A BUSHEL OF DIRT

My grandmother used to say to us, as children, usually when we found a bit of soil left on vegetables, “We must all eat a peck of dirt before we die.”   My dad said it a little different when we dropped food on the ground he said, “Pick it up and wipe it off, you’d have to eat a bushel basket full of dirt to kill you.”

Jesus teaches an amazing point about sin that changes everything about what it means to be his disciple.  Before we go there let’s recount what we heard in yesterday’s Gospel reading.  The Pharisees have challenged Jesus because his disciples do not wash their hands according to the tradition of the elders.  Jesus responds that the religious leaders are hypocrites by elevating their traditions to the level of God’s law while devaluing what God’s law actually taught.  They had made God’s word void by their traditions.  When we add fences and rules to God’s law, we are actually rejecting God’s law and our hearts are far from God.

So, the disciples come to Jesus and ask him about this parable. They want to know what Jesus is saying because what he just said sounds so contrary to what the Law of Moses declared. Jesus challenges the disciples’ thinking, “Do you not see what whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and out into the latrine?” (Mk 7:18)

The concern needs to be what affects the heart. Food does not touch the heart therefore it cannot be defiling.  The Mosaic laws were a picture book about defilements and sins. Mark highlights for us the stunning nature of his teaching.  Jesus had just pronounced that all foods were clean.  The kingdom of God had come with Jesus as king and the food regulations had come to an end.  So now Jesus teaches about the real issue, “But what comes out of the man, that is what defiles him.  From within the man, from his heart, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly.  All these evils come from within and they defile.” (Mk 7:20-23)

Doctors have long said you are what you eat.  Nature says what goes in is processed then dumped into the latrine.  The world says you are what you do.  Jesus says you do what you are.  Your actions reflect your heart.  Your words reflect your heart.  Your decisions reflect your heart.  Desire God because He first loved us and He works from the inside.  As we draw closer to Him, we get to know Him and His desire for us.  Only then, as we treasure Him, will our hearts be transformed, which will then change our actions so that what comes out from within us will lift others up and proclaim the Good News of God’s glory.