Jesus Said It First

September 2, 2009

Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,

‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.’
You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”

Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “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.”

After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. ^“Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him ‘unclean’? For it doesn’t go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods “clean.”) He went on: “What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean.’ For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean.’ ” - Mark 7:1-8, 14-23

I’m a sharp enough whip to understand the context. The Pharisees had their tunics in a bunch because the disciples had ignored a basic purity law. They ate food with unclean hands and in doing so they set off a icky dirty chain effect: unclean hands made the food they touched unclean and the unclean food they put into their mouths made them unclean. They were defiled. Unclean. Impure. In other words, the disciples had unholy cooties.

Jesus responded in pure Jesus style which I now offer courtesy of my own translation “Knock it off you chuckleheads! The prophet Isaiah had your number when he said ‘you talk the talk but your hearts are shut away from me. You’re pushing your conditions and traditions on others as though they were doctrine and all the while you’re totally ignoring what God said.’ Wise up everyone! Nothing outside of you will defile you. Pay attention instead to what comes out of you because that’s what really matters.” As is often the case in the Gospel of Mark, the disciples are portrayed as so thick around the ears they don’t understand what Jesus’ teaching means and so once again he has to spell it out for them. “I’m going to say this slowly for you guys. Whatever food you eat goes into your stomach and then it leaves your body, so that’s why no food is to be considered unclean because none of it stays with you.  No. What matters to God is what comes out of your heart and if what comes out of someone is evil, then that’s what makes that person unclean. Capice?”

Everyday we take what’s unclean into ourselves from outside ourselves. Every diminishing word that’s spoken about us, every name we’re called, every condemning word and judgment, the disapproving looks of family and friends, the legal assault on our rights, the verbal debate in society and the church about who and what we are. All those words and looks and actions come at us and into us through our eyes and ears and there are times when worn down and weary we begin to wonder if the unclean things we’ve taken in to ourselves are who we really are.

But that’s not who we are. Your worth will never be determined by what’s outside of you. Your worth is found in who God says you are (Does child of God ring a bell?), in the content of your heart (Evil thoughts or thoughts of God?) and in what proceeds out of your life through the words of your mouth and the actions of your hands.

Your worth is determined by your heart and by the day to day living of your life and by who God says you are. Those three things say everything about you and all the rest, all that unclean rubble whirling around you from outside you doesn’t belong to you. It says nothing about you and no one has the power to determine your worth and no one has the right to call you unclean.

Now, if you have a problem with what I’m saying don’t take it up with me. Take it up with Jesus because I’m only repeating what he said. “ There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”

Do you think Jesus was just talking about food? Oh. I don’t. Not for a minute.

Posted in Christian Lesbian Identity, Queering the Bible