Sun Kwak, “You Are What You Eat”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy0Q3rtbY7I

TEXT: Mark 7:14-23

[14] And he called the people to him again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: [15] There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.” [17] And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. [18] And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, [19] since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) [20] And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. [21] For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, [22] coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. [23] All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

SERMON: “You Are What You Eat“

Brian Scalibrine is a former NBA player, and when he was playing, he had a bit of a cult following. Because what endeared Scalibrine to NBA fans was that he knew he wasn’t very good. He was fully aware that there was a sizable gapbetween him and the next least talented player on the roster. And so, he made up for it, with increased enthusiasm, hustle, and energy. He became this mascot of sorts, a fan favorite and the glue to whatever locker room he was a part of. He surfaced in this video, years after he retired — and here he was, not having played basketball regularly for quite some time. But then, he shows up at a local gym. And for us normal people, we would look at what goes on in that gym and be intimidated by how good these players are. There were junior college players, ex-high school players. This was the cream of the crop of players of those who played basketball in that local rec center. And one of them, the best of them thought he could take on this Brian Scalibrine because of this illusion that he’d created in his mind. And there he was — dunking, dribbling with style, shooting and making deep threes. And so, he confidently challenges Scalibrine to a game of one on one. And Scalibrine was never known for his one on one game — he spotted up in the corners and shot open three pointers, he played tough defense, and he set hard screens. But when challenged to this game of one on one, Scalibrinecompletely decimated this king of his pond. And while this challenger thought himself to be an elite scorer, he couldn’t score against this former NBA player many had come to make a mockery of. And at the end of this embarrassing game, Scalibrine tells this overly confident young man — I’m closer to Lebron James than you are to me. There are levels to the game of basketball, and there’s a stratosphere that some of us aren’t ever able to reach.

Now, what about the other side of the moon? And on a more serious note. A couple years ago, I came across an article written by Patric Gagne titled I Always Knew I Was Different. I Just Didn’t Know I Was a Sociopath. Gagne has also written a longer memoir titled Sociopath to speak more extensively on the topic. She shares about moments in her childhood, when she would enact violently and stabbed a classmate with a pencil. Or, when she would grow a little older and without remorse, she would steal things. And we have a certain monstrosity we picture when it comes to sociopathy. As something, perhaps, so far away from us. But as I was reading a list of some of her early childhood experiences, it made me wonder — If she’s diagnosed as a sociopath, what must be wrong with me? Because there has to be something. Because her experience, while different, didn’t seem so far from me and some of my stories from my childhood. And what I want to do is invite us into some self-examination — to consider this dark side of the moon. Because the error that I believe the Pharisees made that I’m pleading that you and I won’t repeat is thinking that we’re closer to God than any monstrosity in this world. But that we are, in fact, closer to something like sociopathy than the holiness of our God.

Because the key word in our passage today is the word defile. It’s a word that’s used by the Pharisees to describe something that happens to them, from the outside in. But what we’re going to see with Jesus is that he teaches us that this is something that happens not to but from them and us, from the inside out. Which makes us not too different from those the Pharisees deemed defiled and morally disqualified. Because the great equalizer with us, with Patric Gagne, with Adolf Hitler, with Hannibal Lecter, with the Pharisees, and with every human being who’s ever lived outside of the Son of God, is that we are born sinful and our sin is incurable by any other means than the sacrifice of Jesus. Our stained and guilty hands have no power, have no categorical rights to fix, to correct, to cleanse anything that’s defiled within. Cleansing must come from the hands of Jesus — from the outside in. And here in chapter 7, from verses 1-23, the word defile surfaces seven times, which is emphatic. And we looked at verses 1-13 some time ago, but these are connected passages. This word to defile actually begins to be used as an adjective earlier in the chapter — meaning, it’s used to describe something or someone initially. But towards the end, Jesus deliberately shifts its usage, as he uses it in verb form. And when you look at the moral categories towards the end of the passage, what Jesus uses are not passive verbsbut active verbs — that these acts of uncleanness are not things that happen to you but rather things that come out from you.

