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Sound & Season is a daily audio devotional designed to connect the routine moments of life to the rhythms of the Church seasons.
This is Sound and Season. It's Monday, 17th day of Lent. Our passage today comes from the gospel of Mark chapter 7 verses 14 through 23. And Jesus called the people to him again and said to them, hear me all of you and understand, there's 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. And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable and he said to them, then are you also without understanding?
Jeffrey Heine:Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters, not his heart, but his stomach, and is expelled? Thus he declared all foods clean and he said, what comes out of a person is what defiles him for from within, out of the heart of man come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness, all these evil things come from within and they defile a person. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. The prophet Jeremiah tells us that the heart is deceitful above all things.
Jeffrey Heine:In our passage today, we find Jesus teaching his disciples that it is not food or drink. It's not the things on the outside that defile or make us unclean. It is what comes out of our hearts. This teaching was and is revolutionary. For its first hearers, they had a hard time believing that certain foods or rituals were not the grounds of spiritual cleanliness.
Jeffrey Heine:For sure, today, it is important to see that uncleanliness both matters and generates from the inside. Our thoughts of selfishness, desires of greed, the sins that flow from pride. While we might not believe foods cause spiritual uncleanliness, we can spend more time thinking about our diet of food than our spiritual health. We can count calories, cut ingredients, and examine our nutrition more than our blessings, our transgressions, and our hearts. We should not be blind to the state of our souls and the health of our spirits.
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus creates in us a clean heart, a heart of flesh that seeks to obey the Lord. Christ calls his followers to tend to the health of their renewed hearts, not by focusing on the outside, but on the inner person. Lord, hear our prayer and let our cry come to you. Let us pray. O God, you have delivered us from the dominion of sin and death and brought us into the kingdom of your Son.
Jeffrey Heine:We pray, that as by his death he has called us to life, so by his love may he raise us to eternal joy. This Lent, O Spirit, renew the joy of our salvation so we might join the angels and the archangels declaring together, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is full of his glory. Oh, Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.
Jeffrey Heine:Amen.