Sermon for Pentecost 15, Proper 17B, preached on Sunday, September 2, 2018, by the Rev. Daniel M. Ulrich.
I’m
going to be blunt: you’re not a good person.
I’m not a good person. No matter
what popular opinion day may be, deep down inside, we humans aren’t good. We like to think that we are. We hope and we desperately want there to be
some sort of divine goodness in us, but there isn't. Deep down, in our hearts we’re evil...and
there’s nothing we can do to change that.
Now, I know this doesn’t sound very
nice. It’s not the uplifting message you
came to hear. It’s depressing to think
about, but it’s the truth. And at some
level, it’s a truth that we all know, so we try to correct it.
We
would like to be good, to be clean, to be free of sin and evil. And we think the best way of achieving this
is to avoid that which is unclean, to avoid sin. After all...can you be a bad person if you
don’t do bad things? Aren’t we sinners
only because we sin?
This
goes along with our Gospel reading from last week (Mk 7:1-13), where the
Pharisees questioned Jesus because His disciples didn’t wash their hands before
they ate. The Pharisees assumed they
were clean, that they were good because they followed all the ritual purity
laws of the OT. Hoping to stay undefiled,
they constantly performed ritual washings and they only ate the kosher
foods. They let nothing unclean enter
their bodies. They touched nothing
unclean. They avoided defilement at all
cost. And because of this, they thought
they were clean, free from sin. They
thought defilement came from the outside.
And so do we.
We
think we’re clean and pure and good if we just avoid the things that
aren’t. Now, we’re not worried about
defilement from the foods we eat. We’re
not concerned about becoming ritually unclean by touching blood or shaking
hands with an unbeliever. But we do
think sin and evil come from outside of us.
We’re morally good, or at least, morally neutral, and it’s the sinful
world around us with all of its temptation that causes us to sin. If we just avoid these things, if we avoid
foul language, the gossip of the day, the obscene images on our TV screens,
greed for money and power, the violence that sells at the box office, the
blatant disregard for human life or the estate of marriage as God designed
it...if we just avoid all of this, then we should be good, right? … Wrong. You see, all of this, this evil and sin, it’s
not from the world around us. It’s from
us.
We’re
not neutral, and we’re most certainly not good.
The sin we see in the world, it’s not a product of the world, it’s a
product of us, of our sin, the sin that resides in our fallen human heart. You see, we’re not sinners because we
sin. It’s the other way around. We sin, because we’re sinners. We’re not unclean because we do unclean
things. We’re unclean, because our heart
is unclean. This is what Jesus told the
people and His disciples.
Responding
to the Pharisees’ accusations Jesus said, “The
things that come out of a person are what defile him...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” (Mk 7:15b, 18b-19a). The Greek here is more explicit than our
English translation. What Jesus says is
that what goes into a person comes out into the latrine. You see, unclean foods and eating with
unclean hands, the things the Pharisees worried about, they don’t defile a
person, because food doesn’t enter the heart.
Defilement doesn’t come from the world around us...it comes from the sin
that’s already in our hearts.
Speaking stern
Law, Jesus 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” (Mk 7:20-22). These are
the unclean things that reside in our hearts.
This is the sin that is in each and every one of us. Listen to that list. These aren’t small things. They’re not tiny sins. This is pure evil. That’s what’s inside all of us. And
this is what makes us unclean.
Our
hearts need to be cleansed of this sin and evil. But we can’t do it. We can’t clean our hearts by avoiding
sin. Fighting temptation, not giving in
to our lustful thoughts, keeping our mouths shut so we don’t slander or speak
angrily about our neighbors, these are good, but they don’t clean out our
hearts. Doing the good works of God’s
Word, loving our spouse and children, going out of our way to care for those in
need, being content with what we have, these are good, but they don’t clean out
our hearts. The only way for our hearts
to be cleansed of the sin and evil that reside in them is for God to clean
them. King David knew this.
Our
Introit for today comes from Psalm 51.
This was King David’s psalm of confession after he had committed
adultery with Bathsheba. And in these
words, words that we sing today, he prays for God to clean out his heart. “Wash
me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!...Purge me with
hyssop, and I shall be clean, wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow….Create
in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me” (Ps 51:2, 7,
10). This prayer of confession, this
prayer of faith, looked to God for restoration and for cleansing, and God
answers this prayer. He answers it with
the blood of Christ.
God
washes clean your hearts of sin with the innocent blood of Christ that was shed
on the cross. There, the sinless Son of
Man died the death that we sinners deserve.
The cross seems to be unclean, a thing of death, and it is. It is a thing of death, but it’s by Christ’s
death that you’re made clean. The blood
of Jesus is far from being unclean. The
blood of Jesus is the only thing that makes you clean. It’s the only thing that washes the guilt of
your sin away. It’s a scarlet bath that
makes you whiter than snow.
In
your Baptism, God provided you with a cleansing flood that drowned the sinner
in you. In your Baptism, He washed you
with the “washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit” (Ti 3:5), giving
you not only a clean heart, but a new one.
This new heart has no desire to sin.
This new heart despises the evil that resides in our Old Adam. This new heart looks to Christ for
cleansing. This new heart wants to hold
fast to the good and holy commands of God, to live out Christ’s righteousness
that we’ve received.
In
Psalm 119, which we also sang today, we said, “I long for you commandments….Keep steady my steps according to your
promise, and let no iniquity get dominion over me. Redeem me from man’s oppression, that I may
keep your precepts” (Ps 119:131, 132-133).
I often wonder if we truly long for God’s commandments? The sinner in us surely doesn’t. The sinner loves the evil heart that we
have. But the saint made clean by the
blood of Christ doesn’t. Ps 119 are the
words that come from a new and clean heart, a heart that’s free from sin. Having been washed clean by the blood of
Christ, we rightly want to live according to God’s command. We want to abandon the sin and evil in our
hearts, not in an effort to cleanse our hearts ourselves, but because we’ve
been given a new heart and we love the Lord with these new hearts.
By
ourselves, deep down, our hearts are filled with all sorts of evil. But in Christ, washed clean by His blood shed
on the cross, washed clean in the waters of baptism, we’ve received His
righteousness. And in faith, we want to
live according to that righteousness.
With faith we strive to live lives according to God’s Word, according to
His commandments, turning from sin and temptation. With faith we pray for God to create within
us clean hearts. We pray for a renewed
spirit so that we might delight in God’s law and lead righteous lives according
to it. And thanks be to God that He
answers these prayers, giving us clean hearts, washed by the blood of
Christ. In His name...Amen.
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