When you look at verse 19, there is a parenthetical inclusion towards the end of the verse — Thus he declared all foods clean. And it might seem like a random inclusion here. But we remember that the primary eyewitness testimony that was used for the Gospel of Mark was the apostle Peter. And this was not an arbitrary but a very personal disclosure for the apostle Peter. It exposed what we might call his besetting sin. In Flannery O’Connor’s very first story Geranium that was later refined into what’s titled Judgement Day. In this story, the central character Dudley is an old white man from the South who comes to live with his daughter in New York after his wife dies. And throughout the story, she’s never even referred to as his daughter. But throughout, she’s referred to as the daughter, marking the estrangement in their relationship. And a big part of this estrangement came about as a result of his living in the past and identity in the Southset in contrast with his daughter’s living in the present and now life in New York. And where this past and presentconverge is when Dudley sees a well-dressed black man walk into the vacant unit next to where the daughter lives. And as one living in the past, he can only surmise that he has to be a slave or a servant working for someone who actually lives there, someone who’s, of course, white. But the daughter corrects his assessment that he’s just someone who’s set to live there himself by his own means and financial abilities. And throughout the story, Dudley constantly reflects on his days spent in the South, when he had a black servant named Rabie. And he remembers how he would go hunting with Rabie. He had fond memories of Rabie, as one who was eager to be in his company, to do the things he was doing, to follow him around. But only as long as he was submissive and relationally his inferior. And Flannery O’Connor almost uses Rabie in a way to show Dudley’s self-made portrait of the black man. And because this new neighbor of his didn’t fit the mold, it drives Dudley into this existential crisis. When this neighbor of his actually helps him and treats him as an equal and with collegiality, it brings about this existential crisis, as if he can’t believe what’s happening.

And maybe not so different from Dudley, the apostle Peter held the Jews to be in higher regard than the Gentiles. He had a hard time shaking off the fact that the Gentiles were equally accepted members of the family of God. When you look at Galatians 2, the apostle Paul describes a time when he had confronted Peter. And this happened at an event we know as the Jerusalem Council over in Acts 15. And this was about table fellowship. And the way that Peterdisassociated with Gentiles when it came to table fellowship was something that Paul described to be out of step with the gospel. Because what Peter couldn’t shake was looking at the surface, what was on the outside to identify one on the inside. And so, the apostle Paul confronts this prejudice and act of religious animosity and bigotry. And I noted that this was an honest inclusion from Peter, because it was something of a besetting sin. And the reason we say this is because it took a long time for Peter to overcome this sin. Because Paul was not the first to confront Peter about this issue. But he had actually received a vision prior to Acts 15. That back in Acts 10, he received a vision from God himself. We read there that there was great sheet descending from heaven while he fell into a trance. And on it were all kinds of animals deemed unclean according to the Old Testament. And the voice from heaven, which was God’s voice, told him — Rise, Peter; kill and eat. But Peter responded by saying — By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean. But then, this voice from heaven pronounced upon him in response — What God has made clean, do not call common (or unclean). And from here, Peter preaches the gospel to Gentiles, and the reach of the gospel extends to those the Jews had previously deemed unclean. And Peter’s sharing this with Mark while he’s near the end of his life. And it seems here that Peter is stating once again what was declared upon him. Because here was one who had struggled with loving the Gentiles in his ethnic prejudices against them. Here was one who had struggled with this kind of Jewish nationalism that made him stiff arm the Gentiles away from the promises of God. And we see this with how the apostle Paul, a fellow Jew and apostle, called him out for separating himself from the table of the Gentiles when he saw the Jews approaching in Galatians 2. And according to the apostle Paul, once again, this was Peter walking out of step with the gospel.

