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Mark 7: 1-23

Clean and Unclean

Introduction

If there’s one thing that we don’t like being told what to do about it’s our eating habits.  Do you remember the outcry when a sugar-tax was suggested?  And then there was the new traffic light system suggesting which foods were healthier for us and which foods were not.  More recently we have been told that we are being encouraged to reduce our red meat intake to save the planet and reduce the impact of climate change. 

As far as I am concerned these are all very positive developments that are very reasonable and sensible things to do.  But if you lived in first century Palestine the religious leaders had devised a series of regulations and teachings that revolved around cleanliness and dietary laws which were not in the interests of ordinary Jews.  Now we should be clear that these were not the original Levitical food and hygiene laws that are recorded in Leviticus 11, but these were extra regulations, described here as ‘the traditions of the elders’ that had developed over the years and they had begun to entrap the ordinary Jews.  

Conflict between Jesus and the traditions of the elders

In our story from Mark today these become another issue of conflict between Jesus and religious leaders of the day.  One of the sub-titles in a commentary I was reading read “Religious opposition to Jesus intensifies.” And this sets the context for this story.

According to the cleanliness laws, if you touched a dead animal or human being, if you had an infectious skin disease, like boils or rashes or sores, if you had encountered mildew, if you had any kind of bodily discharge, you were considered ritually impure, defiled, stained or unclean which meant you couldn’t enter the Temple for worship.  And before you ate any food you needed to ceremonially wash your hands. I wonder how many of us in church today would have been excluded from worship under these ‘ancient traditions’?

The Pharisees and teachers of the Law begin by questioning Jesus

“Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with ‘unclean’ hands?”

Jesus couldn’t have agreed more with the religious leaders that we are all ‘unclean’ before God but picking on his disciples using the “traditions of the elders” was legalistic in the extreme and hence, Jesus fights custom with custom.  Jesus cites a first century tax loophole that the Pharisees allowed with respect to giving a gift.  You see there was a custom in those days whereby when someone owned property could declare the property was owned by God or Corban as it is called so then they were not beholden to give a portion of the house’s worth to their parents.  A cunning way to avoid ‘giving’ their portion to look after their parents. Hence, the Pharisees in criticizing Jesus’ disciples were being hypocritical. 

Jesus replied, “You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, for he wrote,

‘These people honour me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
Their worship is a farce,
for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.’

Then Jesus moves away from legal argument and begins to expound the spiritual point to the crowd.  He agrees with the Pharisees that all people are ‘unclean’ but he disagrees with the source of uncleanliness.

Again, Jesus called the crowd to him and said, ‘Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. Nothing outside a person can make him ‘unclean’ by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that makes them unclean.’ 

                                                                                                            Mark 7:14-15

Problem of Sin

Now for some people in modern society, they find it hard to accept that they are ‘unclean’ in the eyes of God.  This is the problem of sin which is a hard concept for modern man to recognise or accept.  The idea of a transcendent holy deity before whom we stand guilty and condemned is hard to grasp.  And yet we regularly wrestle with guilt and shame.  “In other words” says Tim Keller “we live in a world now where we don’t believe in judgement, we don’t believe in sin, and yet we still feel that there’s something wrong with us.”

As much as we try to rationalise and find causes or excuses for our wrongdoing, deep down we are all sinful.

  • Maybe we try to blame our wrongdoing on our genes. Scientists claim to have found the part of our brains that are responsible for our addictions, or our lust, or our predilection for gambling or alcoholism. 
  • Maybe we believe that we have had a troubled childhood.  We were never shown love as a child and so our parents are to blame for our inability to love other people.
  • Maybe we try to psychologise our problems, ‘I’m a victim because I have always had a low self-esteem.’
  • Maybe circumstances have played a part, if I hadn’t got together with that bad crowd when I was a teenager or perhaps, being an only child has led me to become someone who is desperate to make friends and a people-pleaser.

Now, all of these factors may have contributed to our situation but the hard truth is we all have a sense that we are unclean!  In Jesus words, “Nothing outside a person can make him ‘unclean’ by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that makes them unclean.”

Disciples still didn’t understand

But his disciples still don’t understand!  This is a common theme in Mark’s gospel isn’t it!  So, when Jesus gets them on their own, he backs up his teaching with a biology lesson!

Jesus graphically illustrates the way in which, as he says,

“Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.”

In the Bible, the heart is the centre of our being.

Proverbs 4:3 Above all guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life.

Proverbs 27:19 As water reflects the face, so a man’s heart reflects the man.

Jeremiah 31:33 “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts…”

Matthew 22:37 “Love the LORD with all your heart…”

Relevance to you and me

What is Jesus saying to the Pharisees?

What is Jesus saying to the disciples?

What is Jesus saying to you and me?

We don’t need a stomach-pump, but we do need a heart transplant, if we are going to reflect God’s characteristics in the world around us and if we are going to be filled with His Spirit and display the Spirit’s fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, kindness, gentleness and self-control.  But we do need to change our hard hearts and receive a soft heart.

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” 

                                                                                         Ezekiel 36:26

We need a heart transplant and that begins today!

Over the next few chapters Jesus explains to his disciples how they can undergo this life changing, inside-out cleansing, deep spirit-filling surgerybut today my challenge to you is:

Are you living with a specific failure in the past that you need to confess?

Have you spent your life ‘coping’ with pattern of behaviour or way of living that you want to change?

Maybe, you’re fighting a sense of inconsequentiality and in need of a deep and thorough, change of heart?


Category: Sermons , The Bridge

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