Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke Sunday, September 1, 2024
“What Does It Mean To Be Clean?”
“Did you really wash your hands?” I feel like I have been using that line a lot less than I used to. At the risk of upsetting or annoying or embarrassing my kids, I’ll tell you the reason I say it less is that they have grown up and matured. There are fewer times when I wonder if they had enough time to wash their hands. There are fewer times they sit down to eat, and I see dirt on their hands. So I don’t need to ask the question as much as I used to.
It’s not exactly the same question, but it is the same issue the Pharisees pointed out to set off the events and discussions in our sermon text today, the portion of Mark chapter 7 read earlier. They were concerned that Jesus’ disciples had not washed their hands. They weren’t worried because they saw dirt and thought it would be disgusting to eat that way. They weren’t concerned about germs or bacteria or viruses or cooties. They were concerned that the disciples did not follow the rules about eating. The rules said they needed to follow a specific, formal, ritual hand-washing before they ate. This was a part of the rules or traditions people added around God’s law. Perhaps at first the rules served their intended purpose, to keep people from disobeying God’s laws by adding an extra layer of protection, a fence, around those laws. But what quickly happened was people, like these Pharisees, focused on the specific rules instead of understanding God’s laws and his purposes.
The Pharisees complained that the disciples were ignoring the traditions. They were eating with unclean hands. The Pharisees wanted the disciples to be clean. They wanted the disciples to follow the rules. But what did that really mean? What did it mean to be clean?
The Pharisees had an answer to the question. To be clean meant that you had washed your hands in the prescribed way. Then you could eat. But there were problems with their view, as Jesus points out. “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites. As it is written: ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. They worship me in vain, teaching human rules as if they were doctrines.’” One problem: the Pharisees had replaced what God said and what he commanded with their own rules. That was a problem because God didn’t need human help. He had revealed his will in the way he wanted to reveal it. The people just needed to listen. They didn’t need to change or update what God said. But that wasn’t the big problem. That wasn’t the real issue. Jesus got to the real issue when he called these men “hypocrites.”
A hypocrite was an actor. He was someone wearing a mask, so that what he presented to the world was not reality but an illusion. The Pharisees were hypocrites because they wanted the people to think that they were careful followers of God. They were the really good, upstanding, religious people. They were genuinely concerned that other people obeyed God, too. That’s why they were so vocal about the disciples and why they followed so many rules and let the people know about it. That was the impression they were trying to give.
The reality was they were just trying to build themselves up. They were concerned about appearances. They liked the rules about things like washing hands because that gave them a way to appear clean. It gave them a way to appear religious. But their hearts were not in it. That’s the whole point of the prophet’s words. God’s laws always revealed people’s hearts. He didn’t give them so people could earn his approval. That’s especially clear because God gave his laws to people who couldn’t possibly keep them all. The Pharisees had replaced God’s laws that revealed their dirty hearts with human traditions that hid the dirt and made them appear clean. They accused others who did not live up to their standards. If people didn’t do what the Pharisees said, how could they be clean?
You know how to play that game, too, don’t you? You can probably think of a sin that you like to talk about. It disgusts you. You can’t believe that anyone would act that way. And, conveniently, it makes you feel good about yourself because that sin is not a problem for you. You have figured out how to be like the
Pharisees in our reading today. You get to make up your own standard for what makes people unclean, and then you look clean by comparison.
And Pharisees like that don’t have to stop and think about their hearts. They don’t need to ask whether God approves of what they are doing. They don’t need to face the reality that their hearts are unclean. Their actions are false and fake. They are hypocrites putting on a good show that hides reality.
