Welcome to St. Andrew's Lutheran Church, Kamloops

Today’s Gospel lesson sparked a conversation around my dinner table last week. One of our guests recalled the account of a Ukrainian family on a trip to Israel. They were in Jerusalem. It was supper time. The family was hungry. They needed some items for their room fridge: bottles of water and some milk for the kids. They stopped at a convenience store and purchased a pack of water bottles and some individual sized cartons of milk. 

They saw a café nearby and decided to eat there. It was a Jewish establishment. The waiter put glasses of water in front of each of them and took their order. Each one ordered a beef burger and fries. The kids and mom ordered pop to compliment their meal. The waiter eventually brought the food and drinks and all of them began to enjoy their burgers and fries. Dad looked at the sodas everyone else was drinking and his now unappetizing glass of water. Without thinking, he reached into the plastic sack beside him and pulled out a small carton of milk, opened it, took a bite of his burger and then a drink of milk. 

The family was not prepared for the response of the management and patrons of that restaurant to their father’s simple innocent act. 

Some diners around their table rose to their feet and began to protest in Hebrew, English and Yiddish. Their anger and ire were evident by the scowls on their faces. They all pointed to the door. Their angry faces, the volume and angry tone of their voices and gestures were universally understood symbols. The family capitulated and left the restaurant bewildered, heads hung low and still hungry. 

It was only when they were back in their hotel room and munching on some pizza did these Christian folk realize what had happened. 

In three places, Exodus 23:19 and 34:26 and Deuteronomy 14:21 it is written: “Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.”

The sages read these texts as a decree from God that prohibited even clean meats from being cooked in milk. They further reasoned that if meat and milk cannot be together in a pot for cooking, then meat and milk should not be in a person’s stomach at the same time. When the man took a bite of his beef burger followed by a milk chaser, the calf and its mother’s milk were together in the stranger’s stomach, in violation of the general principle stated in above quoted texts. Beef is a clean meat and cow’s milk is a clean food, but when they are together, the person ingesting the same is rendered ritually unclean.

Moreover, whatever that person touched became unclean until the evening. Anyone ritually unclean could not go to the synagogue or engage in any other act of worship. If a Rabbi or any other worshipper was accidentally rendered unclean because of an accidental touch of this man, his family or their table, they could not go to a synagogue or undertake any other religious act until the next day. 

In verses 1-13 of Mark 7, Jesus’ disciples had been accused of eating food with defiled hands, thereby making all their food unclean. To the Pharisees, Jesus, a Rabbi, at best seemed unconcerned by his disciple’s failure to obey the Pharisaic codes and worst seemed to be one who encouraged this unlawful behaviour among his disciples. 

The Pharisees believed that they were undefiled by their own standards. Clean hands, clean food and scrupulous adherence to their own rules made them righteous in their own eyes, God’s eyes, and the eyes of their fellow men. Their outside condition necessarily reflected on their interior condition. Like their hands, their hearts, minds and souls were clean. They had a clean bill of health for their exterior and interior life. With clean hearts and hands and could therefore judge Jesus and his disciples. 

To them the disciples were like the 21st Century Ukrainian man who had put beef and milk in his stomach at the same time. The Pharisees, like the 21st century customers, were incensed by the disciples’ behaviour. Therefore, they rose up and expressed their ire. “Unclean – get out!” They wanted the crowd around them to feel their indignation, to revolt against Jesus and his disciples. 

Jesus silenced his critics with two short sentences: “Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.” (Mark 7:15). 

Moses promised that one day a Prophet would arise and God would put His words in the Prophet’s mouth. The Prophet would make things clear. (Deuteronomy 18:14-22) With these words, Jesus changed everyone’s focus from the disciples’ hands and the food their hands had defiled, to their own hearts, minds and souls. The Prophet had spoken and silenced his critics. Jesus and his disciples were not chased away like our Ukrainian brother and his family, rather they walked away. The crown was silenced by Jesus teaching. He had made a point they all had to ponder. 

When they were alone with their Master, the disciples revealed that, like the crowd, they were stunned by Jesus’ teachings. They asked, “What did you mean by that?”

Jesus focused their attention first on the food. Look he said, food goes into your stomach, and it comes out. It touches your stomach, but it doesn’t touch your mind and soul. The disciples realized that by these words Jesus made all food clean. They could eat what was previously forbidden: a cheeseburger (milk and meat together on the bun and in your stomach), shrimp and bacon. 

Then he focused their attention on their minds. The Bible uses the human heart as a metaphor for the human mind. Deep within the body, the human heart pumps blood through the body thereby allowing it to be oxygenated and filled with nutrients by the lungs and the other organs. Deep within every human mind is a person’s core, the heart of the mind. It makes them who they are. It drives everything the person does. Jesus rendered a diagnosis on the human heart. It is utterly sick. The human heart pumps bad ideas into the human mind and makes people do horrible things. The lesson to the disciples stops here. Jesus and the disciples move on to Tyre an area near Gentile people. He leaves us hanging. To ponder what he said. 

Is what Jesus said about the heart, the innermost part of a human being something new? The answer is a resounding no!

Listen to what God said about the human heart through the Old Testament Prophet Jeremiah. 

