Mark 7 14-23

Have you ever seen Fiddler on the Roof? It is a musical movie about Russia in the 1800’s- more exactly it is about Russian Jews who live in interesting times. One of the haunting early songs in the movie is “Tradition”. These Russian Jews did everything according to tradition, the way it has always been done. How they eat, what they wear, who they marry, all according to tradition. The story is really about his daughters breaking with the tradition about who they are going to marry. The girls don’t want their husbands chosen for them; they want to marry someone they love. And so begins the breaking of the traditions, the way it has been done for years.

We are going to get to look at some of the traditions that Christ broke apart when He walked the earth. One of the problems of any type of worship is that we start to worship the traditions rather than God. We get caught up in doing something the right way, which is the way it has always been done, and we lose sight of God. What we used to do for God we now do for ourselves. The Jews got caught up in this, and I think we can too. We too have traditions, if we look closely enough. The real problem is when the traditions we have become shaped in our hearts and minds to be worship of God. I strongly suspect God doesn’t want us caught up in rituals and traditions while thinking we are worshipping the living God. Worship always should be, instead, and encounter with the living God. Let’s take a look at what Jesus said about some traditions He was encountering as He taught His way through Israel, and see what He says about what really makes someone acceptable to God, as opposed to what the religious leaders thought.

Please stand and follow along beginning in Mark 7:14.

Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. Nothing outside a man can make him ‘unclean’ by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him ‘unclean’.

After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. “Are you so dull?”, he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing enters a man from the outside can make him ‘unclean’? For it doesn’t go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods ‘clean’.)

He went on: “What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean’. For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean’.

Let’s pray.

I don’t know if you are tired of Mark by this point, but I’m still enjoying our nice long look at the first gospel completed and out there for all the world to read about Jesus Christ; Him the preacher, Him the priest, prophet and King, Him the resurrected One. All of Mark leads directly to the conclusion that the tomb was empty that Sunday morning after Passover. He was dead, wrapped in burial clothes, placed in the tomb, the stone rolled into place, left as dead. But 3 days later, the stone had been rolled back, the clothes had been discarded and the One who was dead, wasn’t any longer. The early church, and in fact the church throughout the ages has been focused on the empty tomb, that the dead body put in there on Friday afternoon wasn’t there Sunday. Something miraculous, that Jesus said what would happen if one were to listen closely, happened. Death could not hold Him, the grave couldn’t hold Him and He rose.

We worship a living God. We don’t worship a God who demands mindless traditions or a mindless ‘going through the motions’. We worship a God who demands our attention, who knows us completely and loves us, and desires to be actively loved back. We actively love God in response to what He has done for us in a couple different ways. One is getting to know Him better through His Word and through prayer. Another way is through the way we spread the message of Him to our friends and to people we barely know. We are called to be ministers and missionaries wherever God places us in His kingdom. Another way we worship God is through how we live, moment to moment, capturing our bad thoughts and asking God to change them; capturing our bad actions and stopping them because we know they distance us from God. So in all that, I want us to deeply realize we worship a God who knows us, and knows if we are just going through the motions of worship because we think that’s what we should do, or whether we are actively worshipping God; reflecting on His Word as it is brought to us in song, prayer and sermon each week.

You see, the Jewish people were like us. They could get off track, and focused on the trappings of religion; the outer show of religious piety and obedience. But God never seems interested in the outward show. He seems interested in the inner workings of our motivations, the inner workings of our minds. He wants us living for Him not just in the mechanical things we do, but actively seeking Him through our worship, through our living for Him. The Jews could get lost in the stuff of religion, doing all the proper stuff but with hearts that were really far from God. They could go to the synagogue for worship, and hate their neighbor, desiring their neighbor’s spouse or goat or farm, or whatever. They could go through the motions of piety, without having a connection to God, without desiring to know the God who wants to change us from the inside out into His disciples, His followers who are willing to pay whatever price in order to be close to God; whether that price be financial, the giving up of certain rights, or even some are called to pay the price in blood.

The Pharisees were interested in enforcing the trappings of religion; the outward show of faith. In fact, they were pretty good at it themsleves. But God is interested in the heart, God is interested in the inside of people, which cannot be policed. It cannot be forced or coerced. A person with a heart for God sometimes shows it outwardly, but sometimes not. And a person who makes a big show of piety and religion may actually hear from God someday, “Depart from me, I never knew you.” The problem with some traditions is that it gives us the feeling of closeness to God without the closeness to God. We think we are doing what we are supposed to be doing, but our hearts are far from God. Which is too bad. It’s not how we were created. Let’s take a look at how the Jews got off-track, and hopefully that will help us not to fall into the same trap.

When Mark wrote his gospel, perhaps in the 50’s or 60’s, the early church was still dominated by Jewish believers, but with a substantial portion of Gentile believers. They were merging and becoming the bride of Christ, but they weren’t perfect yet. One of the early discussions within this growing church, one that Paul has to address over and over in his letters to the different churches, is whether someone has to become a Jew before they become a Christian. Does someone have to be circumcised into the Jewish religion? Seems like that might have been a deterrent…and do the Gentile believers now have to adhere to the strict dietary laws of the Jews? God Himself had handed the dietary laws to Moses, who handed them to the people.

But the early church decided, largely through Paul’s influence, that Gentiles didn’t need to go through the intermediary step of becoming Jews before they became Christians. So Mark, and Peter, the apostle looking over his shoulder, approving of Mark’s version of events, remember a helpful comment Jesus made to help settle a disputed issue in the early church. The comment that Jesus made much more sense and the early church could really hold on to Jesus teaching in the middle of the later dispute. We see that in the last line, with the explanation that Jesus had declared all foods clean, that no one was ritually defiled by eating something. For instance, we know that one of the questions Paul answered in First Corinthians was about whether people could eat animals sacrificed to other gods. Paul says, the food is fine, but if eating it causes one of your brothers or sisters in faith to have a problem, by all means refrain from eating.

