The Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity
“ there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile”
Summary
Let me catch you up on what you might have missed if you’ve been away over the summer: six solid weeks of John chapter six, six solid weeks of Jesus talking about bread. We began with Jesus miraculously providing food for 5,000 and ended with him offering to feed us with the bread of heaven. Just as we need material food to keep our bodies alive, we need spiritual food to feed our souls. The spiritual food Jesus offers involves sharing in the life of God. This is the background to today’s argument, in Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23, about eating. The disciples are eating without washing their hands. This was more than poor food hygiene, it was a rejection of a religious tradition which divided the world into clean and unclean, worthy and unworthy, insiders and outsiders. We too have many rules about what constitutes acceptable behaviour and, consciously or unconsciously, we use these rules to judge which people are acceptable and which are not. Jesus does not reject these rules instead he asks us to consider their meaning and their impact: who do they serve? Were those who strictly observed these traditions doing so to show obedience to God or to indicate that they were better than others? The original purpose of these purity codes was to show other people that God’s people were different, not because they were better, but because they were close to God. This was intended to invite others to draw close to God, not to shut them out. The blessings we receive from God are not for ourselves they are for sharing. Jesus is asking us to question our own rules and traditions: do they serve us or do they serve others; are they healing, nurturing and life giving? Any behaviour that results in excluding others from God’s grace may be acceptable to us but will never be acceptable to God.
GOSPEL
Mark 7.1-8, 14-15, 21-23
When the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?’ He said to them, ‘Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,
“This people honours me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.”
You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.’
Then he called the crowd again and said to them, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.’
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.’
