So much of Jesus’ time is taken up with disputes, disagreements, arguments, differing interpretations.  People seem to interpret God’s Word in such a variety of ways.  Frequently, these differences provide opportunities for mutual education and encouragement: a way to delight, together, in the richness of God’s Word.  Occasionally, the differences in interpretation become a point of conflict.  That’s where we begin today.  Jesus tells the Pharisees, “You put aside God’s command and obey the teachings of men [. . . .] You have a clever way of rejecting God’s law in order to uphold your own teaching” (7:8-9).  The Pharisees might counter that all that they teach is based upon and derived from God’s Law, the Word of God.  By reason, logic, inference and deduction, the Pharisees have carefully arrived at all they now teach.  Because what they teach is based upon God’s Word, the Pharisees regard themselves as faithful.

Jesus tells them otherwise.  The advantage that we have is that we know Jesus is not simply another teacher, another interpreter of the Law.  Jesus is the Word of God.  When Jesus tells us how we are to interpret and understand God’s Word, he speaks with authority.  One of the very first things people noticed about Jesus was the authority with which he spoke.

Yes, the Bible says, but that’s not what the Bible means.  Yes, the Bible says, but that doesn’t apply to us, doesn’t apply to this, doesn’t apply now.  We are told that the Bible is full of errors, but what is actually being said is, “The Bible can’t be right, because then I would be wrong.”  Even within the church, a prevalent approach is to read and interpret the Bible in such a way that it affirms the things that matter most to those reading it.  Have you ever had to admit that you were wrong, and about something that was important to you?

The Pharisees use their reasoning, all the powers of thought given to them by God, to cancel out the Word of God.  They take what God has given them and use it to reject God, though they would never put it that way.

People are happy to receive God, on their own terms.  Look around the world at all the gods people have.  People are quite willing to have a god.  These gods can be quite demanding, stern, quite loving, patient, quite mysterious and powerful, so long as they do not touch the one thing seated upon the throne of their followers’ hearts.  What people have placed upon the throne of their heart is truly their god.

What’s inside you?  Jesus goes on to discuss with his dull disciples—and all of us, absolutely including me, are in one way or another dull disciples—Jesus discusses with his disciples what they had regarded as a ceremonial matter but that is truly at the very heart of our discipleship: what is uncleanness?

Read enough in the first five books of the Bible, and you will probably come away with a sense that those people were very concerned about the difference between clean and unclean.  This is not a difference we think about much.  We do not follow kosher laws: that way of thinking is foreign to us; the Bible says Jesus declared all foods clean.  End of story.

But clean and unclean aren’t really about food.  They are ways of describing relation to God.  What is clean is whatever has been devoted to God, set apart for God, whatever is fit to present before God.  What is unclean is not fit to present before God.

When we are going to have guests over, we try to clean the house, at least a bit.  When our guests sit down to a meal, we like to serve them using our good dishes, glasses, silverware, napkins, and so forth.  Even if we use our everyday items, we try to make sure they look good, that they are clean, nothing stained (at least not badly), nothing chipped, cracked, nothing that shows the dishwasher didn’t quite get all the food off the plate or the fork.

When our guests, our honored guests, our loved guests, come inside, we ordinarily try to offer them our best.

Jesus comes to us; he comes to dine with us, to feast with us, to celebrate with us.  He is eager for this celebration.  He knocks on the door.  We let him in.  As he looks around, what shape is the place in?  Who does he find in the seat of honor?  Is pride already there, pulling all the best things closer to himself?  Is lust there first, ogling everything?  Has gluttony already filled its plate?  Beloved, it’s not as if those idols brought their muddy boots and their dirty hands and mouths in with them.  Jesus is telling us they were already there.  They were already at home.  They had been living there a long time, long before we ever met Jesus and invited him to come and eat with us.  “All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man” (7:23, RSV).  Defiled.  That’s not a word we use much, but we know what it means.

Uncleanness is the human heart: not fit to present before God.  “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts” (7:21, RSV).  This word, “thoughts,” is also translated as intentions or ideas.  The word Mark records has to do with the process of thinking and the results of thinking: careful, sustained thought.  All translations try to capture that.  Reasonings.  From the heart comes bad reasonings.  We can think our way out of God’s Word quite readily!  By our reasonings, we can remake God’s Word in our own image, to serve whatever is already seated on the throne of our heart: this is not confined to the Pharisees!

Beloved, the very first temptation came in these words, “Did God really say?” (Gen 3:1).  All temptation can be traced back to that question.  Well, God said, but that isn’t what God means.  Yes, God says, but that doesn’t apply to us, doesn’t apply to this, doesn’t apply now.  By reason, logic, inference and deduction, we carefully arrived at what is now being taught in the church; it’s based upon God’s Word, so we are being faithful.  We are very clever.

Only, what is being served by this teaching?  We serve what we most want out of life.  “[W]here your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Lk 12:34).  What we find in our hearts is what we most want out of life.  What we want most is what we place deepest, there.  If it isn’t God, it is an idol.  All our reasonings will go to serve that idol.  Beloved, no reasoning can be good, right, or holy that serves an idol.  Where do we learn what to want most out of life?

What’s inside you?  Today, this hour, in the presence of this Word, this cross, this table, today is an occasion for you to check in with yourself.  Jesus invites and instructs us to take and eat, and to drink from the cup he gives.  The bread and the juice become part of us.  Bread and juice are symbols and signs of something profound, someone profound, deeper than the deepest parts of our hearts, there before our hearts were formed.  This bread and this juice are symbols and signs of the one who formed our hearts, to dwell there, enthroned there in majesty, glory, power, peace, and love.

What Scripture and our own experience shows is that we didn’t want Him there, if it meant He would get in the way of our heart’s desire.  Eating this bread and swallowing this juice means nothing and can do nothing, apart from faith.  This bread and this juice, symbols and signs of the sacrifice of our Savior, mean nothing and can do nothing, apart from faith.  These elements do not create faith; these elements feed faith.  God says to His covenant people, His holy, cleansed people, “lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul” (Dt. 11:18).

The bread and the juice are incorporated physically into our bodies; this is a provocative thought, yet the deep beauty is that the Holy Spirit spiritually uses these elements, when they are accepted and received in faith; the Holy Spirit spiritually incorporates them within us, in our mouths and in our hearts, so that we can do God’s Word (Dt. 30:14; James 1:22).

Jesus Christ is God’s Yes in response to the No dwelling in the human heart, all our hearts.  It’s there still: we feel it and see it in action, probably far more often than we want, than we care to admit.  We confess before we partake.  We admit before God the ways we have said and done No to God’s Yes.  When we receive, accept, partake what Christ offers us—this bread, this juice, his body, his blood, his sacrifice by which our sin is canceled, by which God restores us to Himself for life—here, we say Yes to God’s Yes, and No to the No that had been enthroned in our heart.

We do this and can do this only because God has called us, chosen us, given us the Holy Spirit.  The Yes we say to God’s Yes is not perfect.  The No we say to the No that had been so securely seated in our hearts is not an especially firm no.  And in Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, even now alive and at work in you, God is establishing Himself: He is even now at work in our hearts, cleansing, clearing, cleaning, bringing order out of chaos, light where there had been darkness.  God is making Himself our heart’s desire.

Beloved, desire this bread.  Desire this cup.  You will be in Christ, and Christ will be in you.

Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.