Sermon Text: Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Date: September 1, 2024
Event: Proper 17, Year B
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 (EHV)
The Pharisees and some of the experts in the law came from Jerusalem and gathered around Jesus. 2They saw some of his disciples eating bread with unclean (that is, unwashed) hands. 3In fact, the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they scrub their hands with a fist, holding to the tradition of the elders. 4When they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions they adhere to, such as the washing of cups, pitchers, kettles, and dining couches. 5The Pharisees and the experts in the law asked Jesus, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders? Instead they eat bread with unclean hands.”
6He answered them, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites. As it is written:
These people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.
7They worship me in vain, teaching human rules as if they were doctrines.
8“You abandon God’s commandment but hold to human tradition like the washing of pitchers and cups, and you do many other such things.”
14He called the crowd to him again and said, “Everyone, listen to me and understand. 15There is nothing outside of a man that can make him unclean by going into him. But the things that come out of a man are what make a man unclean.
21In fact, from within, out of people’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual sins, theft, murder, 22adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, unrestrained immorality, envy, slander, arrogance, and foolishness. 23All these evil things proceed from within and make a person unclean.”
Joyful Service Comes from Within
Cause and effect and correlation can be tricky to figure out. What is caused by something else and what happens along side it? For instance, since our family moved here in 2012, there have been zero Bengal tiger attacks in Belmont. Now, I don’t want to take credit for that, but it is interesting that our living here has coincided with zero tiger incidents, isn’t it?
Of course, that’s ridiculous. But some things are harder to tell. Did that new, experimental drug really help that person’s disease, or would they have gotten better on their own, and they just happened to be taking the medicine while their body did the work it would have done anyway? Did that questionable fast food burger make you sick, or did you pick up a stomach virus somewhere else along the way?
We can ask related and even more difficult questions about spiritual things. Did this thing happen to me because I did that other thing? Is God upset with me, so he’s letting trouble come my way? Are these positive things in my life because of my devotion to God? What is cause? What is effect? And what just is?
This morning, Jesus has an opportunity to address the Pharisees’ concerns and help them to see the true origin point not only of sin but also of proper, thankful, joyful service to God. Our problems come from the inside, not the outside, and once God has purified us from sin, our thankful life also comes from within us.
We’re in the second “half” of Jesus’ ministry, where his earthly popularity is waning, and more than ever before, everything is heading toward the cross. As a result, Jesus is increasingly more direct and blunt both with his disciples and those who are opposed to him. This morning, Jesus very directly confronted a sinful problem and misunderstanding that the Pharisees had.
A crew of religious leaders, some of the Pharisees and some of the scribes (who were experts in the law), came up from Jerusalem to where Jesus was teaching. They were continually looking for reasons to discredit Jesus in the eyes of the people so that either the people would stop following him and this nuisance would just disappear on its won, or they might concoct some “justifiable” way to get rid of him. And so on this opportunity, this group zeroes in on traditions, or in Jesus’ group’s case, lack thereof. The Pharisees and some of the experts in the law came from Jerusalem and gathered around Jesus. They saw some of his disciples eating bread with unclean (that is, unwashed) hands. … The Pharisees and the experts in the law asked Jesus, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders? Instead they eat bread with unclean hands.”
There was a tradition among the leaders and forefathers of the people that, before you eat, you gave your hands a ceremonial cleansing. This had little to do with hygiene in the modern sense of that term (although, we certainly see some hygienic benefit for this tradition) and it had more to do with being having cermonially clean hands so that the food you ate would also be ceremonially clean. Without that, you might pollute yourself spiritually by eating unclean food, which brought with it all sorts of other challenges and requirements in the ceremonial law and in the traditions of the people.
What’s the issue here? The leaders’ question to Jesus is, “Why do you let your disciples sin by allowing them to eat without doing this traditional ceremonial washing?” They were equating man’s traditions with God’s commands. And Jesus, using the words of the prophet Isaiah, condemns them for that: These people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. They worship me in vain, teaching human rules as if they were doctrines.
Jesus is really getting at the heart here. For the Pharisees and other religious leaders of the day, the widespread consensus was that it was enough to look good, but they would often ignore the heart. If the lips said the right thing, the heart's motivations didn’t matter. If you were pious and upright by all outward appearances, that must be what you were.
But this is a legalistic mindset that presumes we can be right with God through our conduct. Even if we could control our words and actions perfectly (which you and I both know well we cannot), there is still the problem of our sinful hearts. Even doing good things to make God happy with us betrays a total misunderstanding of our relationship with God and why we would do things God deems to be “good.”
