By Jared Warner
Willow Creek Friends Church
September 1, 2024
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Mark 7:1–8. 14-15. 21-23 (ESV)
1 Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, 2 they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. 3 (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders, 4 and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.) 5 And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” 6 And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, “ ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; 7 in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ 8 You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”
14 And he called the people to him again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: 15 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.”
21 For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
We have spent a great deal of time over the past couple of years in the Old Testament, and the past few weeks I have been speaking out of the Letter to the Ephesians. It has been a challenge for me to speak out of the Old Testament, it has been a challenge because there is so much history, culture, and deeper study than I am used to. But it has been good.
When we gain a greater understanding of the culture and cultures surrounding the Hebrew scriptures, we gain a deeper understanding of the gospel. And there is so much more to speak about, but I feel we need to move forward and remind ourselves of Christ once again. We need to be reminded of how Jesus spoke about the Hebrew scriptures so that we do not lose track of the fuller message.
Today we are returning to the Gospel according to Mark. Tradition tells us that Mark was one of the younger disciples, not one of the twelve apostles but he was most likely among the seventy that Jesus sent out to minister among the people in his name. The other interesting bit of traditional history is that John Mark or Mark as we know him, was the disciple that ran away from the Garden at Jesus’s betrayal. Not only did he run away but he ran away without his clothing. Mark actively participated in the ministry and traveled with Paul and Barnabas. He likely went on these journeys because he is believed to have been the cousin of Barnabas.
Although Mark is and always was of Hebrew heritage, he like many of that lived in areas more heavily populated by Romans, had both a Hebrew and Greek name. John was his Hebrew name, and Mark was Greek. Because of this double name, some believe that it might have been Mark at the root of the accusations against Paul for bringing gentiles onto the temple grounds.
Mark was also at the center of the disagreement between Paul in Barnabas on their missionary journey. Paul did not want to take Mark and Barnabas did, so they went their separate ways. Eventually, though, there was reconciliation between Mark and Paul, because he later regards Mark as a fellow laborer and useful to the ministry.
Most of what we know of Mark has him with either Paul or Barnabas, yet tradition states that Mark penned this gospel account according to the teachings of Peter. This has always bothered me to some degree, because we do not see Mark and Peter together in the pages of scripture, but there are a few instances where this could be plausible. The first is that Mark’s mother would often open her home to the various teachers of the gospel. In Acts 12, we are told that several of these disciples were gathered together in Mark’s mother’s home praying and one of the servants heard a knock at the gate. They were gathered in prayer because Peter had been captured and imprisoned by Herod. An angel came to Peter in that prison, he was chained between two guards and this angel struck Peter in the side, I imagine he kicked him, and told him to get up. As he rose the chains fell off and after dressing, they walked out of the dungeon to Mark’s mother’s house.
Rhoda, this poor servant girl, was with the praying people and was probably praying right along side of them, she heard the knock and recognized Peter’s voice, but had to have permission to open the door. They all thought she was crazy, and even began to lose hope saying that it was his angel or departed spirit. Yet Peter continued to knock. And they realized that Peter was there in his flesh.
Some believe that it might have been at that house at that moment, that Peter spoke of his time with Jesus to those that gathered. This is the tradition that those that believe Mark’s gospel was written first often espouse, but there are other possible traditions. The second is that after leaving Paul, and while carrying various letters to the churches from the apostles, Mark met up again with Peter when they were both in Rome. According to this tradition Matthew was written first, and Paul had encouraged Luke to write his Gospel, and the people of Rome were divided over which Gospel was the better account, because each of the gospel narratives focus on different aspects. In this tradition Peter, who at this time was considered the bishop of Rome, stood and began teaching from Matthew’s gospel and comparing it to Luke’s, and Mark was there taking notes. According to this tradition, Matthew was written first, followed by Luke, and Mark since it was a bridge between the two went between them, giving us the traditional order of the books in scripture, and because Matthew and Luke were both honored by Peter, Mark’s notes were included to give clarity between them.
That is interesting, but does not get to the heart of the message. Why I give this history is to say Mark, although he was not one of the original disciples, was there participating in the ministry from the beginning. Although it is believed that he wrote to the gentiles, he knew the Hebrew origins of the faith because he was of that background. The gospel, the story of Jesus was not just something that he heard, but it was all around him. And the things that he discusses within his gospel are likely things that he also experienced.
In today’s passage, Jesus had just feed the five thousand, and then walked across the water to Bethsaida. Mark does not tell us what they did in Bethsaida, but right after they get there we meet him again in Gennesaret which is just south of Capernaum. Here they get out of the boat and everyone immediately recognizes him and the whole region begins to bring the sick on their beds to him. I want you to imagine the scene because this leads us to today’s passage.
The sick are being brought to Jesus, they are reaching out to him, touching his clothes pushing in to be touched by him. And as these people are pressing in there among the crowd are scribes and Pharisees, from Jerusalem.
