It's About What Comes Out: Reflections On Matthew 15:10-20

"Like" the Patheos Progressive Christian Page on Facebook to receive today's best commentary on Progressive Christian issues. Lectionary Reflections Proper 15, Ninth Sunday after Pentecost Matthew 15:10-20 August 14, 2011 At the heart of this scripture passage lies a proverb: "It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out" (Mt. 15:10). Jesus often coined short sayings or proverbs that shed light on specific situations. When we know who coined them, we call them aphorisms. Here Jesus' aphorism counters the Pharisees' criticism of his disciples for not following their rituals for pre-meal hand washing. Implied is a broader criticism on their part against Jesus and his disciples for not observing their rules for what one could and could not do on the Sabbath and for associating with those they viewed as unclean. The spirit of Pharisaic Judaism intended these external rituals to keep the inward heart focused on the heart of the Torah: mindfulness of one's duty to God and neighbor while immersed in the details of daily life. Jesus knew that even the best-intentioned external observances can become corrupted. They can become substitutes for devotion to God while our hearts are occupied with thoughts that promote our agendas and whittle others down to size. It is possible to honor God with our lips while our hearts are far removed (Mt. 15:8). This saying of Jesus about what defiles is a paradoxical proverb, meant to undercut the way we habitually look at things. Conventional wisdom, whether biblical or contemporary, usually pairs good behavior with good results. "A penny saved is a penny earned" (Prov. 11:28b). Conventional wisdom usually pairs foolish behavior with ruinous results, as in the contemporary proverb coined by computer operators: "Garbage in, garbage out." A biblical example is: "Those who trust in their riches will wither" (11:28a). But Jesus' proverbs at times pair something we would normally view as good with ruinous results. "Those who want to save their life will lose it." "Whoever wants to be first must be last." He pairs what we would view as negative with positive results. "Those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it." Our proverb from today's passage is one such paradoxical proverb. These proverbs shake up our conventional worldview and point us toward unorthodox, but faithful attitudes and actions. As Good as It Gets? In the movie As Good As It Gets actor Jack Nicholson plays Melvin Udall, an obsessive compulsive author of more than sixty romance novels. He lives alone in an exclusive New York City apartment and is a busy man. Several hours a day he spends writing about love and romance. He also spends quite a bit of time making sure he doesn't step on the cracks in the city sidewalks and that no other occupants of the sidewalk so much as brush against him as he walks along the crowded streets. Another of his favorite pastimes is insulting everyone, whether they are his gay neighbor or the Jewish patrons of his favorite restaurant who dare to sit at his favorite table. When anyone tries to have a humane conversation with him, he proves to be the world's poorest listener. So absorbed is he with protecting his personal world from contamination that he checks out of conversations when they don't directly concern him and his needs. Oh, and there's one other pastime Udall engages in. That is his daily hand washing ritual. In his medicine chest is row upon row of gleaming amber bars of antiseptic soap, wrapped in cellophane, never before touched by human hands. During his daily ritual, he goes through several bars of soap, swiping each one once across his palms before discarding it and unwrapping another. Verbal garbage that wounds others and hands clean enough to eat off of. Jesus reminds the Melvin Udall character in all of us that "it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles." In fact, the whole plot of this movie can be summed up as Mr. Udall gradually living his way into the truth of this pithy, pungent saying of Jesus. Jesus offers us this proverb for the same purpose that he offered it to his first century listeners. He invites us to look out over the expanse of our culture, our church community, and our personal lives to see if there are any situations that stand in need of its pithy but powerful challenge. I have a friend Laurel who is Jewish. In the late '60s, she began her freshman year at Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania. She had moved her things into the dorm and met several other girls. One of her favorite new friends was a girl named Debbie who had grown up in a little town in rural central Pennsylvania. One day in the lunch line, as Debbie was piling lettuce on her salad plate, she said to Laurel, "Did you know that there were some Jewish girls in our dorm?" Laurel said in pretend surprise, "Really?" "Yes," said Debbie. "I'm kind of glad I didn't get one as a roommate. I never saw one before. I wonder what they look like." Laurel said, "I'll bet you'd be surprised." Pure Heart, Loving Words Jesus insists that harmful words express evil intentions that lead to harmful deeds. Scripture bears him out with its catalogue of murderous, adulterous, false, and thieving words. "It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles." What we eat is processed through our bodies and eliminated. It goes to the sewer. There is a more complicated kind of waste management, one we often oversee poorly, with the result that lots of verbal sewage flows in our streets. What we say comes straight from our hearts. For Jesus' listeners, the heart was not a faculty separate