Our natural state is as sinners at war with God. We are by nature not honoring God with our lips, but indeed, our hearts are from him. We bring God’s wrath down on ourselves in this hostile conflict with the Almighty. Because God is a just God, our sin needs to be punished; God would violate who he is if he just turned a blind eye to our disobedience. And so there is no escaping the punishment for sin, and no matter how good we might try to look on the outside, we will never be perfect on the inside.
And so, the principle issue we have is not so much the sinful actions we commit or sinful words we say, but the origin point, the cause of those sinful words and actions: our corrupted hearts. Jesus describes who we are by nature: “Everyone, listen to me and understand. There is nothing outside of a man that can make him unclean by going into him. But the things that come out of a man are what make a man unclean. In fact, from within, out of people’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual sins, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, unrestrained immorality, envy, slander, arrogance, and foolishness. All these evil things proceed from within and make a person unclean.”
What is Jesus’ point? Your traditions are worthless because a ceremonial splash in the water does not fix the true source of your uncleanness. Dirty hands didn’t make you unclean, nor even the things you eat, but the spring of spiritual corruption and poison is deep in your hearts. So, if our lives, actions, and words are being corrupted at the very source, if our very motivation is being poisoned by sin, there will be nothing we can do to change that status unless that corruption is removed, unless the spring of raw sewage that bubbles up from inside of us is purified.
Jesus wanted them to see this because until they could see the corruption of their hearts for what it was, they would never understand the purification he was bringing. They had to see themselves as God sees them—hopelessly lost sinners—rather than as the models of good living they thought they were.
The same is true for us. Jesus has very little value for us if we don’t recognize our own complete corruption by sin. Not realizing that is what produces ideas like, “I can be good enough to make God happy with me!” or “I’m not so bad! In fact, I’m mostly good!” This mindset that so easily creeps in is the exact one that Jesus is trying to purge from the hearts and minds of the religious leaders.
No matter how hard we try, we cannot make God happy by how we live our lives. Because God’s requirements are not “do your best” or “give it your all” or “be better than most other people.” God’s requirement is perfection. You and I have not been perfect, and the sinful hearts inside of us prevent us from even making it possible to be perfect from this moment forward—not that that would be what God was looking for anyway.
But Jesus is not trying to get the religious leaders of his day and us today to see this corruption and despair. He wants us to see how we can do nothing about this cause of sin so we can rely on him completely. Because this is the good news that Jesus came to bring and the work he came to do. Yes, God’s justice would never be satisfied if sin was not punished, but God’s love would also never be satisfied if we were condemned to hell with no hope. And so, from the fall into sin in the Garden of Eden onward, God’s plan and purpose was always a rescue mission—to save us from hell, to save us from ourselves.
And that’s what Jesus did. He put his face toward the cross, scorned the shame that would come from it, and endured what you and I deserved. In his mercy, Jesus took our place. The one who had no internal corruption and sinful nature suffered hell as if he were the only sinner that ever lived. Because he lived and died for us, our sins are forgiven. Despite this spring of poisonous sin inside of ourselves, we are healed and made whole again. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead proves that he paid for all our sins and that we will be with him forever in eternal life.
And now, we do what is right, not to try to make God happy with us but because he is happy with us. We live lives that honor God, not to try to make him love us but because he loves us. We seek what is good and avoid what is evil, not to try to prove our worth to God but because he values us so much. The cause of sin was internal, and the cause of joyful service to God is also from within because he has purified us. We obey God in joy, not fear; we follow God’s law in thanksgiving, not terror. As Paul said in our Second Reading, “To everyone who believes, Christ is the end of the law, resulting in righteousness” (Romans 10:4). The law’s purpose of making us right with God has long since become impossible. Its purpose now is to guide our thankful living to God.
So, my brothers and sisters, recognize that the source of your sin doesn’t come from things around you—the company you keep, the things you read, or even this wildly corrupt world in which we live. No, your sin stems from inside of you, from the sinful nature you were born with—conceived with! But see that your service to God also comes from within—from the joy that God instilled in you by forgiving all your sins and assuring you that you’ll be in heaven. Let us not go through the motions of looking like we’re living a Christian life; let us embrace and value the complete forgiveness Jesus gives and let that cause our lives to be ones of joyful service to him.
Lord, keep this motivation ever in our hearts and minds. Thank you for your patience, love, and forgiveness. Amen.
