The Kingdom Movement

A Literary & Pastoral Study Guide to the Gospel of Matthew

The Inspiration of Matthew,

by Caravaggio

On the King's Errand

Devotional Reflections on Matthew's Gospel

The Mouth and the Direction of Contamination:  Mt.15:1 – 20

^15:5 But you say, ‘Whoever says to his father or mother, ‘Whatever I have that would help you has been given to God,’ ⁶ he is not to honor his father or his mother.’ And by this you invalidated the word of God for the sake of your tradition. ⁷ You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you: ⁸ ‘This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far away from Me’…¹⁰ After Jesus called the crowd to him, he said to them, ‘Hear and understand. ¹¹ It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man’… ¹⁷ Do you not understand that everything that goes into the mouth passes into the stomach, and is eliminated? ¹⁸ But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. ¹⁹ For out of the heart come evil thoughts…false witness, slanders.’

          ‘Yuck!  You’ve got the cooties!’ said the boys and girls to each other in 1^st grade as we tried not to touch each other.  If you got touched by ‘the other,’ you got ‘the cooties.’  Of course, we were too childish to ask how you could get ‘cooties’ if you already had them.  But it just goes to show how we often think ‘contamination’ comes from outside ourselves, and from ‘the other.’

          Jesus taught that contamination does not actually spread across human beings, but within the human being.  My contamination begins in my heart, is evidenced through my mouth by what I say (among other ways), and contaminates the rest of me.  My mouth is important.  Just look at all the manifestations of speech in Mt.15:1 – 20:  ‘you say’ and ‘whoever says’ (15:5), ‘their lips’ (15:8), ‘what proceeds out of the mouth’ (15:11), ‘the things that proceed out of the mouth’ (15:18), ‘false witness, slanders’ (15:19).  There was a lot of talking going on.

Why the mouth?  It’s with our mouths that we take the commandments of God and excuse ourselves from them or rationalize them away.  The Pharisees showed their contamination by what they said about what other Jews could say about God’s Law.  ‘They said’…‘whoever says’…  While making a tax loophole, they undermined God’s decree about honoring one’s parents.  Suddenly, you could kill two birds with one stone by giving the money you would have given your parents to the Temple sanctuary instead.  I’m sure Jewish parents felt quite cheated, and powerless to critique it because their children would throw up the pious defense.

Anyone who sins can seek God’s forgiveness and cleansing, so long as they understand it to be sin.  Anyone who changes the definition of sin itself, however, has contaminated themselves in a much more serious way.  By saying any of these things, we create a world of lies in which we then live.  We build defenses to interpret away criticism.  We develop a resistance to God’s voice in Scripture.  That posture then contaminates us, and we become defiled.

The same can be true for Christians.  Despite Jesus’ own example of eating with tax collectors and ‘sinners’ (Mt.9:9 – 13), some say, ‘I don’t go to parties because I don’t approve of the party scene.’  Or, despite the New Testament admonition to not get drunk but to be available at all times to the Spirit of God (Eph.5:18), some say, ‘I’ve worked hard all week.  This is my time.  I’m going to get smashed.’  Despite Jesus’ command to forgive others (Mt.5:21 – 26; 6:13 – 14; 18:21 – 35), some say, ‘It’s okay for me to be bitter against that person.’  Despite Jesus’ many commands to give money to the poor (Mt.6:19 – 34; 19:13 – 30; 25:31 – 46), some say, ‘It’s okay for me to keep a lot of money, so long as I don’t love it in my heart.’  Despite Jesus’ clear teaching on marriage being male and female, monogamous, and binding (Mt.5:27 – 32; 19:3 – 12), some say, ‘Those ethics are outdated.’  Despite Jesus’ directive to evangelize the world (Mt.5:13 – 16; 28:18 – 20), some say, ‘I only have to love my own people, but I’m not racist or anything,’ or even, ‘I don’t think it’s important to share my faith.’

In all these cases, these lies mean that relationships are up to us to define, without regard for God’s normative vision for all human relationships and His own relation to us.

         Imagine catching a slow-acting but lethal disease that makes you sicker and sicker, yet deludes you into thinking that other people are the ones getting worse and worse.  What if it made you more obese while you thought others were becoming anorexic?  Sin is like that.  You start thinking that other people are sicker than you are, and you blame them for making you guarded.  If you’re more self-indulgent, you call them more ‘narrow’ or ‘conservative’ or ‘traditional,’ etc.  Or if you’re more self-denying, you call them ‘liberal’ or ‘self-indulgent’ or ‘irresponsible’.  They have ‘the cooties.’  You create a false world in which you live.  But be careful.  Other people do not pass along contamination to us.  You primarily defile yourself.  And you do so every time your mouth gives you an excuse for you to not live out the command of God.