Mark 7:14-23
Counter-Culture: Genuine Purity
Mark 7:14-23 – Discerning Morality
14 He summoned the crowd again and said to them, “Listen everyone and understand.15 Nothing that goes into people from outside them can make them unclean. Rather, what comes out of people makes them unclean.”As he did occasionally, Mark introduced the crowd to make the point that what Jesus was to say had dramatic and universal relevance. Perhaps his comment was not immediately clear to his audience. In the following sentence, Mark would refer to it as a comparison. In that case it was to be seen as an invitation to thoughtful listeners to question themselves and to see the intrinsic truth of what Jesus was referring to, so as to come to the depth of conviction necessary to withstand the pressure to conform from Jewish diaspora compatriots.
However, Mark did not leave the matter unexplained. It was too basic an issue for his community to be allowed to remain unclear.
17 When they had moved away from the crowd into the house, his disciples queried him about the comparison.18 He said to them, “Do you likewise not see the point?The obtuseness of the disciples echoed the inability of Mark’s community to understand.
Do you not see that anything that goes into peoplecannot make them unclean, 19 because it does not get into the heartbut goes into the stomachand eventually into the toilet?In case the community still failed to appreciate his point, Mark explicitly stated the obvious for them:
... and declaring clean anything that is eaten.]Jesus further elaborated his point:
20 In fact he said, “It is what comes out of people that makes them unclean.21 The things that come out from inside, from people’s hearts, are such things as pondering evil, inappropriate sexual behaviour, theft, murder,22 adultery, greed, malice, deceit, indecency, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, senselessness. 23 All these evil things come from inside people and make them unclean.”The listing of the evil intentions proceeding from the human heart was not in itself the main focus of Jesus’ teaching. (Indeed it would have been Jesus’ only instance of ever speaking explicitly about what most people spontaneously think of as sins: Jesus’ main concern was the human heart, and the unrecognised and unaddressed structural sins of the culture.) It served simply to illustrate the point being made. It nevertheless raised the question of the importance of knowing the inner workings of the heart. (The evils listed were all inappropriate responses to the deeper human needs of personal survival and the continuation of the species, to the quality of people’s standing in the community and to on-going security. Unrecognised, the energies associated with these needs could seek expression in substitutes that seemed to satisfy, but did not, or did so at the price of the destruction of personal integrity or of the dignity and rights of others.) For Jesus the issue that mattered was the compromise and even destruction of true human dignity.
For the Markan community, however, the problem of kosher food was undoubtedly important in itself. For the Jewish members, it touched their deeply engrained sense of identity. It also served to represent all the different non-essential but comfortably familiar customs and traditions that made dialogue with the broader community so emotionally engaging and difficult.
For the modern reader it may seem a non-issue. To see the struggle in that light is to miss the point made by Jesus and emphasised by Mark. It is a failure to read the comparison.
The invitation was to see beyond assumptions to the radical values being emphasised by Jesus. It was a call to move beyond the “traditions of the elders” to the discovery and integration of genuine value, to be mature sufficiently to break free from the pressure of custom and culture, to be sure enough of one’s truth to critique what was no longer helpful in society (or the Church) or what was dishonestly justified by double-talk. It was the call to on-going conversion and belief in the good news of God’s Kingdom.