What Lies Within

Text: Mark 7:14-23

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

            There’s a legend about Alexander the Great, the man who conquered enormous realms of the ancient world. In this legend, the would-be emperor comes to the city of Gordium, capital of the region of Phrygia. During the tour of the city, he sees a chariot bound to a post with an extremely complex and complicated knot, the ends of the rope buried in the knot itself. He asked the people of the city what it was and they explained the founder of their city had tied the knot himself and announced that the one who could untie it would be the future emperor of Asia. Alexander had aspirations along those lines, so he pondered how to find the ends of the knot so that he could untie it and claim the title. After a moment’s thought, Alexander drew his sword and cut the knot, revealing the ends. The sections of the knot that didn’t fall away immediately were quickly taken apart by the man who would soon come to rule the largest empire anyone had seen in that part of the world up to that time.

            Whether you agree with his tactics or not, Alexander did undo the knot, if only by refusing to play by the rules that had been set up by the people of Gordium. He blew up the system. This is not altogether different from what Jesus does in His declaration in our Gospel reading today. He had just been in a dispute with the Pharisees over cleanness and uncleanness. They wanted Jesus and His disciples to follow the rules of the elders—ceremonial handwashing, elaborate rules about the cleaning of dishes and dining couches, complicated and complex rules about eating and drinking, what kinds of foods could come into contact with other kinds of foods, who someone was allowed to eat with, and so on and so forth.

            Now a word should be said about all the rules of the Pharisees. They weren’t making rules just to make rules. They weren’t trying to control people. Rather, their goal was keeping the commandments that the Lord had given to Moses on Mount Sinai. And that’s a good, laudable goal for the people in that covenant. But in order to keep people from even coming close to breaking those commandments, the elders had set up additional rules to act as fences of sorts from breaking the commandments. For instance, the Third Commandment about keeping the Sabbath holy by resting and meditating on God’s Word had a number of fence rules placed around it—how many steps one was allowed to take on the Sabbath, not carrying any kind of burden or yoke, as all these things would be considered work. So the elders had to sort through what exactly all of it meant—was a toothpick something “carried” by someone? How many steps were too many and constituted traveling? So they ended up with over 1500 rules, all to ensure that the center of it all, the Ten Commandments, would be kept.

            Of course, the problem is that this misses the point. All too often, people got so wrapped up with keeping these countless rules of the elders that it was all too easy to miss how the Lord’s Commandments actually strike at the heart and inward attitudes of His people. And so rather than quibbling over all the finer points of these rules, in this case those rules pertaining to eating and drinking, Jesus draws the sword of His Word and cuts through the tangled knot of the Pharisees’ code: “‘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…Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart, but his stomach, and is expelled?’ Thus he declared all foods clean.” For Jesus it’s not a matter of keeping a checklist of what was done right or wrong. It’s an issue of knowing one’s heart and the dangerous darkness that lurks there by nature. “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 things come from within, and they defile a person.”

            Jesus cuts the knot. It’s not what goes into a person that makes them unclean. It’s what comes from within, from their very heart. And what was true then, with the people who heard him there, the Pharisees and His disciples, is true today, with us. For who of us does not have one of those defiling things come from their heart: evil thoughts, sexual immorality, lust, theft, coveting, murder, rage, hate, lies, half-truths, envy, slander, reputation-hurting words, pride, foolishness. And if you try to plead that you’re innocent of all those, then you would be in great company with the Pharisees. If you try to build a complex code of saying, “Well at least I don’t do that bad thing…Or at least I’m not as bad as that person,” then you’ve built your own little labyrinth of codes and rules. Further, notice that it does no good to claim that the reason you do those things is because of someone or something else out there, outside of you. It’s not the system’s fault, or that other person’s fault, or that party’s fault, or the community’s fault, or the church’s fault, or your spouse’s fault. It comes from within, from the heart, from your heart. The problem is not that things haven’t been scrubbed and cleaned out there. The problem is that your heart needs to be purified. Your heart needs to be cleansed.

            And that’s exactly what Jesus does. He hasn’t come to fix all those threads and ropes and tangles that we tend to get so fixated on as our heart is pumping out all those things that defile us. No, He draws His sword and cuts them all away so that He can get to the center of us and purify us. That’s why He’s come—to redeem, to cleanse, to make new, to forgive, and to do it for you.

            How? How does our Lord go about cleansing that very source of our problem, our heart of defilement? Here’s the twist: while we aren’t made unholy by anything outside of us, we are made holy by Jesus’ gifts, which do come to us from outside of us. These gifts begin from the outside, then work their way in, touching your heart, renewing and enlightening your mind, making your soul holy, turning your body into a temple of the Holy Spirit. Consider those purifying gifts that come to you from the outside. Baptism, water poured onto you by someone else, washing you clean of all those things that would come from the inside. God’s Word—spoken to you, preached, chanted, prayed, sung—all coming into your ears from outside of you. Jesus’ body and blood, received in the bread and wine, received in your mouth for the forgiveness of sins and life everlasting—the bread of heaven that you eat and will not perish, food that does enter your heart by faith in what Jesus has taught you about it. While nothing from the outside can take away your holiness, the things of Jesus that come from the outside do make you holy. They come to you from all the places where Jesus has promised He’ll be with His forgiveness, light, and joy, and they move inward to your heart, to cleanse you.

            And now, forgiven and purified, you have a clean heart. And from a clean heart flows forth all the good things that the Lord loves, the things He rejoices in: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. Against such things there is no Law, no tangle of protocols and rules. Jesus has gotten to the center of it all—the heart of faith—and He’s given that cleansed heart to you. Receive that purification now and rejoice in the beautiful things that will come forth from His work in you. In the name of Jesus, who makes us holy. Amen.