What’s Inside Comes Out

Transcripts are computer-generated and may not be 100% accurate.

My name is Maggie Keller. I am part of The Table team. So glad to be with all of you tonight. And a bunch of those kids were mine. I have four kids, here they are, they're between the ages of 6 and 11. And I have to tell you that picture is so sweet. Becky Ankrum, she's a miracle worker. She captured that and she got him on a really good day because I have to tell you, the sibling rivalry is very strong with these four. 

And sometimes I will say something like, “stop touching your sister's body.” And Tommy, who's seven, will hold out his finger like an inch from her face and go, “I'm not touching you, I'm not touching you.” And I just thought that was like the perfect illustration because in that moment, Tommy is following the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law. And tonight we're talking about the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. 

So we have been in John Mark's gospel since last September actually, and we are beginning chapter seven tonight. And uh, we're in verses one to 23. And I'm going to read it here in just a moment, but I have to tell you, it is kind of a weird one. Um, we don't get to skip over the weird ones when we work our way through an entire book of the Bible. 

So, uh, when I first read this passage, I noticed there was actually, um, a reference to the food that we eat and the bodily functions that follow. And I was like, are you kidding me? On baby dedication night, I have to talk about bodily functions. And then I thought, nobody knows feeding and bodily functions like the parents of newborns. And so I thought, okay, maybe it is fitting that that's what we're talking about. So we have a lot of new babies in this community. If you have become a parent again recently or for the first time, I am dedicating my message to you. 

Alright, so we're gonna work our way through this passage in sections. We're gonna dive right into Mark 7:1. Here it is:

Now, when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him being Jesus, they noticed some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands. That is without washing them for the Pharisees. And all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders. And they don't eat anything from the market unless they wash. And there are also many other traditions that they observe, like the washing of cups and pots and bronze kettles and beds. So the Pharisees and the scribes asked Jesus, why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders? But they eat with defiled hands? 

And Jesus said to them, Isaiah, prophesied rightly about you, hypocrites, as it is written, this people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. In vain do they worship me? Teaching human precepts as doctrines, you abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.

Okay, we're gonna pause there. Oh, I love it when Jesus calls people out! So bold and so blunt. But what is this conflict actually about? The Pharisees here are concerned with defiled hands, but Jesus doesn't seem to care very much. And so what is going on here?

First of all, what, what even are defiled hands? So the last time I preached, we talked a lot about ritual purity, but we don't have any ritual purity laws in our modern context. So if that is unfamiliar to you, let me just give you a little recap. 

Jews followed 613 laws that were set forth in the Torah. And a good chunk of those were purity laws. They applied equally to both men and women. And it was expected that everybody was gonna be impure at some point even daily. In fact, most people were ritually impure almost all the time. Purity laws say that when you touch something or someone who was unclean, that impurity passed on to you and then you needed to either, uh, wait a certain amount of time or go through a ritual of a certain kind and then you'd be allowed to reenter the temple for worship. It was natural and it was inevitable and it was normal. 

But in our text tonight, the Pharisees are really concerned that the disciples not only have defiled hands, but that they're eating with them. So we need to talk about the Pharisees next. And I am going to be very careful here because if we as Christians do not talk about the Pharisees correctly rerun the risk of sounding pretty antisemitic. And so I need to let you know, I need you to hear me, that Jesus was a Jew just like the Pharisees. He kept kosher and he followed the law just like the Pharisees did. And he didn't come to establish a new religion. He already had one. 

So the Pharisees though were a sect within Judaism, and geographically they came from Jerusalem and they had their own thoughts about, you know, how do we follow God? How do we follow the law and do that in a faithful, real way? And they actually included some additions to the Torah and they called that the tradition of the elders. So their tradition of the elders took the Torah that 613 rules and made it even stricter. And then they traveled to Galilee where Jesus and his disciples were. And they said, why don't your disciples walk according to our tradition of the elders? 

