This week's readings are all from Mark chapter 7. Click here to see the full reading and a list of each day's readings. Each day's segments of the readings will be posted on this site during the week.
Today's Reading:
Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand. There is nothing outside of a person that can defile him by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles him.”
Now when Jesus had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. He said to them, “Are you so foolish? Don’t you understand that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him? For it does not enter his heart but his stomach, and then goes out into the sewer.” (This means all foods are clean.) He said, “What comes out of a person defiles him. For from within, out of the human heart, come evil ideas, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, evil, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, pride, and folly. All these evils come from within and defile a person.” (Mark 7.14–23 NET)
The previous translation is from the NET Bible translation. Scripture quoted by permission. Quotations designated (NET) are from the NET Bible® copyright ©1996, 2019 by Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. All rights reserved.
Resources for the Reading
Gospel Parallels
- Gospel Parallels: What Makes Someone Unclean
- Gospel Parallels: The Syro-Phoenician (Canaanite) Woman
- Gospel Parallels: Jesus Heals a Deaf Mute and Many Others
Full Resoure Page
I feel like this is where Jesus speaks more plainly than ever. This. Is. A. Heart. Thing. It must be so hard though for these people living in this time who are so deeply steeped in their human traditions to see this. What deep steeped human traditions keep me not “getting it”; my nationalism, my whiteness, my privilege. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.
i think I get stuck in the larger message of what is or isn't left from the mosaic code of purity. Kind of like the disciples I can hear Jesus saying that I am missing it. I found this quote from a commentary helpful to center me on what Jesus is teaching here:
"Jesus presses home the recognition that the ultimate seat of purity or defilement before God is the heart."
I think about multiple passages from the OT in this regard. This is not a new teaching per say but a continued reminder that God desires mercy/steadfast love not sacrifice (Hosea 6:6) and Amos' elevation of justice over empty praise and worship (5:21-24).
In Leviticus there are commandments concerning washing for the sake of ritual purity regarding the tabernacle (and later temple) worship: how the Levites, priests, and other Israelites should be ritually pure in order to engage in sacrifices, offerings, and other worship in the sanctuary. Though there are laws in it directed towards ritual purity for all Israelites, it was always in relation to the sanctuary, and most of the laws pertained to the Levites and Priests who served in the sanctuary.
The Pharisees and some other groups expanded these instructions and commands for Levites and sanctuary worship to include all Israelites in all places but especially in the land of Israel, and then, through interpretation, added additional commands and instructions. The idea was that a ritually pure people would not risk defiling the sanctuary and that God would then return fully to dwell among God's people.
Jesus is clarifying that the real location of purity (or not) is the heart, and that the actions coming from the heart are the problem. Going to the market place and acting with greed is not something that can be washed away with water when coming back.
It should be pointed out, that in first-century context, not all Jews had such traditions, and many who did also pointed out that the issue was really about the heart. For these it was not an either/or of following traditions or not, but being aware that the heart and righteousness is what really mattered. Jesus was not alone in this, although his way was clearly unique. Josephus clarifies that the baptism of John (which, baptism is the word for "immersed" or "wash" used in Mark 7) was for the purification of the body and not proclaimed as something that could wash away with water heart defilement:
John the Baptist . . . who was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism; for that the washing [with water] would be acceptable to him, if they made use of it, not in order to the putting away [or the remission] of some sins, but for the purification of the body; supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness.
(Antiquities 18.117 emphasis added)
John's baptism, according to the Gospels, was a "baptism of repentance", of a change in thought and action. Ritual washing/baptism without this was pointless.
Could any of this clean/unclean food conversation be a foreshadowing of Peter’s vision where God tell him “do not make anything impure that God has made clean”?
@mallary-malwick Good question. I think there were several significant issues in the early Jesus communities that had to do with both ritual purity and with the issues of purity related to interaction with non-Jews. Most of the issues relating to non-Jews were tied to two things: circumcision and sharing meals. The first one was about whether non-Jews could be a part of the people of God, and the second was about how Jewish believers interacted at meals with non-Jews who ate non-kosher food. Both of these were major divisions, and in Peter's vision in Acts the issue of kosher food laws (not really washing, so much) and Gentiles is overlayed. Notably, the voice says in that vision, "Don't call unclean what I have called clean." In the case of washing in Mark 7, it is important to note that God never commands the washing of hands for ritual purity before meals outside the temple.
