“Christ Comes to Defeat Our Enemies” (Mark 7.14-23) Pent. 14B, Aug. ‘21

1.                Please pray with me. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock, and our Redeemer. Amen. Our enemy is both external AND internal. Outside of us AND inside of us. It is the old evil foe who prowls around us AND the old Adam who wreaks havoc inside each of us. That’s why it’s important for us to be reminded as we observe the 14^th Sunday after Pentecost that, “Christ Comes to Defeat Our Enemies,” the message today is taken from Mark 7:14-23. Dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

2.                “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Maybe you have heard a version of that quote. The original came from an American naval officer in 1813 after the Battle of Lake Erie, but it was made popular by Pogo the Possum in several cartoon strips in the early 1970’s. Since then, it continues to resurface here and there in moments of honesty, transparency, and political convenience.

3.                This came to mind as I read the appointed Gospel reading for this Sunday from Mark 7:14-23. Both the quote and the reading from Mark 7 articulate a truth about the source of evil and the reality of the human condition. As is often the case with Jesus’ teaching, this truth arose out of a much narrower and specific context. In last week’s Gospel reading from Mark 7:1-13, Jesus engaged in a back and forth with religious leaders about the authority of human traditions, the practice of washing hands, and what makes a person ritually unclean. At the beginning of today’s reading, Jesus expanded the audience by inviting the crowd into the conversation (maybe they were the same people he had miraculously fed in Mark 6). Jesus says in Mark 7:14, “Hear me, all of you, and understand” (7:14). Then, with everyone’s attention, Jesus taught about what makes a person truly unclean. Jesus speaks of the Old Testament Law, from Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14, and declares that food does not make a person unclean. What goes into the body is not the problem. It’s what comes out. Jesus says in Mark 7:21-22, “Out of the heart of man come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness” (Mark 7:21-22). Such evil comes out because it already lurks within. As Pogo says, “We have seen the enemy and he is us.

4.                What Jesus says here in Mark 7 causes us to think about the identity of our true enemy. It is good for us as Christians to think about our true enemy, because in our increasingly polarized culture it is far too common to find mortal enemies around every corner. Who is my enemy? It is the network pushing fake news. It is the political party trying to destroy the country. It is the local public-school board, the ambitious colleague, the omnipresent screen. There are many enemies. Notice they are always someone (or something) else.

5.                Our Epistle reading from Ephesians 6:10-20 paired with our Gospel today from Mark 7 helps us to further identify the enemies we face as Christians. Unlike Jesus, who emphasized evil comes from within, the reading from Ephesians 6:12 emphasizes the external nature of our enemy. “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” It is almost as if Paul is saying our enemy is NOT within, but rather far above and beyond flesh and blood.

6.                So, which is it? Is the enemy within? Or is it without? The answer, of course, is: “Yes.” Our enemy is both external AND internal. Outside of us AND inside of us. It is the old evil foe who prowls around us AND the old Adam who wreaks havoc inside each of us. The reality is that we actually have three enemies that we face as Christians, Martin Luther says that we wrestle against the devil, the world, and our own sinful flesh and they are relentless. He comments on this as he teaches and instructs on the need to receive the Lord’s Supper on a regular basis to do battle against our three enemies in the Large Catechism and to receive the forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and salvation that Christ has won for us through His cross and empty tomb. (LC V, Sacrament of the Altar, 75-80).

7.                So, what does all this mean for the Christian life? First, it means we are in trouble. History clearly teaches it is really hard to fight a battle on two, much less three, fronts. The message is rather simple: We need to be on guard. This is important, because most of us are in the habit of practically ignoring at least one (and usually two or three) of our enemies. As a result, the evil lurking in our hearts comes out far too often in the forms Jesus mentions in Mark 7:21-22.

8.                Our nature is to focus on external sin rather than on internal sin. We are in a “beauty is skin deep” culture that judges by appearance. We act like Pharisees in focusing on external sins of others rather than the sins from within ourselves. We see a married man holding hands in public with a woman 25 years younger, not his wife. But, we don’t see what’s going on in our hearts when we flip the remote or click on our smartphone browser back to the channel or the website we shouldn’t see. We see a woman flaunting her furs and jewelry. But, we don’t see the catty thoughts that cross our minds about how she thinks she’s so great.

9.                Have you ever known of someone who looks healthy but has a disease raging inside his or her body? Looks can be deceiving. People can smile nicely and be pleasant but still have sin down deep at their core. We are also those people who may look okay on the outside but are not fine on the inside. The old radio show The Shadow always began by asking, “Who knows what evil lurks within the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!”

10.             Second, and this is where the good news really is good, there is one who rules over all our enemies. He is the victorious one, the conqueror of death, the master over sin, the risen and reigning Lord Jesus Christ who has tamed the evil foe and the old Adam and keeps them both on a short, if hidden, leash. When Jesus returns, He will end the tyranny of the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh for all time.