What we should be doing instead is marveling that Jesus even takes the time to talk to Pharisees like that. He calls them to account. He calls them to repent. He gives them opportunities to learn what is really important and to set their hearts on him. Jesus didn’t stress about his disciples not living up to human traditions because he was teaching them about the heart of the matter. Unclean hands were not the problem. Unclean hearts were. The disciples had unclean hearts stained from all the times they did not put God first. The Pharisees had unclean hearts stained by all their hypocritical demands. The whole world of people at Isaiah’s time and at Jesus’ time and at our time are people with unclean hearts stained by all their failures and faults. And the only exception, the only person with a clean heart, is Jesus. He was never a hypocrite. His actions perfectly matched his heart. His heart was clean—his attitude was always perfect. He loved God and loved people relentlessly. His hands were clean—his actions were always perfect. His love met people’s needs and served them.
And so he goes on to teach further. He gathers the crowd to himself, not just the Pharisees, and he says even more about what it means to be clean or unclean. He says that it isn’t the outside that makes people unclean. Things don’t go into us like dirt on our hands being ingested with our food. No, what makes someone unclean is the heart, and unclean actions flow out of an unclean heart. And it’s an extensive list that Jesus lays out: “In fact, from within, out of people’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual sins, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, unrestrained immorality, envy, slander, arrogance, and foolishness. All these evil things proceed from within and make a person unclean.” Jesus accuses the sinful heart of what we might call the big sins. These are the ones that have an outsized impact on people around us: murder, theft. But that’s not all. He drills down to the sins that people around us may not even be aware of when we commit them: evil thoughts, greed, envy. All of these evil things come out of unclean hearts. All of the unclean actions start on the inside. And even people who follow Jesus know all too well that their hearts are full of that filth.
What is outside cannot make a person unclean. But something outside of us is absolutely necessary to make us clean. All we have inside is filth and dirt. Only Jesus has a clean and pure heart. Instead of a selfish heart, his heart beat only for others. His heart beat only in service to people and out of love for his heavenly Father. And then that sinless, pure, clean heart stopped beating. Jesus gave up his life so that he could offer it to you. He gave up his life so that he could make you clean. The perfect, clean, holy heart and life and actions of Jesus are given to you and me through faith. In baptism he washes sin away. His body and blood are given to us to make us clean. He has done for us what we could never do.
And that’s why we follow him. That’s why we come again and again to his Word and to his sacrament in the same way that we will wash our hands many times over. On our own we are impure and unclean, unfit to worship or approach God. With Jesus, we are pure and clean, made ready for heaven with God forever. Our hearts delight not in keeping rules, but in serving others. Our hearts delight in obeying God’s law, obeying his directions for us—not because in some way we think there’s a reward in it for us. We do what God commands because he has made our hearts clean, and now they beat for the people around us and for our God. The masks are off. We worship with our lips and our hearts and our lives.
“Did you really wash your hands?” It may be a useful question for personal health and hygiene. It is not a useful question from those who have made handwashing into a traditional and ceremonial requirement. We may not have those Pharisees to deal with, but we can still rejoice that whether or not our hands are clean, our hearts are clean in Jesus.
The Text: Mark 7:1–8, 14–15, 21–23 (EHV)
7The Pharisees and some of the experts in the law came from Jerusalem and gathered around Jesus.
2They saw some of his disciples eating bread with unclean (that is, unwashed) hands. 3In fact, the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they scrub their hands with a fist, holding to the tradition of the elders. 4When they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions they adhere to, such as the washing of cups, pitchers, kettles, and dining couches. 5The Pharisees and the experts in the law asked Jesus, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders? Instead they eat bread with unclean hands.”
6He answered them, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites. As it is written: These people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.
7They worship me in vain, teaching human rules as if they were doctrines.
8“You abandon God’s commandment but hold to human tradition like the washing of pitchers and cups, and you do many other such things.”
14He called the crowd to him again and said, “Everyone, listen to me and understand. 15There is nothing outside of a man that can make him unclean by going into him. But the things that come out of a man are what make a man unclean.
21In fact, from within, out of people’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual sins, theft, murder, 22adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, unrestrained immorality, envy, slander, arrogance, and foolishness. 23All these evil things proceed from within and make a person unclean.”