And I have to, I have to imagine that it would be a little bit like a group of Christians from a different kind of church coming into our service tonight and saying, “Why are you dedicating your children and not baptizing them as is our tradition?” And we would kind of be like, “um, well, it's nice to meet you. Who are you and why are you trying to impose your tradition here?” 

So the handwashing thing that the Pharisees are so hung up on, well, washing your hands was in the Torah, but that was a rule that was given to the priests when they were doing their job at the altar. But the Pharisees took that law and they extrapolated it out to everyone everywhere all the time. They believed that eating defiled food defiled you. And then there, that's where we get our practice of hand washing before meals. So the very first lesson of this passage is don't let your human traditions add to what the scripture says. What Jesus is rejecting here is not the law itself, but just the way that the Pharisees are adding to it. 

Now, I know that we might be tempted to think about Jesus as, um, a radical progressive who came to really shake things up, but I have to tell you that is not the Jesus we see in Mark's gospel tonight. Jesus here is the conservative one. The Pharisees are the radical innovators when it comes to the law and Jesus is calling them back to a more conservative reading of the text. So whenever Jesus argues with the Pharisees and the gospels, I want you to remember they were on the same team. It's Jewish teacher versus Jewish teacher. 

So now that you know how the Pharisees are different from other Jews of the day, look what Jesus accuses them of next. This is verse nine:

And then he said to them, you have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition. For Moses said, honor your father and mother, and whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die. 

But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, and whatever support you might have had for me is Corban, that means an offering to God. Then you no longer permit doing anything for father or mother. 

Thus you nullify the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on and you do many things like this.”
Here's what this portion is referring to, the ways that the Jews understood, uh, the fifth commandment, which is honor your father and mother. The spirit of the law in the fifth commandment is that as you became an adult, you needed to provide for your aging parents. You would be expected to use your worldly resources, uh, the property that you owned, your possessions, your money, even your house in order to care for your parents as they grew older. And in that way, if you did those things in that way, you would honor your father and mother.

Now, at the same time, we have this tradition of corban. This is when a particularly pious Jewish person would say, I want to dedicate all of my possessions in service to God, and I'm going to sacrifice all, everything I own is going, um, to God in, in service to God. But if you had done this technically, then you could turn to father and mother and say, I'm sorry, but whatever support financial or otherwise you would've gotten from me and the things that I own, I I declared it all for God. So I can't help you. You're on your own. And the Pharisees would let the Jews do this. And so declaring your possessions for God, that's not a bad thing, but it doesn't get you out of following the fifth commandment and honoring your parents. 

So I have to tell you as it is perhaps clear, I am not an expert in Jewish law and I did a lot of research for this message and I have to tell you that, uh, Rabbi and scholar Daniel Boyarin wrote an entire book called The Jewish Gospels and he, um, provides a lot of insight for Christians who are trying to understand a Jewish Jesus. And so, um, yeah, I could probably go on for like 30 more minutes on this passage. If you're really into cultural anthropology and you wanna get coffee sometime, I'd love to tell you what I learned for this message, but I'm not gonna do that here. 

So, um, Daniel Boyarin calls this whole practice of following the letter but missing the spirit. He calls it poor religion. And here's the quote: 

“To concern oneself with extraordinary performances of external piety while ignoring the ethical and spiritual requirement of the Torah. It is poor religion on the same order perhaps of preaching that Jesus' love but hates homosexuals.” 

Both of these ideas are poor religion. They follow the letter of the law and they miss the spirit of it. That's what Jesus is calling the Pharisees on. So the second lesson of this passage, if if the first is don't add to it. The second is, don't let your tradition take away from the spirit of the law. 

In the last part of our passage here, Jesus kind of comes back to this idea of defilement. It says verse 14, then he called the crowd again and he said to them, listen to me, all of you and understand there is nothing outside of a person that by going into them can defile them, but the things that come out are what defile. When he left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable and he said, oh, you don't get it either. Okay, well don't you see that whatever goes into a person from the outside can't defile them because it doesn't enter your heart, but it goes into your stomach. And then out in the sewer, I told you there was bodily functions tonight, there it is, parents. And he's, uh, Bessie declared all foods clean. And he said, it is what comes out of a person that defiles.