Because this was a gospel matter. It touches on something we know through the doctrines of Calvinism — total depravity. And the way my kids have memorized the meaning of total depravity is that we are sinful and completely unable to save ourselves — and that’s a universal statement. And Jesus is addressing those who seemed to have a different understanding of this doctrine. Here Jesus is teaching that it’s not what goes into a person that makes him or her defiled. But rather, it’s what comes out of a person. And he even gets a little graphic here. He’s literally saying that what goes down your mouth comes out of your butt. He’s saying that it doesn’t touch your heart but just goes in and comes out. That the only thing that defiles one’s heart is whatever already lies within. And the Pharisees had all kinds of ceremonial rituals that they would observe religiously. There were clean laws regarding the kinds of food you were allowed to intake. And you think about the Jews of the Old Testament. They were those who had been enslaved to the ways of Egypt for 430 years. And they were programmed to identify themselves as slaves. And so, something God had done was enforce ways to be different — to show them that they no longer belonged to Egypt but belonged to him as a liberated people. And one of these ways was through what they could and couldn’t eat. But in their sinfulness, what was used to lift up an enslaved people and to set them apart was used by these religious leaders to cast out and condemnand ostracize. And so, it made some of these Jews awfully judgmental toward those who didn’t align with their food intake and their dietary laws. And so, one problem with the Pharisees that Jesus addresses is how they weaponizedthese traditions and put their system as above other traditions and other people. But even among their own people, it created a restlessness and an anxiety that was toxic to the soul.

And to address this, Jesus gets pretty extreme. There are parts of his teachings, when Jesus says that if a certain body part is dirty or causes you to sin, you were to cut it off. We’ll see this later in chapter 9, when he says that if your hand or if your eye causes you to sin, cut it off. But if defilement is not about what you touch, what you see. But if defilement is about what comes from you, it’s not a matter of your works, it’s a matter of your heart. It’s not a matter of your behavior, it’s a matter of your being. And the emphasis here is that sin comes from the heart. And think about the dilemma here. Jesus tells us with sin that’s on the body limbs, that if they cause you to sin, you cut it off. But what about the heart? What do you with your heart? Because if you cut off your heart, you are no longer alive. You need a different life support. And this is what I think Jesus is ultimately saying here. What we need are not better practices or better traditions. What you and I need, as those affected by sin, are new hearts. We need the new birth, a completely new life source. That you and I are, as the apostle Paul says over in Ephesians 2:5, dead in our trespasses. And it’s as we acknowledge our deadness of heart that we cut off our deadness and are born into new life. Because in Christ, we receive new hearts, we receive new life. And how? Because the word cut off is about being dismembered. It was what happened for those who had been disqualified in the community. And you think about what happens when you are completely dismembered. It’s something that happens when we commit something that is too far reaching that will leave us out. And against a holy God, what can we say? It has to be that because of our actions we would have to be cut off. But what happens? The Bible tells us that he was cut off, dismembered in our place. That on the cross, when he died for our sins, he was cut off, severed from his Father in heaven. In order that he might give us new hearts. In order that we might be indwelled by the Spirit, who in Christ cleanses us from all unrighteousness. That he might validate and secure our stay in the gospel community.

And here’s how I want to close. What the Pharisees did was take a certain practice and absolutize it to be the determining factor for whether you were clean or unclean. And as we’ve been stating, this had everything to do with what went down as a result of their eating. And the laws of Moses would have it where there were certain things that were prohibited from eating, because it was considered unclean. Among those was blood and live flesh. But you consider what Jesus does when he institutes the Lord’s Supper. He doesn’t say that this represents my body and blood. But he looks at his disciples, who were accustomed to Jewish laws and tells them — This is my body, this is my blood. Eat this, drink this, in remembrance of me. And to remember something or someone is the very opposite of what happens with dismembering something. It’s the opposite of severing, of cutting off. And for us who in our sin, often commit acts and thoughts from our hearts that might lead us to think that we’ve been dismembered from Christ, what we’re told here by Jesus is that this very meal remembers us, that we are told again and again that we are held intact by the sacrifice of Jesus for us. And in this Supper, in this meal of sacrifice, what we eat sets us apart yet again. But not in distinction frombut in unity with. Because here was a place where those eating don’t place trust in what we did but what was done for us. With an equal fixation upon the finished works of Jesus, we are a group of people who confess of how we are now those set apart by what we eat. That in this meal, what we eat doesn’t defile but makes us clean. That the body and blood of Jesus is a better law, because he’s fulfilled the law and the prophets. Place your trust in him, that he was cut off for you, in order that you might be able to do this in remembrance of him.