Sermon by Pastor Mike Buttonnn
From the Inside Out
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
NRSMark 7:1
Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him,2they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. 3(For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders;4 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.)5So 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?"
6He said to them, "Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,
'This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
7in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.'
8You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition."
144 Then he called the crowd again and said to them, "Listen to me, all of you, and understand: 15 there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile."
21 For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder,22 adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.
23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person."
May the Lord keep us in the covenant of our baptisms and give us the blessing of peace; for the sake of Jesus the Messiah. Amen.
Many years ago my brother dated a young woman named Sheryl Hurst. At that time Sheryl was just beginning a teaching career in a poor elementary school in a really poor neighborhood of East Baton Rouge Parish. During that first year of teaching Sheryl had a student named Celeste, and from Sheryl’s reports, Celeste was having almost as many problems as her young teacher in adjusting to the classroom. After one especially frustrating day, one filled with many corrections, poor Celeste finally exclaimed, “Miss Hurst, there must be a worm in me that makes me so bad!”
I hope and trust that Celeste has since grown into a happy, productive citizen, but whenever I find myself behaving badly or just badly tempted, I think of her and that worm. Although I haven’t knocked over any convenience stores lately, I still wonder if maybe there’s some worm wriggling around in me. In my soul and yours, too, there rumble around all sorts of evil thoughts and vile feelings that sometimes tempt us into terrible darkness. We’ve all had moments when we got so mad, so angry that we wonder what would have happened if we’d had a gun in our hand. Sometimes we find ourselves struggling with sexual desires so powerful that we could easily defile or betray another person. And when we see our neighbors prosper and move up the economic ladder, who doesn’t get just a little jealous, or perhaps even covetous, maybe to the point that we talk ourselves into taking what rightly belongs to someone else? Maybe Celeste was right. Maybe there is some worm squirming its way through our moral fiber.
It’s the old question of human nature. Are we essentially good, or essentially evil? Are humans at heart noble, honest, and moral, or basically cruel, vicious, and immoral? In today’s Gospel Jesus answers: Yes. Without denying the intrinsic goodness of our creation, Jesus also declares that to find the source of evil we need look no further than our own hearts. “For it is from within,” says Jesus,
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. (vv.21-23)
Jesus refuses to locate evil “out there,” as something that solely comes at us from outside ourselves. However our environment, or society, or even the devil himself may incline, encourage, or tempt us to evil, Jesus insists that there’s still something not right in our very hearts and souls.
How we got this way is the subject of Genesis 1-3. In today’s gospel, though, the issue is: What are we to do about this mixed up, confused nature of ours? How are we to answer the problem of evil in our own hearts? That’s the question Jesus is arguing with the Pharisees in Mark 7. Jesus didn’t have any problem with washing up before dinner, but for him the real question was: How do we wash our hearts to be worthy of a place at the Lord’s Table in the Kingdom of God?
For the Pharisees of Jesus’ day, as for the Pharisees of today, the answer to the problem of evil is the Law (that’s with a capital ‘L’). The Law, they argue, is to keep our wicked hearts in check. The Law is to restrain us and hold us back from acting on the wicked impulses of our corrupted natures. The Law is to drive us to do what we should, and scare us away from what we shouldn’t.
This is a good and righteous function of the Law. Every time I’m tempted to do something really stupid and go some place I really shouldn’t, I have no doubt that’s just when the place will be raided, I’ll get arrested, and the next morning my picture will be in the paper under the headline, “Lutheran Pastor Busted!” It’s the Law (and maybe just a little fear of my spouse!) that keeps me from giving into a base, ugly part of my nature. Just like it’s the Law that holds you back when you want to wring somebody’s neck or take somebody’s spouse.
For Jesus, the only problem with the Law is that it does not go far enough. The Law may keep me out of strip joints, but it does not take away the impure desires that would have me turn another human being into an object for my satisfaction. The Law may keep you from shooting your boss or running off with the milk man, but the Law does not and cannot clean out the murderous and adulterous passions that sometimes boil up beneath our righteous exteriors.
What’s more, says Jesus, the character of human evil is such that we know how to get around the Law, or even use the Law to our own selfish ends. In verses not quoted in your bulletins (vv. 10-13), Jesus cites an example of a Pharisaic practice which allowed a person to get around the basic requirements of honoring father and mother. We find equally sneaky, hypocritical ways to satisfy our base desires while giving the appearance of righteousness. Isaiah speaks no less to us than to his own day: “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Mark 7:6).
To get to our hearts God has to give us more than just the Law. God must give us the Son, and this is finally Christ’s mission. Jesus has come into our world and into our hearts not just to reform, but to transform. Jesus has come not just to slap a new coat of paint on our shabby exteriors, but to make us new again from the inside out. For it is only by grace through faith in Christ that God creates in us clean hearts and renews right spirits within us.
Jesus is our hope for newness. Jesus is the promise for an end to our divided natures. Jesus is the one and only one who can and will, once and for all, overcome the consequences of our fall. But until that great and glorious day, when Jesus will finally cast out all the darkness that afflicts us from within and without, we live under, but not in bondage to, the Law. We subject ourselves to the Law to keep our old natures in check, to restrain that squirmy old worm, but also to make some room for God to bring out a new self.
In the meantime, we live humbly. We live in the awareness that while our hearts are impure, we have to be very, very careful when it comes to casting stones and pointing fingers. Of course, we have to be ready to stand and decry and condemn the evil we see not only out there, but in here as well. And that means there’s no making it for any of us without calling on the name of Jesus and praying, fervently, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”
In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