A multitude of people: sick, hurting, marginalized people, are pressing in. The disciples and Jesus had just got off their boat after crossing the sea. We are not told how long they had been out, what they were doing prior to this, we only know they had made a voyage. Since many of the disciples at this point were fishermen, and they had been at sea. I think it is safe to say that they had likely spent part of that voyage working, casting out the nets to bring in some income, because the sick were being brought to the marketplaces. These men had been traveling, working, bombarded by a multitude of people requiring help. And among those people were Pharisees.
These religious leaders see what is going on all around them. They see the crowd, they see the marketplace, they see Jesus and his disciples. But what do they speak about when they come up to Jesus? Why do your disciple eat with hands that were defiled?
I grew up on a farm, I have worked in the lawn and landscape industry. I know dirty hands. I also know that there are moments where lunch comes and it is not always possible to completely wash when you are just wolfing down a quick bite as you press on to get the job done. I imagine that this is what was happening to the disciples. They had come off the boat, they quickly unloaded their goods and carried them to the market to sell, and just as their sales were coming to a close the crowd comes rushing in. They begin to organize the crowd, applying some semblance of order in the midst of the chaos, and as they are working someone hands them some bread and without even thinking because they are starving after a hard day’s work they eat.
But the religious leaders were watching. They see the people. They see all these unclean people and they see these supposed disciples touching them. They see them interact with them, and then they see them eat food while standing among these people. That is what bothers them. Not the pain, not the hurting, not the injury and despair. They are upset that the disciples did not wash their hands, that the disciples would eat food while being in a state of defilement.
As I sat considering this passage, my mind like usual went all over the place. I was telling Eric yesterday at practice that I was having trouble focusing on what I needed to say. I spent most of this week reading the writings of the Old Testament looking at the various laws. I even looked up the some of the teachings of the rabbis trying to grasp why or what was causing the Pharisees to be so upset about this.
The problem with the law, is that we often think when it says a person is unclean that means that it is the same as sin. This leads people to come to the conclusion that if you are sick it is because you have sin in your life. If something bad has happened you have sinned. If you have prayed for healing and you are not healed, you are not healed because there is un-confessed sin in your life and God cannot heal you because you are unclean. This is problematic.
I read many of the cleanliness laws this week. I looked up what they were pertaining to and what the rituals were to alleviate the unclean status. The interesting thing is unclean is exactly what it sounds like, it is about hygiene not sin. A few years ago, when the pandemic was at its height many within the Christian communities were debating the ideas surrounding compliance with the various guidelines and the free expression of our faith. Many of these laws of hygiene could have been beneficial to that debate because they speak of discharge of fluids, illness, and the sanitation of a house. Many of these laws like many of the suggested guidelines during Covid and the guidelines our public schools have regarding illness, say similar things.
If you are bleeding all over everything. Stop the bleeding, then wash your clothes, wash everything you touched in that state, and take it easy for the rest of the day. If you are sick, everyone you have come into contact with should bath, wash clothing, wash bedding, clean all the exposed surfaces of the house and until you are no longer symptomatic, you need to stay home until the end of the day. It is basic hygiene not sin. It is about preventing the spread of disease not sin. It is about getting rest and taking care of yourself before you get back into society in a weakened state.
But even in this state of uncleanness, there are times you cannot stay at home. We need to see doctors and at times people will need to assist you in your weakness. They are not contributing to sin, yet they too are unclean. They too will need to wash, and will be considered unclean until the next day.
This even goes to food. This was what I found interesting. If a lizard or other swarming creator got into food or water it was unclean. And you were not only supposed to discard the food you were to break the vessel that the food or drink was in. I sat and considered that for a while. Before Albert started school, we would often go to the zoo to participate in critter club. It was a preschool aged event once a week where the educators at the zoo would teach kids about various animals and they would bring an animal that you could see and interact with. Several times, much to my discomfort, they would bring in snakes. Even I have to admit that some of these species of reptiles were amazing but something that was interesting about these classes was that whenever they brought in a snake or other reptile they would always have another person standing next to the one with the animal and the assistant would have a bottle of hand sanitizer. Each child or parent that touched the snake had to sanitize their hands immediately after because the risk of bacterial infection was high if you ate without first washing. In the pages of scripture we see something similar. If one of these creatures were in your food or drink you were to dump it out and get rid of the container. But then I got even deeper. There was different rules about dead animals in grain and the water supply. If you were to find a swarming animal, or mice, in your grain it was not considered unclean, unless the grain was moist.