Tonight's story is not actually about bodily functions. It's not about honoring your father and mother or keeping kosher or even handwashing. It is a little bit of a good news, bad news situation. The good news is it's not anything outside of yourself that makes you worthy or unworthy to be in the presence of a holy God. It's not the food you eat or the things that you touch or even the things that somebody else does to you that affects your holiness. So that's the good news. The bad news is it's what comes out from inside of you that counts. Look at that laundry list of sins. Patti, can you put that last verse up again? It's like 12 different sins. I didn't read it, did I? Okay, we're gonna read the verse together now. You ready? 

“It is from within, from the human heart that evil intentions come. Sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, avarice—which is greed—wickedness, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, pride and folly. All these evil things come from within and they are what defile a person. So if you're looking at that list, like I'm looking at that list, I'm like, okay, murder doesn't apply, I'm good, but have a second look. Pride? Check. Foolishness? Yeah, check. Envy? Ooh, check there too.

All of these things, they start inside of a person, but they hardly ever stay there. And nobody knows this better than your partner or your spouse or your kids or your best friend. When I have something really ugly brewing inside of me, it does not ever stay there. It comes out sideways and it hurts my husband or my kids. 

And then what happens in the aftermath of that? Well, people are affected, relationships are broken and violated. I don't know about you. I feel awful when that happens. Scripture would say that's defiled. I would use a four-letter word that has to do with the sewer, right? When you hurt someone else, you feel like crap. 

But what Jesus is saying here is that we are only as holy as our hearts are healthy because what is inside comes out. Our goal then is that our insides would match our outsides. The Pharisees were called hypocrites because their interiors did not match their exteriors. And that is the question of this passage. Do your insides and your outsides match? Do your beliefs and your behaviors, do they line up?

Because I tell you what, I can wear my Old Testament women sweatshirt and I can put the “you belong” sticker on my car and I can talk about how much I love this church on my Instagram. And it doesn't matter at all. That external symbol doesn't mean a thing. If I am not practicing kindness or generosity or compassion or mercy, or I'm not loving my neighbors or working for justice, that's what really matters. Not the outward piety that I practice that makes me clean undefiled or acceptable to a holy God. It's the extent to which I am willing to live in right relationship with all of you. That is going to demonstrate my beliefs much more than just standing on a street corner and saying them ever would. 

So if the question of the passage is, does your interior match your exterior? And if we answer that question honestly, no, not all the time. Then what?

The first step you already know: if the wrong things inside of you have come out sideways and hurt somebody else, the first step is to repair. I do this with my kids after I yell. I do this with my husband when my words are really caustic and abrasive and they hurt him. I repair with my friends when my behavior makes them feel unloved and unseen. Repair is acknowledging I have hurt you. It's apologizing, it's act, asking for forgiveness, but it's also only controlling what's mine to control. You can ask for forgiveness and the person that you've hurt may not forgive you, but that isn't yours to hold. 

Once you have repaired with other people, the next step is to turn your attention inward and get reoriented. What I don't want for us as individuals or a community is to beat ourselves up on this, um, introspection. I don't want you repeating words and phrases like I'm no good or I'm worthless, or, um, this little nugget from the church I grew up in: “I'm capable of no good thing apart from the God who rescues me out of the pit.” Those are words that live rent-free in my head.

What I do want for us is to gently, with self-compassion, reorient ourselves to the ways of Jesus. That is the kind of community we say we are. We are practicing the ways of Jesus, and it is a practice. So how are we supposed to do this gentle reorientation? How do we come home to the truth of who we are? Because the truth is you are a beloved child of God and you belong. I want that to be our internal position so that whatever is flowing out of me comes right from there.

So how do we do this? Look, you know, which spiritual, uh, practices resonate the most for you? I know we've got a good crowd here who likes to walk the lakes as their spiritual practice. Um, acts of service would be another one. Meditation or prayer. One of our communal practices I think that we could adopt together is what we do in this space right here on Sunday nights. Why do we even gather? What are we doing here? For me, and I suspect for some of you, this worship space is one of those ways that I reorient myself to the truth about who I am and kind of bring myself back into alignment.

