the ritual.
It is not the ritual that makes a person clean or unclean. Eating with hands that have not been washed or drinking from cups that have not been properly purified cannot make a person unclean. What defiles comes from within people, from their hearts (cf vv 21-23).
Gentiles, those people who were accepting Jesus and his ways, were, according to Mark, not bound to the ritual purifications, as these had become meaningless. Faith is not concerned about washing jugs and kettles; it is concerned with the inner disposition of people. Conversion does not begin on the outside and move to the inside of a person; it begins on the inside and moves to the outside. According to Mark, those who insisted on keeping the old meaningless rituals had not been converted.