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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
“You are what you eat.” You probably have heard that saying, usually used to suggest that, in order for you to be fit and healthy, you need to eat food that is good for you. “You are what you eat.” Sometimes the saying is used as part of a visual joke, where somebody eating something literally turns into what he or she is eating. (The French and German 19-century authors who first came up with the saying did not mean it quite that literally.) “You are what you eat,” or are you? In today’s Gospel Reading Jesus at first seems to suggest that what one eats has no bearing on one’s spiritual condition, at least not as His Jewish opponents taught. But, as we reflect further on today’s Gospel Reading, we rightly ask, “Are you what you eat?”
Today’s Gospel Reading from St. Mark’s divinely‑inspired account picks up right where last week’s Gospel Reading left off. Last week, you may remember, Pharisees and scribes from Jerusalem saw some of Jesus’s disciples eat with ceremonially unwashed—and thus defiled—hands. So, they asked Jesus why His disciples did not walk according to the tradition of the elders, the leading Jewish rabbis, who taught that not only the priests but also the ordinary people needed to ceremonially wash their hands before eating. Jesus sharply condemned them for leaving, rejecting, and voiding God’s Word to hold, establish, and pass down their own tradition. (In so doing, they certainly violated God’s commands, such as those we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading, commands against both taking from and adding to God’s Word.)
In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus called the crowd of ordinary people to Him again, and Jesus said as clearly as possible that nothing outside a person going in defiles the person but the things inside a person coming out defile the person. Later, when they had left the crowd of ordinary people, His disciples asked Him to explain the saying. Jesus seemed surprised they did not understand it, and He restated the saying and explained, in somewhat graphic terms, that whatever is outside a person and goes in enters the person’s stomach and eventually is expelled, without really affecting the person’s heart. But, Jesus said, from within, out of the person’s heart, come all sorts of evil things that defile the person. Out of great concern for the crowd of ordinary people and for His disciples, Jesus explained that the ceremonial uncleanness of hands or food does not, in fact, defile (or destroy one’s fellowship with God), as the Jews’ tradition taught, but what really defiles (or destroys one’s fellowship with God) is one’s sin.
In our time, you and I hardly try to keep the Jewish ceremonial law in our day‑to‑day lives. We may be glad that Jesus has effectively declared all foods to be clean, though that declaration hardly means all foods are beneficial for us, especially not in unhealthy quantities. We certainly cannot be glad that Jesus declares the human heart to be unhealthy. How many of the evil thoughts and actions Jesus lists are found in your and my hearts? Sexual immorality, theft, or murder? At our Circuit meeting Thursday, one of the pastors told of yet another family destroyed by pornography. Adultery, coveting, or wickedness? All too often we are not content with what God has given us and instead want more. Deceit, sensuality, or envy? Jealous grudges are too easy to hold in our hearts. Slander, pride, or foolishness? Let us not fool ourselves! Jesus lists sins that are really found among us in thought, if not also in word and deed. As soon as we commit one such sin, even in thought alone, we are guilty of committing them all. Our sin breaks our fellowship with God. By nature, our hearts are cesspools, and on that account alone we deserve nothing but death now and for eternity.
Even if there is nothing outside of us that by going into us can defile us, we are already defiled. Today’s Gospel Reading more or less leaves us in that condition! Like St. Paul writing to the Romans, we might say, “Wretched person that I am!” We might ask, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” And, we might exclaim, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Like St. Paul, we probably know there is more to the Gospel than we heard in today’s Reading. Out of His great concern for us, Jesus Christ our Lord was born to save us. He perfectly kept all aspects of the law. He suffered the consequences for our failing to keep the law perfectly. Jesus died on the cross and rose from the grave to save us from our sins. When we turn in sorrow from our sin, when we believe that Jesus died and rose to save us from our sins, and when we want to do better, then God for Jesus’s sake forgives our sin, whatever our sin might be. God even forgives our sinful nature, including the hearts out of which all those evil things Jesus listed flow. And, God gives us that forgiveness in very specific ways.
We do well to notice that, while Jesus says that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile the person, Jesus does not say that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot make a person holy, set them apart, restore them to fellowship with God. And, the Gospel of the forgiveness of sins by grace through faith in Jesus Christ our Lord does precisely that: it goes into us from outside and makes us holy, sets us apart, restores us to fellowship with God. The words of Gospel do those things by themselves, and the words of the Gospel do those things when they are attached to visible means. For example, in Holy Baptism, the words of the Gospel attached to water grant the petitions of today’s Introit. For, at the Baptismal Font, God washes us thoroughly from our iniquity and cleanses us from our sin. There, He purges us with the cleansing Baptismal water, and we are clean; He washes us, and we are whiter than snow. There, more than anywhere, He creates in us a clean heart and renews a right spirit within us. By our recalling Holy Baptism and returning to that state as through Holy Absolution, He restores to us the joy of His salvation and upholds us with a willing spirit.
Yet, God, Who overflows with love, mercy, and grace, does not stop there! In the Sacrament of the Altar, not ordinary but extra-ordinary food goes into us from outside and makes us holy, sets us apart, restores us to fellowship with God. Bread that is Jesus’s body and wine that is His blood is present, distributed, and received, giving the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation to all who receive them in faith. Bread that is His body and wine that is His blood also affects our hearts. We eat holy food and are made holy. Perhaps we are what we eat, after all! (Some even think that the saying, “You are what you eat” is older than the 19th-century, owing its origin to the transformative power of the Sacrament of the Altar.)
Though Jesus in today’s Gospel Reading declares our human hearts to be quite unholy, the words of His Gospel of the forgiveness of sins by grace through faith in Him go from outside of us, into our ears, onto our skin, and into our mouths and thereby make us holy, set us apart, restore us to fellowship with God. Baptized and fed with the Supper, we are armed and strengthened for the battle that is our daily lives, as described in today’s Epistle Reading. As part of our daily lives, we wash our hands for hygiene, we eat food that is good for us, and we keep customs regarding coming into God’s house—not because we have to, but because they flow out of our holy hearts. Yet, even our holy hearts fail in our daily battle, because we still struggle against our sinful flesh, so we live each day with sorrow over our sin, faith that God forgives our sin for Jesus’s sake, and the desire to do better. We make these ways known to our children and grandchildren, we boldly proclaim to all those God places in our lives the mystery of the Gospel, until God brings about its full and final consummation. Until then, we pray as we did in the Collect of the Day, that God, the source of all that is just and good, would nourish in us every virtue and bring to completion every good intent, that we may grow in grace and bring forth the fruit of good works.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +