From the Inside Out

Mark 7:1-9, 14-15, 21-23

September 2, 2018

            There is a humorous television commercial out right now – an ad for the pest control company, Terminix. Here’s how it goes. The Terminix man comes to the door of a nice home. The woman who owns the house is obviously relieved that he has finally arrived. Clearly, she is in great distress about the puzzling pest problem she’s facing. You realize why it’s puzzling when the two go inside. Her home is immaculate, spotless, and sanitary to the nth degree.

            The home owner takes the Terminix man into the kitchen, bemoaning as she goes that she cannot fathom why bugs are coming into her home, because she keeps it spotless. She tells him that there isn’t a crumb of food to be found anywhere. To prove her point, she opens the doors to her pantry. There, in perfect order, are neat rows of clear containers keeping her food secure. I believe they are even arranged by color. When this woman said that not a crumb or stray speck of food could be found, she meant it.

            The Terminix man has to give her the bad news that bugs don’t always come into a home looking for food. They come to get away from the cold, to build their nests and to reproduce. She cringes in horror at the thought, and the Terminix man goes on to tell her how the company can get rid of the bugs and return her home to its pristine state once more. At the end of the commercial, he makes the mistake of putting his hand on her counter, leaving potential germs. She quickly takes care of that by moving his hand and spraying cleaner on the spot.

            The point of the ad is to sell Terminix. But it is a funny commercial, and what makes it funny to me is this woman and what is supposed to be her over-the-top neatness. But here’s the thing; while I might laugh along with others at this woman, secretly I want her pantry. I want that kind of order. I want all of my food packed securely into air-tight containers, and I want to have the kind of pantry where they can all be arranged in neat rows, arranged, if not by color, than alphabetically.

            Now that my confession is out of the way, you’re probably wondering what the heck this commercial has to do with our passage from Mark’s gospel. After all, Jesus made no mention of clutter or insects anywhere in the verses that we read, or in the verses that were left out. While the Pharisees and scribes did ask about the lack of hand washing among some of the disciples, this was not an encounter about hygiene. It was, instead, a confrontation about defilement.

            “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”

            Looking at this question through our particular modern lens, the Pharisees and scribes don’t seem off base at all. We know about germs. We know that hand washing is one very effective way of preventing the spread of sickness and disease. Every public restroom you go in has a sign up saying that all employees must thoroughly wash their hands before returning to work. Hand washing is a given in our culture. But again, the tradition of the elders that the Pharisees and scribes referred to was not about hygiene or sanitary practices. It was about defilement. It was about being ritually clean or unclean. That’s why hands were washed and food from the market place was washed; and pots, cups and bronze kettles were washed. In one way it would seem that the world Jesus and these religious authorities lived in was divided into clean and unclean. One walked side-by-side with ritual uncleanness all the time. Because of that, observing the tradition of the elders was necessary to avoid defilement. Just as the woman in the commercial believed that keeping her home scrupulously clean would deter insect infestation, the people in Jesus’ context believed that defilement could be deterred and avoided by controlling their external reality. Defilement came from the outside, so they worked on keeping that outside in check.

            But Jesus turned that tradition on its head.

            “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. … For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

            “For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come.”

            From the inside out; it seems to me that was the point Jesus was making. If you want to know what defiles a person, look at what is on in the inside, not the outside. I do not think in any way that Jesus was saying that the Law didn’t matter or was unnecessary. After all, Jesus said that he came to fulfill the Law. Even though what defiles originates from the inside out, outward laws are still needed to restrain and constrain our worst impulses. Setting legal boundaries on human behavior is part of what makes societies function. But legalism is something else. That’s the issue that Jesus had with the Pharisees, the scribes and the other religious authorities. They took the Law, capital L, and expanded and extended it into lists of legal do’s and don’ts.’ They forgot that the reason God gave the people the Law, was not for the sake of legalism but for the sake of love.

            Jesus spent a lot of time trying to get people to understand that; to understand that the heart of God was the source of all love. So if you really want to know where defilement originates, you have to look at the heart. Defilement comes from the inside out, not the other way around.

            Yesterday, Brent and I made a trip down to Dallas to visit the 6^th Floor Museum at Diehly Plaza. The former name for this museum was the Texas Book Depository. It was where Lee Harvey Oswald was working when he became infamous for assassinating John F. Kennedy, the President of the United States. The 6^th floor is where Oswald made what is called the sniper’s nest. It is where he spent the day waiting for the president’s motorcade to come by, and it is where he took his rifle and fired three shots. The first one missed, the second hit the president and Governor Connelly, and the third one finished its ultimate purpose.

            This was not a lighthearted or fun museum to visit. It was sad. It was incredibly sad. It was haunting because unlike some museums, we could actually walk down the sidewalk where Oswald walked when he left the building. My fiancée is a self-described geek about this particular moment in history, so after we toured the museum, we followed the path of both the motorcade and Oswald for the rest of that day. We drove the route to Parkland Hospital, where the president was taken. We passed by the Trade Market where the president and the first lady were heading for a luncheon, and where the president was supposed to give a speech. Then we went to the boarding house where Oswald stayed during the week when he was working at the depository. We drove by the house where Oswald and his wife lived before they moved to a farther suburb, and we saw through a slat in the fence the backyard where he had his picture taken with the rifle that would be used to kill the president. We stopped at the spot where he gunned down a police officer, Officer Tippet. It is a place where an historical marker has finally been erected – not to remember Oswald, but to remember Officer Tippet. And finally we went to the Texas Theater, now another historic landmark, and saw for ourselves the place where Oswald was captured.

            It was haunting to see all these sites, but even more than that it was sad; so incredibly sad. What a waste of life. What a waste of potential and possibility, and for what? I thought about it and realized that seven children were left fatherless that day: President Kennedy’s two little ones, Officer Tippet’s three children, and Oswald’s own two little girls. And why? For what?

            As we were driving back to Oklahoma, Brent shared a story with me from Oswald’s brother, Robert. Robert went to visit his brother while he was in jail. Apparently Robert stared intently into his younger brother’s eyes, trying to understand, to fathom what would have made his brother do something like this. Perhaps he stared into his brother’s eyes trying to see a glimpse of humanity that he hoped was there.

            Oswald told him, “Don’t stare into my eyes trying to find something, brother. There’s nothing there.”

            That which defiles, that which truly defiles, comes from the inside out. Certainly our external circumstances help to shape us, even define us. But Jesus said it is what lives in the heart that defiles. The violence that we do to one another, the harm that we cause, the pain that we spread, that comes from within.

            But if that which defiles comes from the inside out, than isn’t it also true that what is most good, most kind, most loving also comes from the inside out? It is that goodness, that kindness and compassion and love that we seek to nurture in this place. It is that which we seek to nurture when we come to this table; when we remember Jesus through the breaking of the bread and the drinking of the cup. And when we come to this table, we not only enlarge the goodness that lies in our hearts, we see one another a little more as God sees us; we see one another through Christ’s eyes.

            May our God of grace help us to share all that is good from the inside out, to give more, care more, do more and love more. Thanks be to God. Amen.