15th Sunday after Pentecost
September 21, 2003
Mark 7:1-23

^7:1The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and ²saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were "unclean," that is, unwashed. ³The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. ⁴When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.) ⁵So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, "Why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with 'unclean' hands?"

⁶He replied, "Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: "'These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. ⁷They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.' ⁸You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men."

⁹And he said to them: "You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! ¹⁰For Moses said, 'Honour your father and your mother,' and, 'Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.' ¹¹But you say that if a man says to his father or mother: 'Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is Corban' (that is, a gift devoted to God), ¹²then you no longer let him do anything for his father or mother. ¹³Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that."

¹⁴Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, "Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. ¹⁵Nothing outside a man can make him 'unclean' by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him 'unclean.'"

¹⁷After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. ¹⁸"Are you so dull?" he asked. "Don't you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him 'unclean'? ¹⁹For it doesn't go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body." (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods "clean.") ²⁰He went on: "What comes out of a man is what makes him 'unclean.' ²¹For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, ²²greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. ²³All these evils come from inside and make a man 'unclean.'" (NIV).

Your Heart Matters!

  Our Christian Faith is not a matter of going through the motions of church and Sunday school. It’s not a matter of repeating our prayers hardly thinking of what we’re saying. It’s a matter of the heart. For when our heart is right with God, then the external motions of worship are right. Today’s Gospel lesson makes the important point that your heart plays a great role in your relation to God. An evil heart will destroy your relationship with God. However, a clean heart, one purified by faith in Christ, enables you to honour and worship God.

  In this dispute with some Pharisees, Jesus quickly focuses on the real issue: the attitude of one’s heart toward God. “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: ‘These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’”

  The Hebrews thought of the heart the way we think of the soul. It’s the fundamental you, the seat of human life including your intellect and will. It’s the part that relates to God. We can think of Isaiah’s words this way, These people honour me with their lips, but their souls are far from me. So, although the Pharisees are upset about an infraction of legal religious observance, Jesus sees a much bigger infraction: souls or hearts turned far away from God. A heart turned away from God is evil. It ruins your relationship with God and makes you unclean.

  The point of the Pharisees’ objection is that because Jesus’ disciples eat with unclean hands, they are unclean. To be unclean means to be defiled or corrupted so that one is not fit for the presence of the holy God. This defilement always goes back to sin. Any infraction of God’s law makes you unclean whether that be some deliberate, premeditated sin, like stealing something from the market, or whether you just happen to bump into someone who has touched a corpse or done anything else that made him unclean. His unclean germs, so to speak, get on you making you unfit for the presence of the holy God.

  This conception of holiness and uncleanness is rather strange to us, but it’s not at all unlike our understanding of hygiene. The SARS crisis forcefully reminded us that just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there. Invisible micro organisms can make us unclean so to speak. And so we are taught to wash our hands, especially after being in a public washroom. You would not like it one bit if someone came out of a public washroom, didn’t wash his hands and then sat down at your dinner table! That was the Pharisees’ position. Going into the public markets exposed you to people who were religiously unclean. Therefore, there was only one logical thing to do when coming out of the market as Mark reports. The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.) So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, "Why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with 'unclean' hands?" So, from the Pharisees’ position, Jesus’ disciples are unclean because they have not observed the tradition.

  Jesus is concerned about more than unclean hands. His issue with these Pharisees is about arrogant heart. They presumed to replace or supersede God’s command with their tradition. They elevated their tradition to the level of God’s command so that breaking their tradition made one unclean. Washing your hands before you eat is good practice. But to call it sin that separates you from God, something that makes you unclean is going too far. To be fair, we have to assume originally good intentions by the Pharisees’ who began this tradition. However, their tradition took on a life of its own and displaced God’s law.

  To prove his point, Jesus brings up their tradition of Corban. The law stipulates that a son must provide for his aged parents in their need. So, wanting to hold on to their wealth, they came up with a system by which you could dedicate your possessions to God. You still got to keep it at home to use, but you couldn’t give it away or sell it to help another person. The idea here is roughly that of property put up as collateral for a loan. For example, if you buy a car on loan, it’s yours to use, but it really belongs to the bank. You can’t give it or sell it to someone else without first settling the debt with the bank. I don’t know if anyone ever put his possessions up as collateral to avoid helping a parent, but if so, the idea would be very similar.

