“Are you also still without understanding?” Matt 15:16 

I’m sure that each of us can relate to this sentence from both perspectives; being the disbelieving deliverer of a quote like that when frustrated by another’s failure to grasp something that we find to be obvious, but also playing the role, on occasion, of the recipient of such a quote, just feeling lost and even more confused by the fact that it feels like we should know what’s going on.  

To Jesus’ credit, often when he says things like this, he does go on to clarify. That’s the case in this fascinating piece of teaching captured in Matthew chapter 15.  

The journey starts in verse 10: 

“Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, ‘Listen and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.’ 

This spoke directly to a part of Jewish law that indicated that people were made unclean, impure or defiled by their consumption of certain things. Eating Pork, for instance; The concept of ritual purity and impurity is significant in Jewish law. Pork was seen as impure, and consuming it could render a person ritually impure. Staying ritually pure was important for participating in certain religious activities and entering the Temple in Jerusalem. 

The underlying suggestion of this, and other parts of Jewish law, was that the person is fine as long as they do/don’t do specific things.  

Jesus, once more, brings new meaning to such an understanding.  

We covered, in our second week, about some of the sayings in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus took a law and expanded it’s application with his ‘You’ve heard it said… but I say to you…’. Those expansions didn’t change the nature of the law, but revealed a deeper understanding of law about the importance of our hearts. 

Legally speaking, you weren’t allowed to murder or commit adultery. Most didn't.

But Jesus says even if we feel anger or lust, it’s as though we’ve done those things.  

This isn’t to condemn a wider reach of people as ‘sinners’, but to show the universality of a sinful heart. Not everyone will have committed certain acts, but everyone will have experienced feelings of anger, or lust, or jealousy. We are all in need of the loving mercy offered by God.  

And we see that same process of Jesus directing us inwards here. He cleverly uses the picture of consumption to highlight the idea of being unclean or impure, and flips it around to reveal new depths. 

Jesus, after either chastising the disciples or teasing them about their lack of understanding (tone really is everything and we don’t get that here- ‘are you also still without understanding’ can be said in a number of ways, with varying weight depending on delivery), goes on to explain his meaning.  

“Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.” 

I can still remember being in a RE lesson in school and seeing the definition of sin; 

A sin is an act against the will of God. 

In the 15 years since then, I’ve met lots of people who hold this view of sin – that it is an act, or a series of actions. The doing of these things is what sin is, and doing them makes us sinful.  

Jesus is telling us here that it is our state of heart that defiles us – our motivations, our attitudes, our prejudices.  

This radical exposition of the heart of sin should, then, sit at the centre of our theologies and our understanding of the nature of God, and us in relation to God.  

Proverbs 4:23 says it clearly: 

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. 

We may not have the same purity laws as the ancient Jews, but we do still live in a purity culture.  

The church culture in the West is heavily affected by the purity mindsight – lots of churches teach that if you do X, Y or Z, then you’re not a real Christian. There is also an overemphasis on sexuality and sexual behaviour within our version of purity culture. Our children and young people might be the most at risk of these kind of teachings, but they don’t really reflect what Jesus is telling us.  

What we need to be doing, in response to Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 15, is two fold; 

1. In the spirit of ‘Before removing the speck from your neighbour’s eye, take out the plank from your own eye’, the most important thing is to check in with ourselves regularly. Ask yourself- what is the state of my heart today? Is there anything there that might lead me to mistreat another, or not love them as I should?

2. Protect one another – understand the impact we can have on others, and treat them accordingly, but also ask how others are feeling. What is the state of their hearts? Is there anything we can do to help that?  

Realising the importance of our state of heart means searching within ourselves and within others. There’s a lot going on beneath the surface – Jesus recognised this, but it’s time that we did too!