The Gospel of Mark: Defilement

Then he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban’ (that is, an offering to God)— then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.”

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.”

When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. He said to them, “Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, “It is what comes out of a person that defiles. 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.” ~ Mark 7:9-23


Jesus wasn't finished going on about tradition!

We get so besotted with some traditions and ignore others.

We twist traditions around so that they fit our plans and programs.

We are, for lack of a better word, hypocrites, in what laws we keep and what we don't.

And yeah, that includes me. And you.

That's the trouble with being too taken with tradition. You might be missing a more important tradition.

Jesus ties this all to the dietary laws: what we eat doesn't make us unclean (or sinful). What we do or say does. 

Could it really be that simple?

It's no wonder that Jesus made an enemy of the Pharisees and the leaders of the Temple. He called into question everything they had built their house of cards on. Their power came from the idea that they kept and held and enforced the law.

Or, at least, the laws that they choose to keep and hold and enforce.


Holy God, thank you for the gospel - the good news - of your Son. Open my mind and heart to this good news and enliven me with your Spirit of servanthood that I might share this good news with a world in need. Amen


Engagement Questions:


Hypocrisy is a hard word. And yet it is something we are all guilty of. When is a time you know you were a hypocrite? Did knowing you are change how you behaved going forward?

 

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