  So you see, the issue is not only about commands and tradition, it’s about the heart too. These Pharisees, while very religious, weren’t very close to God. Their hearts were far from him. Moreover, breaking their tradition was not equivalent to thwarting the will of God and didn’t make one unclean.

  What then does make a person unclean? Jesus says that your heart makes you unclean. What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean.’ For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean.’”

  The world around us and the things in it cannot properly be said to be good or bad. They just are. Nor do these things make us do the evil things Jesus mentioned. People are not immoral, greedy, lewd and arrogant because of trees and animals or whatever. People are that way because that’s what they are like inside, in their heart or soul. From Adam and Eve we inherited a corrupt nature. We take the things around us and do evil. We come up with evil thoughts. Trees and animals don’t think evil thoughts and then communicate them to us by some sort of telepathy! Likewise, while some things if eaten will kill you, nothing you eat turns you into a bad person. You might be evil when your drunk, but the evil didn’t come from the alcohol. It comes from you.

  It is the evil heart then, that makes us unclean. Our evil heart uses tradition or any excuse to avoid responsibilities God gave us. Dedicating something to God isn’t evil, nor is putting up something as collateral. What is evil is the intention of the person who does it out of greed and selfishness. Even the good things that God commands us to do can become worthless and unclean when the heart is evil. The prophets often told the people of Israel to forget their sacrifices until they repented and had a clean heart. What good is a sacrifice to God when one resents it and gives it grudgingly? God doesn’t want that! Its not that God doesn’t want the sacrifice, he just wants it to be given gladly and in faith. In the same way, he wants our offerings of time and money for his church, but not if we have an evil heart that begrudges every minute and every penny. We might as well keep what we have. You remember what Jesus said about offerings and your brother: If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift. Matthew 5:23-24

  It may be easy to see how the Pharisees went wrong, but do we see the same problem in ourselves and our culture? There are ways we too ‘let go’ the commands of God and ‘hold’ to the traditions of men. For example, God says to parents, “Bring your children up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” Yet the popular tradition of our age is “I’ll let my children choose for themselves what religion if any they want. I don’t want to influence them.” How will their children ever hear God’s Word? When they start looking for spirituality, not knowing the truth, they will “lay themselves open to every kind of superstition and exploitation, to every flying-saucer cult and expensive New Age seminar.”

  Of course there’s the debate about marriage currently shaking our politics. God said, A man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. Genesis 2:4 But again, our culture seems to know better and embraces any union, however unnatural and impossible it may be. We call this tolerance, liberalism and pluralism.

  Does it bother us that we set aside the command of God by our tradition? Do we realize that we are rebelling against God’s command, his order and the responsibility that he has laid on us? Do we recognize that we will be judged and condemned for replacing his law with our tradition? We need a clean heart!

  A clean heart, one purified by faith, enables you to honour and worship God. A clean heart makes you able to know that God’s way is the best possible way. So how do we get a clean heart? Through repentance and faith in Christ. Just as David said in Psalm 51, we need a broken heart first, one that realizes that it is justly condemned for rebelling against its maker. Then that broken heart needs to hear and cling to the Gospel, the announcement that Jesus died and rose so that all sin is forgiven. He replaced our rebellion with his obedience. He replaced God’s anger with God’s love. He purifies our evil heart that resents God’s command so that we recognize the wisdom and blessing of God’s commands and embrace them. When you trust that promise of God, your heart changes. You understand that God forgives you, loves you, and cares for you!You gladly come for Baptism so that you personally receive forgiveness of all sin and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Then your heart is clean!

  Your clean heart turns to Christ for direction. You seek not how to avoid the commands of God but how to keep them. You understand that the thing that causes trouble between you and God, and between you and others, is not God, or even tradition. Rather it’s the evil desires that come from your heart and my heart.

  Your clean heart turns to Christ for direction. You seek not how to avoid the commands of God but how to keep them. You understand that the thing that causes trouble between you and God, and between you and others, is not God, or even tradition. Rather it’s the evil desires that come from your heart and my heart. It is true that nothing outside the body by itself can make you unclean. It’s an evil heart, misusing things, that makes you unclean. But a clean heart, one that is purified by the Holy Spirit through faith in Christ can use almost anything to honour and worship God. So confess your sins to God and ask him to cleanse your heart through faith in Christ.