What Defiles? - Mark 7: 1-23

Let us start out with an obvious statement - I want you to wash your hands. Wash them as often as you can. Definitely wash them before you eat. We are now firmly within cold and flu season - wash your hands, friends. But that isn’t really what this scripture is about today, is it? Jesus really isn’t telling his disciples to not wash their hands before they gather at the table. No the questions are much more pressing. 

This scripture is found in the midst of a lot of stories about eating. One chapter easier you find the feeding of the 5,000. One chapter later you find the feeding of the 4,000. And in between you find this story about people coming together at the table. 

The disciples were eating and the religious leaders of the time were calling them out to Jesus for having defiled hands. In the text we are told that means that they did not wash them, but what they are really talking about here are the accepted norms and traditions that were passed down from one generation to the next. 

Some of those traditions were found in scripture and made sense for the time. For example, the dietary laws that we find in Leviticus were an attempt to keep people from getting sick. But other rules were actually customs that were handed down like how to go about washing your hands or washing your dinnerware in a particular way. 

So while it looks like the disciples and scribes and Pharisees are having a disagreement about food, its actually not about the food itself. It’s really about the upholding of traditions. 

But before we go thinking that the Pharisees and Scribes were being unreasonable, I think we need to stop and examine our own hearts and see where we, too, let tradition prevail. In some churches, there is a custom about what type of music is played in church. It can only be songs found within the hymnal, played on the organ. So when people start talking about introducing new types of music to reach out and connect with the community there is an immediate answer of “no, we don’t do things that way around here.”

For other congregations, maybe its not the music, but how you are expected to dress. You need to come wearing your Sunday best, different from what you wear the rest of the week. So when people come in that don’t look like them, they don’t quite know what to do. 

Here is the thing - it is not that the customs that we have, or that the customs that the religious leaders in Jesus’s day had weren’t wrong. Often there is a really good intentions underneath them. We sing these hymns because they have been shared for generations to teach about the faith. Or we dress a certain way when we come to worship because we want to bring our very best to God. But when customs get confused with Gospel, we have a problem. In other words, when we rely more on our human traditions than the movement of God’s spirit, we can become confused about the most important thing. 

These traditions that were passed down from the elders were familiar to the people of the day. The disciples would have known them. But Jesus used this opportunity to talk about something much more important - what it truly means to be pure. 

The religious leaders were using external markers handed down through the generations to make a marker for purity. But for Jesus that wasn’t what it was about at all. Going back to the prophet Isaiah, Jesus pointed out that it isn’t what’s on the outside that makes you pure - its where your heart is. 

Jesus goes on to say that there’s nothing on the outside of a person that can defile, but only the things from within. 

See the religious leaders were using this question about purity to bring people in or push people out. In other words, they were using it as a measuring stick to decide who was worthy. Worthy to come to the table. Worthy to be part of this religious community. But Jesus is pointing out that you could keep all of the traditions you want, you could follow every rule and commandment exactly, but if your heart isn’t close to God, then you aren’t really pure, are you?

We, too, can get caught up in this struggle of judging who is worthy or not. But I have to wonder, when we get so caught up in judging others, is it really to avoid looking at the places in our life that are defiled? Are we avoiding looking into our own heart in order to confess our sins. It is a lot easier to point to someone else and state all of their flaws that we perceive; it is a lot harder to humble our hearts before God and confess where we are in need of cleansing. 

And other times, it isn’t clear. Jesus and the religious leaders of the time were both followers. And even faithful followers sometimes disagree. Think to different Christian traditions when it comes to celebrating communion, the Lord’s Supper. Some say that you need to be baptized in order to come, as a sign of Christ’s cleansing in your life. Others say no, you can come just as you feel led. Some say that you need to be a member of a particular church. Other’s hold a different belief. Each looks to Scripture to come up with their reasoning, yet the way that there tradition takes shape is different. 

In the United Methodist Church we believe that you don’t need to be pure in order to come to the table. We are all sinners who have fallen short of the glory of God and all who are seeking to grow in their relationship with God and we are welcome to come. No prerequisite required. In fact, John Wesley believed that there is something that happens when you take communion that can change your heart from the inside out - and its one of the reasons he said to partake as often as you can. 

Friends, it is not a question of tradition, its about seeking after the heart of God. Sometimes we can get so caught up in what is familiar to us that we don’t take time to ask why we do those particular things in the first place. Sometimes we just want to maintain what is comfortable to us, over and above following the calling of God. 

This call of God is to have our entire beings changed - not just on the outside, but on the very inside. I love the image of an old fashioned tea cup - the type often made of delicate china that sit on a little saucer. Those little saucers aren’t just to put your cookies on, they are to catch anything that may spill over. Jesus is saying that what comes out of us is that which spills over from our hearts. And if we aren’t careful, what can take root in our hearts are things that no amount of external cleaning can address. 

Where are you at today? Are you more focused on the outside or the inside? Do you worry more about where you are with God or judging others? Are your traditions keeping people from the Gospel message or sharing it far and wide? 

What Defiles? Not that which is on the outside, but that which takes root in our hearts. Amen.