“A Clean Heart Create for Me” by Colleen O’Sullivan
Jesus summoned the crowd again and said to them, “Hear
me, all of you, and understand. Nothing
that enters one from outside can defile that person, but the things that come
out from within are what defile.” When
he got home away from the crowd, his disciples questioned him about the parable. He said to them, “Are even you likewise
without understanding? Do you not
realize that everything that goes into a person from outside cannot defile
since it enters not the heart but the stomach and passes out into the
latrine?” (Thus, he declared all foods
clean.) “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.” (Mark 7:14-23)
Piety
Have mercy
on me, God in accord with your merciful love;
in your
abundant compassion blot out my transgressions.
A clean
heart create for me, God;
renew
within me a steadfast spirit. (Psalm
51:3, 12)
Study
Before today’s Gospel reading, the Pharisees and Jesus had been having a
go-round about Jesus’ disciples eating without first purifying themselves with
Jewish handwashing rituals. The irony of
the situation is that the Pharisees and followers of Jesus alike all shared the
same goal. To a person, they all wanted
to be pure in God’s eyes. They didn’t
agree on how to get there.
In a way, life would be so much easier if the Pharisees were the ones
who had it right. They saw themselves as
guardians of the Law (as well as the numerous traditions and observances that,
over the years, had become attached to the Law and been elevated to the same
status). There were rules about avoiding
certain foods, washing in a prescribed manner, following strict prohibitions
against certain activities on the Sabbath, and more. There was a rule for every situation; it
seemed. If you checked off all the items
on the list, the Pharisees believed you would be pure. Wouldn’t it be great if all we had to do was
comply with a checklist of dos and don’ts?
That’s relatively easy.
Everything is all spelled out for us.
Not much discerning or personal responsibility is required.
But then Jesus comes along and turns the Pharisees’ thinking on its
head. He says that it isn’t external
things that render a person pure or impure.
It isn’t what goes into us from the outside; it’s what comes from within
us, from our hearts, that determines what God sees when God looks at us. There’s nothing new in that. Human beings haven’t changed much since
creation. Look at Jesus’ list. He says evil thoughts defile us. Cain entertained many evil thoughts before they
led to his murdering his brother. There
are plenty of people today still harboring thoughts of evil toward one another. When we leaf through the pages of Scripture, we
find plenty of Biblical characters stealing from one another – maybe a brother’s
birthright, perhaps property someone possesses that another wants to own. All I have to do is read my community’s Facebook
page to realize that theft is still quite popular. Turn on the news on just about any day and
you’ll see that murder is alive and well as a product of the human heart. You can go down Jesus’ list and remember people
in the Scriptures guilty of each sort of defilement and you can look around and
realize that people haven’t changed. Looking at the list reminds me that it’s so
much more challenging to have a pure heart or inner attitudes that are full of
love for God and our brothers and sisters than to follow a set of rules about
how to conduct ourselves. As Jesus knew, we can follow the rules and
still have hearts of stone.
Action
What is it that issues forth from our less
than perfect hearts that fills us with shame?
Hold it up to the Lord in prayer
and, as the psalmist did, ask God to be merciful to us and to create clean
hearts within us.
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