Reading: Mark 7-8, Psalm 98

I used to play a lot of what we’ll call high variance games. Most card games fall into this category. The best known one is poker, which since most people know it I’m going to use as an example. In that game, beginning players will generally say that their success depends on what cards they are given. In a single of hand of poker they are right. More advanced players will say that their success is based on knowing when to play the cards they are given. In a large number of hands of poker they are right. Expert players will say that their success is based on what they do with the cards they are given, taking appropriate risks with appropriate cards. There are no “bad hands” per se. What makes a play good or bad is knowing what to do with what is given to you, not whether or not you won a hand.

In our reading today Jesus makes a rather wild statement about the source of good and bad, purity and impurity. In the books of Moses there is a great deal of focus on eliminating impurities from the life of the people of Israel, as well as establishing means for dealing with impurities when they did come up. Since those books were written, more rules of purity had been added, under the argument that if being pure is good, being more pure is better. One of those means was ritual hand washing. At the beginning of our reading today, Jesus is challenged by the Pharisees on his disciples no observing this practice.

Now, what is wrong with hand washing? Nothing, of course. In fact, there is a great deal right with it if you do not want to spend a significant portion of your life rather ill. Though without soap or scrubbing it is of limited value, and there is no indication they did either of those things. But see where the point got missed by the Pharisees: they believed that if the laws of Moses made one pure, doing more than that made one purer. Moses says wash at certain times, so we will wash all the time. There is a misunderstanding of the source of impurity. The ritual purity laws were not, in the end, about scrubbing away the world but about setting the people apart as different. The goal was not to be pure, as that was not possible for the people, but to point themselves and all humanity to a pure God. To cease reaching out and taking the knowledge of good and bad for ourselves, leaving the wisdom of God to rot. But the Pharisees missed the point, and went about plucking fruits of knowing good and bad for generations.

Then Jesus shows up, and he vigorously pulls the Pharisees back in line. There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defiles him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him. Woah. It is not what you are given that defiles. It is not being born Jew or Gentile. It is not being able to see or being blind. It is not being hungry and poor or wealthy and full. It is not the things from without, but the things from within. Humans are never dealt “bad” hands, they are just dealt hands. It is what they choose to do with them that makes them pure or impure.

Just in case anyone missed his point, Jesus drags the whole conversation into one of the great themes of Scripture. Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart. Out of the heart of a man come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these come from within, and they defile a person. It is not the hand you are dealt. It is what you do with it.

One of the great questions of the Christian life is, “How do I be like Jesus?” We think that we might go around healing people and feeding the hungry too, if we had the power to do so. But as we have been reading in Matthew and Mark, Jesus is not just another person. He is the King of the Kingdom of God, and has authority commensurate with his position. We are not, and we do not. However, we do not have to in order to have the right heart. Note that Jesus does not ask anyone to do what he is doing. He asks them to allow their hearts to be transformed and see what God can do. He does not say that what matters is the power a person has (he in fact says the opposite), but that what comes out of a person that God cares about.

Observe, though, what happens when a person with power has a good or bad heart. In the case of the person of power with a bad heart, oppression and domination are the outcomes. We get stories about Herod killing children. We have the Pharisees abandoning their aged parents in order to appear more holy. We have Rome putting an innocent man to death. It is not hard to continue this line of examples all the way up to the present day. But what about the man with power and a good heart? Following his confrontation with the Pharisees, Jesus goes off and heals the blind, the sick, and the lame of both the Jews and the Gentiles. He feeds thousands of foreign people with a few loaves of bread. Out of his heart comes restoration. One might almost say he makes all things new. Peter notices. It is no wonder that he is convinced that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.