SERMON FOR AUGUST 29, 2021                TEXT: MARK 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23                                                                   

          “[T]here is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” What does it mean to defile yourself? For Jesus and the religious authorities he is challenging it is a religious matter. Initially the issue is ritual purity. Mark is wrong when he claims that “the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands.” There were different schools of thought and practice among the Jews. Just as was the later experience of Christians, they practiced and passed on a variety of traditions. Jesus is not questioning the law of Moses, nor is he rejecting the important role tradition plays in the life of the community. But he is rejecting the authority this group of Jews is claiming for their particular practice. Citing Isaiah, he reminds them that the observance of their traditions is not to be confused with obedience to God’s law: “in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.” There are good reasons for washing one’s hands before eating. After our experience with Covid we are in the habit of washing our hands with self-conscious regularity, and we may find ourselves in sympathy with the Pharisees’ concern. But Jesus is arguing the principle, not the particular instance. He is not opposed to hand-washing; he is opposed to adding it as a ritual requirement and denouncing its absence as defilement when the law, Torah, does not.

          We encourage and even require all kinds of behaviors within our communities. They are intended to form our identity, set our moral compass and strengthen the bonds among us. We all inherit traditions from our elders — that’s why we talk about the Jewish tradition or the Christian tradition, or more particularly, the Lutheran, the Anglican or the Catholic tradition — but we don’t all receive the same legacy. And the traditions we pass on change over time to meet new challenges and circumstances. These human precepts and practices are intended to serve the proclamation of God’s word they are not to be confused with the word of God itself. That is Jesus’s point. His disciples’ failure to wash their hands makes them contaminated and impure according to these Pharisees, that is, they have committed an offense against God, when in truth they are simply non-compliant and hence offensive to these Pharisees.

          With the quote from Isaiah Jesus artfully shifts the focus of the conversation from the purity of ritual practice to the integrity of discipleship: “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me . . . .” Why are they sweating the small stuff, like the hand-washing, when the real problem is of a whole different order? We can impose all kinds of requirements to undergird holiness of life, and we are sorely tempted to judge others when they fail to hew our line. We ourselves have likely been on the receiving end of such judgments rendered by others. [My experience in Connecticut] But think of the words we sing when presenting our offering, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me,” (Psalm 51:10). You can conform outwardly to what the community expects and still be miles away from the truth deep within you, blind to what God sees. “For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

          Jesus knows that, according to the law of Moses, contracting ritual impurity is not the same as committing sin. If Jesus’ disciples failed to wash their hands, they defiled themselves but did not destroy the Pharisees’ own ritual purity. Moreover, ritual uncleanness of this sort could be remedied through specific procedures — they are laid out in the Book of Leviticus. But if his followers act on any of the intentions Jesus names, they sin against others, corrupting themselves and harming their neighbors. There is no process by which one can reverse the consequences of these actions; their effects endure.

          Despite Jesus’ insistence that “whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile,” we do well to look closely at what we consume, all too often in excessive amounts and uncritically. Of course, one can start with what we literally eat — the kinds of foods, their effects on our health and the effects on the environment of producing them. Any recovering alcoholic or person struggling with drug addiction knows how dangerous and defiling some things going into a person from outside can be. Then think about what you read, what you watch, what you swallow from the endless smorgasbord of sound bites, hysteria and deception online. There are so many ways to consume — what will come out of what we take in? What will remain to strengthen our hearts or render them toxic? As the New Testament scholar Matt Skinner points out, “We know enough about the human condition to say that evil is about more than an individual’s selfishness or bad decisions. It roams our collective existence, our social, economic, and familial systems. We are at once perpetrators and victims. And our victimization furthers our capacity to perpetrate. ‘The human heart,’ or the human will, remains a complex thing. Our kin and culture usually keep us ingrained in patterns of defiling self-destructiveness and idolatry.”

          In today’s Gospel Jesus offers a stern warning about a real and present danger, but it is also a word of hope. Forewarned is forearmed. The source of the evil we do lies within us. We know what we are up against; we’ve fallen hard many a time. And God’s Holy Spirit dwells within us as well, the spirit of wisdom and understanding that pulls us back from the evil we do and teaches us to love as God loves. We join the psalmist as he prays, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and sustain me with your bountiful Spirit” (Psalm 51:10-12). God always hears his prayer and ours. Amen.