August 28th, 2021

This week, for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, the Gospel text continues in Mark 7, and the Old Testament text for this Sunday [Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9] connects to that text by mentioning some important ‘decrees’ and ‘judgments’.

Jesus is talking about what defiles a person and what cleanses him. Jesus ultimately says that what comes OUT of a person is what defiles him and NOT what goes IN. And, at the end of Mark 7:19, the writer makes this parenthetical comment that says, in these few words (and in a somewhat-literal translation) that Jesus, with the words that came before, was ‘cleansing all the foods.’

To make it even more clear, the Amplified Bible does a good job in connecting this statement to the laws of the Old Testament in this ‘translation’ of that text: ‘Thus He was making and declaring all foods (ceremonially) clean [that is, abolishing the ceremonial distinctions of the Levitical Law]).’ [The Amplified Bible; Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA: Zondervan Publishing, 1965; page 59.]

The Law in the Old Testament is a big topic, you might say that this is an especially important topic for the early Christian Church. How would they deal with all these laws within the especially important books such as Leviticus and Deuteronomy? That is also an important question for the Christian Church today.

It may be helpful to see how the word ‘cleansed’ is used in other places in the Gospel according to Mark. In this gospel account, the majority of uses are when Jesus was cleansing people from leprosy. (The verb is mentioned three times in Mark 1:40-42, and is mentioned nowhere else in this account besides here in chapter seven.) But the word is also mentioned three times within the book of Acts, and it may be helpful to see those uses.

In Acts 10, Peter—who is the writer behind the secretary, Mark—is having his vision while in Joppa. That town is on the coast of the Mediterranean and is perhaps one of the world’s oldest cities. He has a vision of many different types of animals, and God says to him, ‘Rise up, Peter, kill and eat,’ but Peter does not want to, since some of those animals are considered unclean by Old Testament standards. And then God says this (again, in a somewhat-literal translation): ‘What things God cleansed, you do not make common [Acts 10:15 & 11:9].’

Peter also has the ‘final say’, as it were, regarding the last use of this verb, ‘to cleanse’, in the Acts of the Apostles. Here is the famous Jerusalem Council, in Acts 15, where they are wrestling with the issue of whether or not Christians should be circumcised—another law that could be fulfilled.

Peter is the first one to stand up and permit his words to be recorded (although others have said much before this, and these words from Peter sound a lot like Paul says elsewhere):

Men, brothers, you (yourselves) understand that from ancient days among you, God chose through my mouth the nations to hear the word of the gospel and to believe. And the heart-knowing God testified to them, giving them the Spirit, the Holy One, just as also to us, and nothing distinguished between both us and them, by faith having cleansed the hearts of them [a somewhat-literal translation; Acts 15:7b-9].

There is SO MUCH that could be said about these words. They are certainly significant, and they certainly point to the good news, the gospel, in a way that is seen more clearly in other parts of the New Testament. (By the way, this is the very first time in Luke-Acts that the word ‘gospel’ is in its noun form and not as a verb. If you would like to look at the word as a verb before its use here as a noun, here are those passages: Luke 1:19, 2:10, 3:18, 4:18, 4:23, 7:22, 8:1, 9:6, 16:16, 20:1, Acts 5:42, 8:4, 8:12, 8:25, 8:35, 8:40, 10:36, 11:20, 13:32, 14:7, 14:15, & 14:21; it is also used three times as a verb after, at Acts 15:35, 16:10, & 17:18.)

For the next few Sundays, the Epistle text will be from James, and it will certainly be a good ‘change of pace’ to look at how this gospel emphasis (as a noun) continues on in Acts 15, as well as in the book of James.