Mark 7:14-23
On the Inside
I remember when I was growing up regularly hearing the phrase, “You are what you eat.” It was said to teach kids that they can’t eat just junk food all the time, but rather had to eat regular meals and fruits and vegetables. If you ate too many sweets and junk food, then you would become unhealthy like that very food. Instead, if you ate good healthy meals, a well-balanced diet, then you too would become well balanced and healthy. Now this was really only half the picture, but I feel like it has formed many peoples’ opinions about the types of food that people should be eating. It’s all too easy to look at someone who struggles with weight and inwardly judge them if they’re eating more sweets. Or vice versa, you hear all these celebrities or even family and friends who go on these fad diets and try to wave it in everyone’s face… and it’s hard not to judge them for what they eat. Indeed, we understand the role that food plays in our life and how we look at different types of people because of it. We all understand that food is a fairly superficial thing for which to judge someone. It’s inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. I say this to try to help us understand the Old Testament dietary laws and the Pharisee’s being judgmental because of them. Yes, God gave to Israel a strict code about what they could or couldn’t eat. The entire purpose for it was to distinguish Israel from other nations, or perhaps there might have been a hint of godly wisdom about health involved. Regardless, the main discussion of our text is all surrounding food.
As we dive into our Gospel lesson today, Jesus teaches the Pharisees and the crowds a new lesson. It’s not the food that is problematic, but that which resides inside of all of us. If we can’t deal with the junk inside us, then nothing outside will change us. So may we learn:
JESUS CHOSE TO BECOME DEFILED SO THAT WE MAY BE MADE CLEAN!
I.
There’s one thing we need to understand about the Old Testament purity laws. These laws included things like what animals were capable of being eaten and which should be avoided, what to do if you come in contact with certain bodily fluids, touching dead bodies, and so on. These purity laws were never a distinction between sin and righteousness, but rather meant to be an outward sign of inward realities. For God was making his people pure which meant a new relationship with the impure or defiled world. So, Jesus said, “Hear me, all of you and understand: There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him,” Mark 7:14-15. Holiness isn’t dependent on what you eat or what you touch. Though what the purity laws were meant to teach us is that the holiness which God gives is also meant to be reflected externally. The opposite is sadly true as well, the lack of holiness is also evident by external actions.
It’s so often that we look out at the world and say something like, “There’s so much evil out there.” We love to locate the problems of the world in others, as if there’s a way we can isolate evil and contain it. The problem we have though is that evil isn’t so easily contained because as we know, sin is in each one of us. The source of evil in our world comes from within each one of us. As Jesus also says, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person,” Mark 7:21-23. We all are capable of great evil because sin dwells in our flesh. This is also why I commonly say, you can never legislate righteousness. Not even God’s perfect law can grant us righteousness. For imagine that you have a house overflowing with trash so that there’s no room to even walk. The easiest solution isn’t tearing off the roof and building higher. It’s emptying out the trash! And sin is our trash. It overflows the confines of our heart and spills out into our external actions.
II.
Indeed, there’s only one solution for the defilement of sin. We can’t keep tearing off the roof, but rather must empty out the trash. The junk that is inside us must be removed if we’re to deal with our impurity. And how are we to “take out the trash”? We confess! We confess to God our Father how our actions have not lived up to his holy law. We stop piling trash upon trash, but confess our wrong so that it may be forgiven and removed! “If we confess our sins, God, who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness,” 1 John 1:9. This is what enables us to live a renewed and pure life. It’s the forgiveness of God that comes to us to cleanse us of all sin, cleanse us from our defilement, and restore unto us the grace and mercy of Christ! This is the only way to deal with the evil of our world and the evil within us. Only when the forgiveness and love of God fills us and cleanses us shall our external actions become evidence of the change within.
For this is the other side of the purity laws. It was meant to teach how defilement could be transmitted from one person to another. Touching something unclean meant you were unclean. It was a testament to how easily sin could be passed along. But Jesus came to show us the opposite was true as well. For he chose to take on the defilement of our flesh so that he may bring his holiness into the picture. Just as touching something unclean passed along the uncleanness, so too being in contact with Jesus’ righteousness pass along his holiness to all people. And such was the cross. Jesus chose to take upon himself the pinnacle of all defilement, the stain of death itself. Jesus became defiled by our sins and our death by going to the cross, so that by his righteous sacrifice in our midst, he may make us clean! By Jesus’ death on the cross, he removes all the trash of sin from our lives so that now our hearts may have a new resident. By holy baptism, God comes to dwell within us, that is, in our hearts, so that his holiness may overflow our hearts and be reflected in our external actions.
So dear brothers and sisters in Christ, God has come in Christ to remove the defilement of our sin through his own death. So may God in Jesus come to dwell in our hearts so that his holiness may overflow from our lives to all people. In Jesus’ name! Amen!