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Welcome to today’s Daily Scripture Reading and Meditation covering Matthew 15:17-20 wherein Jesus teaches us about the kind of clean that truly matters.
Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.”
Just to make sure that our neighbors don’t get too jealous over a beautiful, lush, green lawn, we make sure that we keep some bare patches dispersed throughout our property. What that means of course is that we’ve got some lovely areas of dirt that the kids are thrilled to be able to dig in. Our 15 month old was doing such when I had my back turned the other day, so when she toddled over to me with a face covered and mouth full of top soil, I was naturally glad that we were keeping our yard in a way that prevented our neighbors from stumbling in that sin of envy. In all seriousness though, what if I would have looked at my daughter in all her messy glory and told her that her make-up o’ sod defiled her soul. Everyone would say that this conclusion was ridiculous for multiple reasons. First of all, she’s one year old and has little understanding of what she has even been up to. Secondly, we would affirm that for anyone, dirt on the face doesn’t mean sin in the heart.
But what the Pharisees and scribes of Jesus’ day were so concerned about was that, so long as all the outward stuff had the right look to it, they were good to go. So when Jesus and His “less proper” disciples who were everything from tax collectors to smelly fishermen didn’t give their hands an extra wash before meal time, these religious leaders were a bit put off. And in a religious culture where foods needed to be kosher in keeping with the law given to Moses, Jesus was saying things about purity that everyone would have at least tilted their heads over. “What’s in your heart that’s flowing out as sinful words and actions?” was the question that Jesus was asking. It’s not that Jesus was against physical cleanliness; it’s just that He urged people to understand that even those outward cleansing procedures were meant to act as a reminder of our need to be inwardly purified.
I wonder how often we, without even realizing it, are far more concerned and broken up over outward stuff than we are about the inward state of ourselves and others. We might argue that a messy house and car or life in general indicate that things are out of order on the inside too, but even when that is the case, shouldn’t we be honing in on the inner man so that more order everywhere might be achieved? I have to be honest that there are many times when I make quick judgments about others that don’t “fit the mold” of whatever setting I’m currently in, often without concerning myself with what might be stirring around inside of them. Like the Pharisees, I’m just asking, “Why in the world couldn’t he have just taken a shower when he got up this morning?” Before anything else, let us test our own hearts and minister to the same of others, longing that we would all be counted pure and made clean within by the mighty healing blood of Jesus today.
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