from the mind, but the seat of emotions, intellect, will, and spiritual life. Our words come from our hearts and often they head straight for the heart of another. Words come from the heart and head for the heart. If the heart is a poisoned well, it has great potential to defile. But a pure heart is a different story. "A person does not live by bread alone," Jesus corrects Satan, "but by every word that comes from the mouth of God"(Mt. 4:4). When we feast on the bread of life, Jesus our savior, our hearts are pure. And it is from a pure heart that loving words come. "Blessed are the pure in heart," says Jesus in the beatitudes, "for they will see God" (Mt. 5:8). The Greek adjective katharos has connotations in the New Testament of clean , as in the clean linen shroud mentioned in Matthew 27:59. It connotes pure , in the sense of unalloyed, as in the pure gold of Revelation 21:21. The Old Testament background to the notion of a pure heart is Psalm 24:4 in which access to God's presence during Temple worship is for the one who has "clean hands and a pure heart." "Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully, they will receive blessing from the Lord, and vindication from the God of their salvation." Clean hands by themselves are not enough. Cleanliness may be next to godliness but it makes a poor substitute! The pure in heart are those who are spiritually pure rather than ritually or ceremonially clean. Blessed are those who are innocent of moral failures (deeds) and of evil intentions. Jesus, centuries before the advent of annual health checkups, is recommending that we all get our hearts checked! The pure in heart are those who consistently, repeatedly allow God to cleanse them of these corruptions. They are those who allow God's light to shine in their heart (2 Cor. 4:6). They are trees that, out of their goodness, bear good fruit (Mt. 12:33-37). Jesus promises us that the pure in heart shall see God (Mt. 5:8). That is, they will have fellowship with and knowledge of God in the Kingdom that is to come. The pure in heart recognize their need for God; they empathize with and extend comfort to others; their lives are graced by daily deeds of compassionate forgiveness to those who wrong them. When our hearts are pure, and our words are loving, our deeds usually follow. And when our words and deeds are loving, our lives have great power to heal and bring joy to those around us. We forgive, as we lift up, and, as Jesus often did with his words, we challenge injustice. The flip side of Jesus' paradoxical proverb about defiling words is a positive insight about the power of purifying words. It is not what goes into the mouth that purifies a person, but it is what comes (from the heart) out of the mouth that purifies. That goes for both the sender and the receiver. My Jewish friend at Penn State decided that her roommate was not being malicious, but had led a sheltered life. And she let it go at that in her own mind. When Debbie realized her mistake, she came to Laurel and apologized profusely. "I'm so embarrassed. I wouldn't blame you if you never wanted to talk to me again." Laurel replied, "I just figured this was beyond your experience, and once you learned more, you'd realize we're people just like you." Debbie said, "Thanks for the benefit of the doubt. Still friends?" Laurel nodded, smiling slightly. "But the next time you hear somebody else say something anti-Semitic, you're going to speak up, right?" Her new friend nodded vigorously. It was January 1993 and New Year's Day had come and gone. Morrie Schwartz, a retired sociology professor from Brandeis University, knew this would be the last year of his life. He had been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease several months before. He was using a wheelchair now and fighting time to say all the things he wanted to say to the people he loved. When a colleague at Brandeis died suddenly of a heart attack, Morrie went to his funeral. He came home depressed. "What a waste," he said. "All those people saying all those wonderful things and Irv never got to hear any of it." Morrie had a better idea. He made some phone calls. He chose a date. And on a cold Sunday afternoon, he was joined in his home by a small group of friends and family for a "living funeral." Morrie had always been a warm, loving, demonstrative man. And their comments reflected the way his love had thawed their hearts through the years. Each of them spoke and paid tribute to their parent, spouse, friend, cousin, sibling, professor. Morrie's experience raises a good question: Why wait to share the healing purity of our hearts with those around us? There is a country song whose rueful refrain is "It's a little too late to do the right thing now." We could tamper with the words a bit and find in it a message for ourselves. "It's a little too late to say the right thing now." And that's true. We have each spewed our share of verbal garbage on the world and it's too late to eat the words others have already digested. It's too late to retract our harmful acts. But, as Scarlett O'Hara once said after spending several hours of movie time spouting hurtful words, "Tomorrow is another day." There is something called a second chance. There's God's grace to forgive, and there will always be a fresh opportunity to take the high road with the people around us, both those we love without even trying and those we have to work to love. Sources Consulted A version of this meditation appears in Patterns of Preaching: A Sermon Sampler , edited by Ronald J. Allen (St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Press, 1998).

It's About What Comes Out: Reflections on Matthew 15:10-20