11.             Jesus points out the evil that lurks in our hearts that we may be able to hide from others here in Mark 7:14–15, 21–23. It takes something completely outside us to wash us clean on the inside. God looked into his heart to devise a plan for our salvation. It wasn’t anything inside us that paid for our sins—no good, pure thoughts of the heart, no outward action that would please the strictest Pharisee. It was the God of heaven, infinitely above us, completely outside us, who came to earth and paid the price: his life on the cross.

12.             Look away from ourselves. Look to Jesus up there on the cross: his pure, undefiled, sinless heart broken, pierced through for our sinful ones. And then the Holy Spirit—from outside—comes into our sinful hearts and brings the cleansing of Jesus’ death. He comes to us in the water of Baptism, which washes away our sins in a miraculous way. He speaks to us, not in a whisper from within (our sinful hearts could play all kinds of tricks with that!), but in God’s external Word—of preaching, of absolution, when we read the Bible—and he declares us pure, holy, forgiven. And while nothing outside a person and coming into him can defile us, taking into ourselves Jesus’ very body and blood in the Lord’s Supper does purify us. It brings forgiveness so real to us that we can taste it.

13.             Third, this promise of deliverance from our enemies not only fills us with hope for future relief, but also transforms our lives here and now. Through these Means of Grace—God’s Word and Sacraments—God creates saving faith in our hearts. See, that faith is totally from outside us too. And a heart of faith is a clean heart, purified of that sin within, and it receives eternal life. In Christ, we are washed clean of the sin lurking on the inside. We are saved also from our enemies outside of us as well: the devil and the world. With the help of the Holy Spirit through God’s Word and Sacraments, we no longer have any excuse to give into temptation, whether it comes from without or within. Instead, we are to live by the Spirit in the victory of Christ by refusing to conform to the will of our enemies. Amen. Now the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, until life everlasting. Amen.

 

 

 

“Jesus Makes Us Clean” Mark 7.1-13, Pent. 13B, Aug. ‘21

 

1.               Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Today, our Lord Jesus calls us from human tradition to God’s Word and His priorities and letting His voice declare us clean, so that he can say, by His death on the cross, “Come to me, and I will make you clean.” The message from God’s Word on this 13^th Sunday after Pentecost is taken from Mark 7:1-13. It’s entitled, “Jesus Makes Us Clean,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

2.               Clean hands are important. We expect any restaurant to provide the customer with a place to wash his or her hands. Hand sanitizers are everywhere these days, especially during this pandemic. Employers have strict polices about hand washing. You can see it in their signs for their employees that they have in their restaurant bathrooms. But, who’s to tell us when our hands are truly clean? Scientists, doctors, teachers, parents, employers? There are actually those who argue we’ve so sanitized our world, including our hands, that our children are growing up less healthy than we did, more susceptible to resistant microbes. But, all of this pales in comparison to the question of a clean heart.

3.               Some time ago, a Hollywood celebrity, as part of a high-profile visit, had the chance to spend an afternoon with the president of Taiwan. Surprisingly, the topic the celebrity wanted to pursue was the treatment of dogs in Taiwan. Humane treatment of animals is important, but if you had one chance to speak to the president of a country, would that be the issue you’d focus on?

4.               The contrast between Jesus’ reception at the end of Mark 6 and his encounter with the Pharisees and scribes in our passage to open chapter 7 is remarkable. The contagious excitement about a Jesus who heals all who come to him is replaced with a concern about the ritual cleanness of his disciples’ hands. Mark 7:1-2, 5 says, “Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. . . . And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?’ ” (Mark 7:1–2, 5).

5.               If you had the opportunity for a private audience with Jesus, would you argue about the proper way to wash up before a meal? It may even be that this wasn’t a matter of the disciples not washing their hands at all, but of not washing their hands thoroughly enough to meet the Pharisees’ standard. Jesus’ opponents seem to have completely lost sight of what really matters before God. The way they ask their question suggests that the root of the problem is that they’ve begun to put human concerns above what’s important in God’s eyes. Our initial sympathy with the Pharisees’ concern over clean hands at the table goes right down the drain when we begin to see the real problem in all its seriousness.

6.               Do you remember when you were a child wanting to pass “bath-time inspection?” You probably quickly learned that your mom wasn’t going to check the easy-to-reach places like your hands or your stomach. If you wanted to be declared “clean,” you had to make sure you washed behind your ears and between your toes. Jesus reminds his questioners that they still need to learn this lesson. Centuries before, through his prophet Isaiah, the Lord had tried to teach Israel to check for true cleanness by considering their hearts: “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men” (Mark 7:6–7; Isaiah 29:13).