This caveat intrigued me. It is almost impossible to keep rodents out of grain, I am speaking from experience, but you need to make every effort to. It can also be difficult to keep grain dry. But when you have rodents in the grain, often you will also have wet grain. Only the moist grain is unclean not all of it. When I was in High school I gained a great understanding of this. We had an entire bin of wheat spoil. It spoiled because mice entered, and they multiplied rapidly. They would eat the grain and the water from outside and the waste of the rodents would mix together and as the chemicals and heat combined the entire bin began to mold. Once that mold began to take hold it rapidly spread through the entire complex. I had to clean the bin. And then we had wash it down, fill in all the hole and get it ready for the next year’s harvest. That spoiled grain was unfit for consumption. We had to scoop it out load it on a truck and the only thing we could do with it was allow the cattle to eat it, if they wanted to. I scooped nasty spoiled grain all day. If the wind blew just right it took every ounce of will power not to throw up, and the next morning my mom had to call the doctor because my body had an allergic reaction to the mold spores. Even to this day I cannot smell alcohol without cringing and remembering that experience.
Moist grain was unclean because it could unintentionally spoil, but grain that was dry even if a mouse died in it was considered clean. You might wonder why? It is because there is processing that needs to happen, before you can eat it. But the things that were already processed were unclean.
But why were the Pharisees upset? The thing about the hygiene teachings is that everyone was unclean until they washed, but they remained unclean until evening. No matter what the disciples did at this point, they were unclean, as were every person that was in that crowd. They could wash their hands all they wanted they would remain unclean until the sun went down. Which makes me wonder what the entire point of their argument was about. This is where the traditions of the elders comes in.
The tradition of the elders here are the oral teachings of the various rabbis. These were the teachings that were passed down from Moses to Joshua, from Joshua on down through the ages. These were not Torah, but they were the teaching that one leader gave to the next. Many of these teachings because they were given by religious leaders to religious leaders, would include some of the most strick aspects of religious observance, that the law only required of priests entering into the most holy place of worship. The cleanliness laws for a priest were much more stringent than for everyone else, because they were going into the areas considered sacred. You did not want to contaminate the holy places with the things of the world. These teachings of the elders were given so that the priests and rabbis would prepare themselves for service. They would need to be mindful of what they did and who they associated with because if they were scheduled to perform duties before God, they could not wait until the next day.
When the priesthood could not function in exile the Rabbis moved the teachings for the temple into the synagogue, and since there was not separation between the sacred and profane in the synagogue as there was in the temple, everyone that participated in worship were being taught to all.
It offended the Pharisees that the disciples disregarded the teachings of the elders because the teachings of the elders moved from the priests to the masses. And they came to Jesus asking why.
Jesus responded to their query by quoting the prophet Isaiah. “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” and he concludes by saying, “You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”
Jesus then teaches his disciples, “Hear me, all of you, and understand:” Hear and understand are the imperative verbs in this passage. To hear and to understand is to know and put into action, to live this out in your daily life. “Here 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.”
Jesus then continues, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, comes evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
Guard your heart the wisdom teachers say, guard your heart because that is the core of who you are. It is where your passions reside, both good and bad. Guard your heart because it is from your heart that you express yourself. It is from your heart that you love, hate, encourage, and discourage. Your heart tells you that you can do all things and your heart tells you that you are a worthless worm unloved by anyone. Guard your heart, because that is you. Hear and understand, Jesus says. You honor me with your lips but your heart is far from me. In vain you worship but you teach as doctrines the commandments of men.
When we begin to focus on the commandments of men our perspectives become skewed. We begin to think that the only right way to worship is what we do, and everyone else is wrong. We begin to think that our political perspective is the only godly political perspective and if you disagree you are wrong. We begin to think. We begin to think that the reason we are not healed is because we have not done enough or we have not prayed enough, or we have un confessed sin. We do not even consider that it might be possible that life is just hard. When we focus on man’s commandments instead of on the truth and wisdom of God, we might begin to think that some people are just better and they deserve more, while others are less. And we fail to see that God so love the world that he gave is only unique son to save not to condemn.
We can often get a skewed perspective, we can focus on the unwashed hands instead of the hurting people. And when we do that we can begin to think that I or we are better because. We can make a list: I have a better education, I was able to pull myself up by my bootstraps, I have a job, or any other things that quite frankly may not even be true. We can often have a skewed perspective but what Jesus is telling us what he wants us to hear and understand, what we see others doing, what we see on the outside is not the whole story. Some of the most righteousness looking people have been some of the most depraved. And some of those that seem to be the most unsavory could be the saintliest of the saints. Guard your heart, because you flow out from your heart. Each of us are capable of greatness or depravity. It depends on what is in your heart.
The pharisees looked at the hurting people, and they did not see what God saw. They did not see people loved by God, all they saw was unwashed hands and sinners. And they did nothing but complain. They did not help. They did not even offer water to wash with. Love God with everything you are and all that you have, and love your neighbor as yourself, those are the most important teachings of God. If you are concerned with clean hands, then maybe pick up the hand sanitizer and stand next to the snake.
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