The text for this sermon is Matthew 15:10-20. Pastor Jim Kniseley
presented this sermon at Resurrection on August 14, 2011, the Ninth Sunday
after Pentecost.
Dear Friends in Christ,
The gospel lesson for
today is a difficult one to understand at first reading. It deals with our mouth, our hearts, and
things that make someone unclean. It
also addresses an obvious disagreement between Jesus and the Pharisees. The challenge for you and me is to enter this
section of God’s Word and see what we can learn that will have meaning for our
lives as Christians today.
It is helpful to
understand that context of this lesson.
It is part of the 15th chapter of Matthew, the chapter that
can be titled “Clean and Unclean.” At verse
1, several Pharisees (teacher of the Jewish Law) came to confront Jesus with 2
questions: “Why do your disciples break
the tradition of the elders?” and “Why
don’t they wash their hands before they eat?”
We already know that
Jesus considers the Pharisees to be too legalistic. He says they concentrate on the details of
the words too much and don’t try to teach people about loving relationships
with God and with people. The Pharisees
in turn call Jesus too liberal, saying he makes it too easy for people, that he doesn’t lay down the law as to what God
demands.
So, in the midst of
verbal battle with the Pharisees, we hear how Jesus thinks, and as Christians
we believe this reflects the heart of God.
Jesus says to these disciples who have a whole list of food that can or
cannot be eaten in order to be pleasing God’s sight, “It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person but it is
what comes out of the mouth that defiles.”
Jesus goes on to talk about the connection between the mouth and the
heart. “But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is
what defiles. For out of the heart comes
evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat
with unwashed hands does not defile.”
This washing of hands
talk could be lost on us today if we don’t understand what it represents. The Jewish laws (there were at least 600 of
them) listed what was unclean and what you were to avoid and why you were to
ritually wash your hands while asking for forgiveness. Here are just a few things that these laws
said made you unclean:
·
If
you had contact with anyone who wasn’t a Jew
·
If
you did any work on the Sabbath, even if it involved helping someone in need
·
If
you touched a woman during her time of the month
·
If
you ate certain foods that weren’t allowed in the Jewish laws
Some of us may think
that Jesus was teaching something foreign to Jews when he said that words and
actions are more important than ritual.
But we can go back to the prophets of Israel and Judah and hear these
words:
·
Isaiah
56:1 Maintain justice, and do what is right, for soon my salvation will come, and my
deliverance be revealed (today’s
first lesson).
·
Amos
5:21f I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your
assemblies…Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream.
·
Micah
6:6-8 He has showed you, o man, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
How can we apply what
we have heard in Matthew to our Christian lives today? Let me ask some questions to get us thinking:
·
Who
are the Pharisees in our midst today?
·
Are
we ever tempted to think we are more holy than the person sitting next to us in
the pew?
·
Have
we sometimes substituted our understanding of liturgy and proper worship for
helping people and standing up for God’s expectation of justice and mercy?
·
Do
we ever exclude people here because we consider them “not our kind?”
Today we also hear the
story of the faith of the Canaanite Woman in Matthew 15. This is a fine story for illustrating what
Jesus and the Pharisees have been talking about. A woman has a son who is very sick. She hears about Jesus and his power to
heal. She also knows that the Jewish
people do not want her to approach Jesus or any good Jews, for they consider
her unworthy and unclean, according to their laws. What is she to do?
Bible scholars point
out that this was a big question in the early church. Who should be let in and who should not? Should everyone coming in have to conform to
the traditions and laws and rules? Was
the church open to new ideas and new people and new ways of practicing the faith? If you read the story of the Canaanite Woman,
you’ll see that she doesn’t at first get a great reaction from Jesus. He talks about being sent only to the House
of Israel. Was he setting up a teaching
moment for the disciples and for us? Perhaps. This woman,
an outsider was so persistent, that finally Jesus concedes and heals her
son. And so lessons are taught about
persistence and about inclusiveness for the Church.
Let me conclude with
the Resurrection Welcome Statement that we unanimously adopted at the June
Congregation Meeting:
Resurrection Lutheran Church is a
community of faith that celebrates the gifts of God that empower us to engage
in the struggles of life, to care for one another, and to serve Christ in our congregation,
our communities, and our world. In response to Christ’s love for us and for
all people, we believe that we are called to reflect Christ’s love by inviting
and welcoming all people into our fellowship.
We do this without hesitation and without reservation. More specifically, we do this without regard
to race, ethnicity, culture, age, gender, sexual orientation, ability,
educational background, economic circumstance, or any other factor that would
otherwise separate God’s people. We are
all God’s children and we can do nothing less.
Amen!