14Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, "Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. 15Nothing outside a man can make him 'unclean' by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him 'unclean.' "
17After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. 18"Are you so dull?" he asked. "Don't you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him 'unclean'? 19For 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.")
20He went on: "What comes out of a man is what makes him 'unclean.' 21For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. 23All these evils come from inside and make a man 'unclean.' "
BACKGROUND READING:
Jeremiah 17:1-8
Leviticus 11
Dig Deeper
Imagine the reaction of most Americans today if someone came along teaching that everything that we held dear about being an American had missed the mark of what God wanted. All of our ideals had gone terribly wrong and we were careening into a head-on disaster with God if we didn’t radically re-think everything about our collective worldview. What would this mean for everything that most Americans hold dear.? Would it mean that our concept of what a good citizen is, was completely wrongheaded? Would it mean that our place in the world was not nearly as pleasing to God as we might have thought? Would it mean that all of our heroes that have sacrificed their lives for God, country, and the American way have died in the wrong ditch for the wrong cause?
That would be a truly radical message that would be hard to swallow. Yet, this is basically what Jesus was telling the Jews. The ancient world is full of stories of Jewish martyrs being tortured to death for their refusal to eat pork or defile themselves. The Jews were proud of their beliefs and their heritage. To come right out and say that the things that someone holds most dear are the very things that are the most wrong in their way of thinking doesn’t display courage, it often displays folly. This is a large part of the reason that Jesus spoke in parables. Had he been straightforward from the very beginning he would have been killed.
Jesus spoke in parables so that he could be heard by those who wanted to hear. He wanted to address the wrong teachings of his time, including that of the Pharisees, but he did it in a subtle and far more effective (in the long run) way. Jesus was not about to say something straight out before people were ready to hear it. He was not about to hand the Pharisees a propaganda victory.
Jesus had, however, hoped that his disciples would get the point of what he was saying. (This is the beginning, really, of a series of passages where Mark will use the metaphor ‘see’ to relate to the level of understanding of Jesus’ message. They were as confused as everyone else. Into his stomach, and then out of his body, was this some sort of bad bathroom humor?
Jesus wasn’t talking about the physical aspects of what goes in and out of a person. Thinking that was to miss the point entirely. What he was saying was that purity laws weren’t the point and they never were. The food laws, along with all of the other laws, pointed to what was happening now. They were like the college guy that has a picture of his girlfriend back home in his dorm room. Would he stay in his dorm room for the holidays, staring at the picture, or go home and be with his girlfriend? The answer is obvious. The food laws had become the point for many Jews rather than what they were pointing to. They were intended to teach God’s people about the need for purity before God, and awaken an awareness for the need of real purity of heart and motives. By focusing on outward things, they were avoiding the real work that needed to be done, the inward purity.
One point of caution must be made here. The Greek philosopher Plato taught that the spiritual realm was what really mattered, while the physical realm was inferior and to be despised. Over the years, a lot of Christians have fallen into that same type of thinking, and passages like this, at first glance, may appear to bolster that belief. Jesus is saying quite the opposite from that line of thinking.
He is not saying that what we really need to do is to simply get in touch with our hearts and feelings and then will discover what life is really about. He is saying that good and bad external and physical actions come from internal, spiritual sources. The real problem is the human heart that causes sinful actions, that’s what all the purity laws were pointing towards.
So why were the Jews so attached to the purity laws? Because in a world that was out of their control in almost every other way, they could control this. It set them apart as clean and everyone else as unclean. In challenging their concept of what it means to be a Jew, Jesus is throwing the doors to the kingdom wide open to anyone who would repent, be baptized, and believe. Now what happens to the symbols? Mark answers that in his little side note in v. 19, all food is clean. The purity laws are fine as far as they go, but they are not necessary. You don’t need the picture when the real thing has arrived. The fact that the signs aren’t necessary anymore doesn’t mean that they were worthless, they aren’t needed anymore because they were correct. They pointed to what was to come and it’s here. The laws didn’t touch the real human problem; this is precisely what the kingdom of God addresses.
Devotional Thought
Do you feel that the Church today has lessons that it should learn from the way Jesus spoke in symbols when dealing with touchy subjects? Are there any areas of our culture have we been so quick to condemn in the name of the Bible, that we have done more harm than good? How can we find that fine line between speaking the truth but doing so in a way so that people will hear us and not just immediately tune us out?
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