7.               We may make the same mistake they were making if we miss the very important way Jesus introduces this quote from Isaiah. “Well did the prophet Isaiah prophesy of you,” Jesus says (Mark 7:6). Right after this, Jesus will speak of the Commandments God gave through Moses and how these ancient words of God should be shaping the lives and thoughts of his hearers. The Pharisees are more concerned about whether people’s hands are clean than whether their bodies have been cleansed of disease by the words of Jesus and whether their hearts have been filled with the peace Jesus is proclaiming. That’s exactly the sort of thing that happens when we stop asking what’s important to God.

8.               You’ve heard the expression “lip service,” and you probably know what it means. Did you know that expression was inspired by this passage in the Gospels and by the passage from Isaiah Jesus quotes here? (That’s what Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable says.) No one is impressed by outward professions that are completely unsupported by attitude and action. But, the Lord’s words, both in Isaiah and in Mark may suggest another image when he speaks of far distant hearts. Here we might think of close lips and distant hearts. Have you ever had the uncomfortable or even infuriating experience of someone whom you know opposes you greeting you warmly—even with a handshake, a hug, a kiss? We immediately think of the example of the kiss of Judas, the kiss of betrayal, in the Garden of Gethsemane. Was there ever a case of greater separation between lips and hearts?

9.               But we’d better not answer too quickly. If Isaiah’s words are prophesied about us, and if Jesus’ warnings speak to us, we had better examine our own lips and hearts and heads and hands to see how we’re doing. How have we lost sight of what’s really important? What traditions of men, what traditions of our own, have we let crowd out God’s Word from its proper place as the Word that demands our total obedience? Maybe, we allow our viewing of sports or entertainment get in the way of our observance of God’s Word and Sacraments. Instead of spending time reading God’s Word, we replace it with time in front of our tablets, our smartphones, or TV’s, or we let our own hobbies get in the way of being in God’s Word. In what ways have we ceased to care about the hearts of those around us and taken, instead, to examining the cleanness of their hands?

10.            The wrongness of the Pharisees’ approach is shown in the behavior that results. Replacing God’s Word with man’s, listening to human traditions that establish themselves at the cost of the honor due God’s Word, results in a life lived only for self. Our Lord points to one of our most fundamental relationships to make this clear: Jesus said to them here in Mark 7:9-13, ‘You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! For Moses said, “Honor your father and your mother”; and, “Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.” But you say, “If a man tells his father or his mother, ‘Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban’ ” (that is, given to God)—then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do’ ” (Mark 7:9–13).

11.            When our own voices and no others guide us, when our hearts are filled with self and far from God, even those dearest to us will suffer the consequences. Instead of gratitude, honor, obedience, and love toward those who have endured pain and deprivation to give us life, we look for excuses and loopholes so that we can be free of the burden of caring for our parents. Though the particulars of this example may be hard for us to reconstruct, Jesus’ concluding “and many such things” shows that this is merely one example among many of what life turned in upon itself looks like. The contrast between man-made definitions of marriage in our world today and the picture of marriage that Paul gives us in our Epistle from Ephesians 5 is just one more example. It’s a long list. Our hands may be clean, but our hearts are filthy.

12.            God so desires that our hearts belong to him that he gave his own Son. The pages of Holy Scripture record for us how our God does more than just pay lip service to his desire to restore the world to himself. The lips of God’s prophets—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, John the Baptist—announced again and again God’s promise to give the world a Savior from sin and death. But, the Holy Scriptures also record for us the story of all God actually did in order to keep his promises—preserving his people through the flood, the Red Sea, from the Philistines, from Babylon. Our God didn’t just make promises. He kept them all, finally, by giving his own Son. God gave his Son Jesus to die for you. That was no lip service. That tore out the Father’s very heart! And Christ went willingly to the cross. All his words of teaching he backed up with that action of deepest, heartfelt love for you.

13.            Human traditions may set standards for outward cleanness, but they can never make us clean within. Jesus points out the true source of the Pharisees’ uncleanness because he wants to make them clean. This is clearly demonstrated in the casting out of the unclean spirit and the compassion Jesus shows the crowds in the accounts that follow (next week’s Gospel, Mk 7:14–23). Jesus draws our attention away from human traditions, which can’t save us, to focus on God’s Word, which can. God’s words, spoken to us and for us, expose the “dirt behind our ears,” the “dirt” we’ve been hiding in the hope no one would see, the “dirt” that gets in our eyes and blinds us to the needs of those around us, the “dirt” that clogs our hearts and shuts them down, the “dirt” that kills. But the point of all this is not so God can say, “Look, you’re dirty!” Rather, Our Lord Calls Us from Human Tradition to God’s Word and His Priorities and Letting His Voice Declare Us Clean, so that he can say, by his death on the cross, “Come to me, and I will make you clean.” Amen. Now the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, until life everlasting. Amen.