“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? “I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.” (Jeremiah 17:9-10)

Jesus had searched the hearts and minds of the Pharisees through the behaviour of his own disciples. They showed what was inside them. They were looking at Jesus and his disciples with one thing in mind, to find a “gotcha moment.” They wanted to expose Jesus as a fraud and at the same time make them look superior to him in the eyes of the crowd. They wanted to take a stand for Moses and for God and for righteous living and against Jesus and his disciples and their unrighteous living. However, in the end they exposed their hypocrisy, self-love, self-righteousness and blasphemous disdain for the very Son of God. 

Jesus searched the heart and minds of his disciples. They were dumbstruck by Jesus’ words. They had no idea what he meant. Then Jesus gave them the diagnosis. You have an incurable disease. They said nothing more. 

King David knew of his terminal condition. God had exposed his sinful heart through the words of the Prophet Nathan. David knew that he had sinned and deserved to die. He did not remain silent. Read Psalm 51. He knew that he had to fall on his knees and beg God for forgiveness. He had to admit that he was a sinner from his conception. He had to admit that all that he had done with Bathsheba (commit adultery) and to her husband Uriah (act as a co-conspirator in his death to cover up a child conceived in sin), were sins against God and God alone. Therefore, only God could forgive those sins. He admitted his guilt and that the suffering and death God could inflict were completely justified. He admitted that he was incurable. He admitted that there was nothing he could do to cure his heart and be a better person. 

Jeremiah did not remain silent in the face of God’s diagnosis. He plead with God: “Lord, you are the hope of Israel; all who forsake you will be put to shame. Those who turn away from you will be written in the dust because they have forsaken the Lord, the spring of living water. Heal me, Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise.” (Jeremiah 17:13-14)

King David asked for even more than forgiveness. He knew his mind was sick. He begged that God “create a clean heart in him.” He used the Hebrew word pronounced “bara” the same one used in Genesis 1:1. He asked God to perform an act of creation on his mind. God created and still creates by speaking. God spoke the words of forgiveness through Nathan, and David’s mind, his heart, was restored and made clean. He asked for even more, that God would renew a steadfast spirit within him. To be steadfast is to be dutifully firm and unwavering. He wanted God to give him the faith and trust in God he had when he was a young man. The faith and trust that inspired and moved him to fight Goliath and show mercy to King Saul who had sought to murder him. Again, David admitted that his faith and trust also came from God. David pled with God not to take the take the Holy Spirit from him. 

The answer to Jeremiah’s and David’s prayers stood before them. The source of the healing of the human heart was so close that they could touch him. The healing of the human heart required, the forgiveness of the sin the human heart produced. The one who stood before them would suffer and die for their sins. Because of Jesus death on the cross God would blot out their transgressions and forgive the iniquity of their sin. The resurrection of Jesus on the third day would open the gates to eternal life for all who believe.

On the eve of the first Easter Sunday, the one before them that day, would stand before them resurrected, the marks of his suffering that produced death still on him. He would say: “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” He breath them and would say, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” (John 20:21-23)

Today the one who said those words is with us. He is all around us. He is within us. Today you heard the words of forgiveness and absolution, and you were forgiven and a clean heart was created within you. Today you have the Holy Spirit within you who breathes on you through words of the Gospel and restores a steadfast spirit within you. 

At the very beginning of things, at creation, Adam and Eve ate a forbidden fruit that went into them. It did not touch their minds. However, God’s words that went with the fruit, did enter their minds and changed their minds. They knew good and evil; they saw they were naked and were ashamed. Death entered creation. Weeds, briers and all that is evil about creation also entered into it. The human heart became a fountain of sin. Though we instinctively know the good; evil is right there beside us. We end up doing what is bad and sinful in God’s sight. We are terminal. This will continue until Jesus’ return. 

We have a cure, and that cure is Jesus. We experience the cure today and every day we have breath. God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit work on us when we are baptized. We are joined to Jesus’ death so that our sins are forgiven. We are joined to his resurrection so that we too will be raised to eternal life. We receive the Holy Spirit. Jesus works on us through the words of the Gospel to give us faith. Faith comes from hearing the message of Christ. This faith inspires us to do things for God’s glory despite our sinfulness. 

Today Jesus works on us through bread and wine that go into our stomachs. The bread and wine won’t touch our minds, but the words attached to them will enter our minds and change them. These words assure that Jesus is with us, inside us just like the bread and that our sins are forgiven. He suffered, bled and died for our sins in real time and in a real place. That suffering and death, blot out the sins my mind produce today. That suffering and death frees me from sin, and death. Word and Sacrament assure us of God’s presence and guidance all the days of our lives. Word and Sacrament assure us that one day, we will have new physical bodies that are driven by a healthy heart that will not wear out. The same Word and Sacrament assure us that one day we will have a new mind and that the heart that drives the mind will be a fountain of blessing. The new mind will enable us to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and our neighbour as ourselves as God intended and desires. 

Lord we pray that use the bread and the wine and the word to create a clean heart in us, renew our spirits, so that someone can see Jesus, the source of heart health, within us and reach out and touch him and be changes and healed. All this to your glory. 

Amen. 

https://youtu.be/nuw3P47CGMU

Copyright © 2024 St. Andrews Lutheran Church Kamloops

https://standrewwslutheran.ca