Jesus was essentially trying to shift their mindset from a religion that focused on the outward signs of piety to an inward focused relationship with God. Jesus was sent by God to bring people into full and complete relationship with Him. The traditions we have are designed to help us worship in spirit and in truth. The traditions are stupid without Jesus. They are pointless if Jesus is not a part of our lives. If you think that coming to worship does something without Christ, I think that’s not right. Maybe people get something out of the service, but without Jesus, a lot of this doesn’t make sense. Jesus came to change our insides, not the outside. The outsides will reflect what is going on with us on the inside, how God is changing us into His image slowly by slowly. But to worry about what food we eat and if that will effect our relationship with God, Jesus says that’s nothing to worry about. It is petty and little. But it was a serious issue for the early church. Do they still adhere to the dietary laws of the Old Testament, and should the Gentiles converts also conform to those laws? It certainly seems like Jesus is saying that what we eat shouldn’t be a deterrent to a relationship with God. So many times it seems like people try to place other expectations on new Christians, more than they need or can handle at the time. This is a minor issue that some people were blowing up into a major one. Major issues are who is Jesus? Is Scripture authoritative? Minor issues are hymns versus praise music, should communion be by dipping or the traditional way. We split with people over major issues, but not over minor ones.

The real issue the Pharisees and Jesus are arguing over is what makes a person ‘holy’ and what makes them no longer holy. The tradition of the elders had a long list of what would make someone not holy; eye contact with a non Jew could defile someone according to the tradition of the elders. The shadow of a Gentile falling across food or eating utensils could make the Jew who ate ceremonially unclean. Unholy. And while this attention to detail could be commendable, it always had the potential to make people think they were holy when they were far from it. Jesus here elaborates on what exactly makes a person unclean. It isn’t that their food has been served without the shadow of a Gentile. It isn’t what people were eating or how. What makes a person unclean is the garbage that comes out of their trashy inner lives; evil thoughts. Sin in many different forms; sexual immorality, stealing, this is the 10 commandments plus some. Slander, arrogance, folly, those aren’t in the 10 commandments but they are heart attitudes that distance people from God. Those are the sorts of things Jesus came to change in the lives of the people back then and in our lives.

These activities show that Jesus has not changed our lives. This isn’t to say that Christians don’t slip up. We do. I do. All the time. But these attitudes and actions coming out of people characterize them as unclean before God. These actions shouldn’t be coming out of any disciple of Christ on a regular basis. And if they are, we need to pray for you. This list really is the opposite of the fruits of the spirit Paul lists in Galatians 5: but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Which set describes us? Does love flow out of us or does the twisting of love; sexual immorality and adultery? Think about that for a second. Does joy flow out of us, or does evil thoughts? Does peace flow out of us, or does murder and folly? Patience, or greed? Kindness or slander and arrogance? Goodness or malice? Faithfulness or lewdness? Gentleness or deceit? Self-control or theft and envy?

Jesus always calls us to be more than we are. We are called to reflect Jesus in all we do because He is our Lord. We are called to show the fruits of the Spirit because they describe who Christ was. They describe His attitude, His fruits. When we have Christ in us actions that reflect Him should come from us. That is the real proof that we are on the right track, not that we are righteous because our righteousness never comes from what we do, it only comes from Christ Himself. But I think we need to examine ourselves, honestly, to see which sets of words describe us. Are we thinking we are holy because we come to church and sing nice songs, and in the meantime act with malice toward our family and neighbors; act selfishly in every possible situation, and wish the worst for people who we feel have somehow slighted or insulted us? Do we think we are holy because we take communion while slandering church or work acquaintances behind their backs? Does that make us holy? Or does something different need to happen in our lives? We cannot continue down a path of a righteous show for others while harboring evil in our hearts. It won’t work. Eventually the evil will show through.

It did for the Pharisees. For all their supposed righteousness, they set up an innocent man, had Him condemned, and forced the local Roman leadership to nail Him to a cross. The false sense of righteousness led them to something terrible. For all their righteousness bore not the fruit of love and joy but rather envy, slander and evil thoughts. That is how it has always been with humans. Our own righteousness is worthless in God’s eyes; we cannot produce a righteousness in and of ourselves. When I say righteousness, what I mean is a right relationship before God. The righteousness of the Pharisees wasn’t. Their attempts at piety did not produce a right relationship with God. Nor will our attempts to be right with God without Jesus. Our own attempts at righteousness will not produce a right relationship with God. Only when we are in Christ are our sins washed away in the sacrifice of His blood that pays the penalty for our sins. We still aren’t innocent, we are still guilty of breaking God’s laws, but because of Jesus, and our acceptance of His gift of life, we are pardoned.

I look around at us and I see a mixture. I see a mixture in most of us of good and bad, a mixture of emotions and attitudes and actions. Some good, some bad. Some fruits of the spirit, some really negative stuff. I wonder if that is because we are depending on our own strength to become better people, or whether we are ready to invite Christ to come into our lives and make them over in His image. We all need Christ, there is no shame or condemnation for those who are in Christ. There is no need to try and produce righteousness. When we are in Christ is ought to flow out of us; love, forgiveness, hope, grace and peace.

This passage is a challenge to us, to you, to me. Are we more concerned with traditions than Jesus? You know, traditions change. The way church happens changes. It always has, it always will. But the message remains the same. The message of Jesus love, His righteousness given to us because of the cross and the empty grave; that should never change. Traditions pass away, but the Word of the Lord endures forever.

Let’s pray.