When you come here to worship, you are coming to a place where you can feel loved and experience belonging, where you can be accepted just as you are here in this space. We celebrate each other's joys. We make promises just like we did tonight. I felt like I watched community built this evening as we promised to stand with these families as you raise your kids. And then we sing together about what we believe. We hear a message about how to live those beliefs out. And then we are invited to the communion table. This was my favorite communion service ever on Halloween night. Nobody in that room thought they were taking communion from Batman that evening, but they did. We share in this meal and we reorient our hearts around the ways of Jesus and that practice, taking communion together, it is so core to who we are. We built our whole identity around it.

We are called the table because Jesus gathered all kinds of people around the communion table: men and women, sinners and tax collectors, well-bred working class. We are called the table because the communion table is where we get to practice society as we believe it should be: all welcome, all equal, all fed, all restored.

We're called The Table because we need the communion table every week. I need to be reminded that Jesus set this table for you and for me. And no matter what happened the other six days of the week, I get to come back to this table and be reminded that this bread is broken for me. And this cup is given for me.

When we say it in our ending benediction, that you will hear tonight, when we say you always have a seat at the table that isn't just a capital T Table seat in the pew. It's also a seat at the communion table. You always have a seat at the communion table because you are a beloved child of God and you are never too broken and you are never too far gone. 

So tonight, whether you are visiting for the first time or community, or you've been coming here for years, what I invite you to do is to approach the communion table with the confidence that you belong. Come to receive these good gifts and reorient your heart to practice the ways of Jesus. Come at the invitation of a God who made you and loves you and knows you inside and out. I'd like to invite Debbie up at this moment as we move towards communion time. Come on up, Debbie.

Debbie: Maggie, hi Jack, that was a wonderful sermon. Thank you. I I'm gonna invite in a moment, Katie Henry Murad up to do words of institution. But here's my surprise announcement that I'm sure you've all been waiting for. Um, for about a year and a half, Matt and I have been having conversations about hiring Katie to come on staff part-time as a pastor. And guess what? Friends, it's happened. She's starting Woo.

And before I have her come up, I wanna tell you just a little bit about her because we feel like, um, besides the fact she's amazing and awesome and gifted and talented and the right person in the right moment and thinking about the future of this church gets us so excited. But I wanted to tell you a little bit about Katie. Um, so Katie and Nick and their two beautiful children, Jude and Esther, another one on the way, they've been coming to the table since our first in-person table service after Covid.

And not that I wanna take credit for, um, her coming here, but I did birth the girl who married the guy that met her at a brewery and invited her to the table. So yes, I guess I'll take credit, but that's how they got here. She and Jake were chasing kids and ended up chatting and started talking about church. Um, uh, and Jake told her about the table and they showed up and, and here you guys are.

But Katie is, um, amazing education and training and talent. She's got her Master's of Divinity from Campbell University in North Carolina. Um, she's been a worship pastor, she's been a children's minister, she's been a pastoral care pastor. She did her CPE, which is continuing pastoral education at, um, university of North Carolina Hospital, Chapel Hill, where she did an internship in pediatrics and then a residency in cardiology.

And for those of you who've been around, we call her the jack of all trades because you have seen her preach, do words of institution. She's led worship, she's taught our kids. She's on the leadership team for women at the table. She's on the board. Um, she also works part-time as a chaplain for a senior care living down in Faribaul–Farmington! Farmington and Apple Valley. So, um, she's got a lot on her plate.

But all those things to say, here's what I love the most: You've come into this church, you've engaged other people in community very intentionally, both you and Nick. You're committed to this place you love Jesus. And one of our many coffees as I'm slowly trying to talk her into working here, part-time, um, you said something along the lines of I'm a theology nerd. We need that at the table. You're just the right person at the right time. So I'm gonna invite you up for words of institution and tell this crew, Hey, let's welcome Katie to the team.