7 One day some Pharisees and teachers of religious law arrived from Jerusalem to see Jesus. ² They noticed that some of his disciples failed to follow the Jewish ritual of hand washing before eating. ³ (The Jews, especially the Pharisees, do not eat until they have poured water over their cupped hands, as required by their ancient traditions. ⁴ Similarly, they don’t eat anything from the market until they immerse their hands in water. This is but one of many traditions they have clung to—such as their ceremonial washing of cups, pitchers, and kettles.)

⁵ So the Pharisees and teachers of religious law asked him, “Why don’t your disciples follow our age-old tradition? They eat without first performing the hand-washing ceremony.”

⁶ Jesus replied, “You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, for he wrote,

‘These people honor me with their lips,
    but their hearts are far from me.
⁷ Their worship is a farce,
    for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.’

⁸ For you ignore God’s law and substitute your own tradition.”

⁹ Then he said, “You skillfully sidestep God’s law in order to hold on to your own tradition. ¹⁰ For instance, Moses gave you this law from God: ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and ‘Anyone who speaks disrespectfully of father or mother must be put to death.’ ¹¹ But you say it is all right for people to say to their parents, ‘Sorry, I can’t help you. For I have vowed to give to God what I would have given to you.’ ¹² In this way, you let them disregard their needy parents. ¹³ And so you cancel the word of God in order to hand down your own tradition. And this is only one example among many others.”

¹⁴ Then Jesus called to the crowd to come and hear. “All of you listen,” he said, “and try to understand. ¹⁵ It’s not what goes into your body that defiles you; you are defiled by what comes from your heart.”

¹⁷ Then Jesus went into a house to get away from the crowd, and his disciples asked him what he meant by the parable he had just used. ¹⁸ “Don’t you understand either?” he asked. “Can’t you see that the food you put into your body cannot defile you? ¹⁹ Food doesn’t go into your heart, but only passes through the stomach and then goes into the sewer.” (By saying this, he declared that every kind of food is acceptable in God’s eyes.)

²⁰ And then he added, “It is what comes from inside that defiles you. ²¹ For from within, out of a person’s heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, ²² adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. ²³ All these vile things come from within; they are what defile you.”

Mark 7:1-23

Dear God, I have a few thoughts about this passage. Let me say the probably least important one first. I am always amazed at how the New and Old Testaments focus on sexual immorality. This isn’t something that came with the sexual revolution in the 1960s, and everyone was chaste and pure before then. In Jesus’s list in verses 21 and 22, he not only says sexual immorality, but also adultery and lustful desires. of the 13 things listed, three of them are sexually-related. So this is obviously an area that you intended for such good that our sinful hearts are prone to take and pervert. If Jesus were to say, “You have heard it said, do not lie with a man as you lie with a woman, for that is detestable (Lev. 18:22), but I say…” how would he complete that sentence? I think it would be to show all of the heterosexuals how we have perverted sex into something you never intended. So that’s the least important thing I have here.

The other part that caught me this morning was his Isaiah quote:

‘These people honor me with their lips,
    but their hearts are far from me.
⁷ Their worship is a farce,
    for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.’

I think of the puritanical people I know in our community and on a national stage and I wonder what their real prayer lives are like. Do they spend time in prayer? If they do, what is their heart like?

And then that takes my judge-y heart to myself. How do I honor you with my lips but still allow my heart to be far from you. When I go to church this morning, will my worship be a farce?

Father, help me to examine my heart while I am at church this morning. My sitting here and judging others will not do me any good. But when I pray to you, I need to examine my own heart and figure out which things on Jesus’s list I allow to be in my life and separate me from you. Create in me a clean a pure heart, oh, God.

I pray this in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen