We hear a lot these days about the need to eat right. We’ve heard about that since I was a kid, of course, and probably longer, but it seems like we hear even more about it now. From increased regulations on school lunches, to taxes and bans on certain types of transfats, to pressure on restaurants like McDonald’s to offer salads and apples rather than French fries, there’s a constantly increasing emphasis on healthy eating in our society.
Now, I am certainly in favor of people eating nutritious meals. I’m in favor of anything that helps us stay healthier for longer. However, it’s important that we note one thing about that. No matter how hard we try to eat right, our eating habits are not going to get us into heaven.
In Jesus’ time, people were concerned about eating right, too. Their concern, though, was for a different reason. They were concerned about eating right not for their physical health, but for their spiritual health.
See, the religious people of that time had a lot of rules and regulations they were supposed keep in regard to their diet. These rules and regulations originated during the time of Moses, if not earlier. The rules and regulations not only covered what you could and could not eat, but how you were supposed to eat what you ate and when you were supposed to eat what you ate. People were required to keep all these dietary rules and regulations, or they’d be considered unclean and unfit to be the people of God. In other words, the religious people of that time literally did think that their eating habits, along with other things, would get them into heaven.
As he so often did, though, Jesus turned that thinking around. He said, look, it’s not what you eat that makes you unclean. It’s not what you’re putting in your mouth that’s making you unfit to be the people of God. What’s making you unclean and unfit is all that stuff that’s coming out of your mouth. Jesus says it’s that stuff that’s making people unfit to be the people of God, not the things they’re eating.
We hear that, and we think, well, that seems kind of obvious. However, it was not obvious to the people Jesus was talking to. It was not even obvious to Jesus’ disciples. They said to Jesus, “Hey, you’re offending the Pharisees by saying stuff like that. What do you mean? What are you really saying here?”
So, Jesus had to explain it to them. He says, look, anything you put into your mouth is going to come out at some point, so eventually it’ll be okay. The things that come out of our mouths, though, are different, because those things come from our hearts. It’s our hearts that make us impure and unclean.
If we really think about that, it may be that what Jesus was saying is not so obvious, after all. We want Jesus to be saying is just that we need to watch the things we say, that we need to watch out for gossip and for talking behind people’s backs and stuff like that. We want Jesus to be saying that we need to make sure our statements don’t come off as rude or arrogant or hurtful. Now, that’s certainly part of what Jesus was saying, but it’s not all of it.
Jesus is not just warning us to watch what we say. He’s not even warning us to watch what we do. What Jesus tells us is that it would not even occur to say those hurtful things in the first place if our hearts were right. We would not do hurtful things if our hearts were right. The key to this, then, is not just to be careful about the words we say. It’s not just to be careful about the things we do. Those things are important, but the key is to make sure our hearts are right with God, so we won’t be tempted to say those things or do those things in the first place.
The thing about that, of course, is that it’s a lot easier said than done. We can control the things we do, to a large extent. Watching the things we say is a little trickier—sometimes we talk before we think—but we can control that, too, at least sometimes. Controlling our hearts, though, is a lot trickier deal. What we’re talking about there is not even just controlling our thoughts. That’d be hard enough, but when we talk about controlling our hearts, we’re talking about controlling our feelings.
How do we do that? Have you ever tried to control your feelings? There’s an extent to which we can do it, but only an extent. If we’re sad or depressed, we cannot just will ourselves to be happy. We can try to stop dwelling on things, we can try to get into a little better mood, but we cannot just force ourselves to get rid of those sad or depressed feelings. It’s the same thing with anger—if we’re mad about something, we may be able to make ourselves calm down, but we cannot just will ourselves to get rid of that anger.
Another example of this is love. We cannot make ourselves love someone whom we don’t love. We can treat them kindly, we can express understanding to them, but we cannot force ourselves to feel love for them. It works the other way, too: we cannot make ourselves stop loving someone whom we do love. We may ignore them, we may stay away from them, but we cannot, just by an act of will, force ourselves to stop loving them.
So, what do we do? We’ve just said that we cannot control our feelings or emotions. Yet, Jesus says those are the things that can and do defile us, that makes us unfit to be the people of God. Where does that leave us?
Well, we can start with the fact that Jesus would never ask us to do something that was truly impossible. Jesus would never have said what he did if there was nothing we could do about our hearts. We can then move on to another fact: Jesus knows how flawed and weak and imperfect we humans are. Jesus does not expect perfection from us; he knows perfection is beyond us. What Jesus does ask is that we do the best we can and that, despite our flaws, we keep trying and keep striving toward perfection, as impossible as it for us to actually achieve it.
What that tells us is that, while we cannot perfectly control our hearts, Jesus is telling us to control them as much as we possibly can. Jesus recognizes our weakness and imperfection, but Jesus does not want us to use that as an excuse. Jesus wants us to keep trying, to keep doing our best, and when we fall short, Jesus wants us to ask for forgiveness and to try again.
There’s one more fact we need to include here, too. That fact is that Jesus never leaves us on our own. Jesus does not expect us to do any of this by ourselves. Jesus knows we cannot do it by ourselves. What Jesus wants us to do is rely on him. We’re still supposed to do our best, but then we’re supposed to turn to Jesus and ask him to do what we cannot do. When we cannot get rid of our sadness or depression or anger, we can ask Jesus to take them away. When we cannot feel love toward someone, even though we know we should, we can ask Jesus to help us feel that love. Jesus can do the things we cannot do. Nothing is impossible when we do it with and through Jesus.
That’s part of the lesson of the Canaanite woman who asked Jesus to cure her daughter. It’s not just a coincidence that this passage follows Jesus’ statements about what makes us impure or unfit. Here was this woman who was not even of Jesus’ race or of his religion. She had no reason to believe that Jesus would be willing to heal her daughter. Yet, she knew there was nothing she could do on her own. She knew that her only hope was to rely on Jesus and ask him to heal her daughter. It was impossible for her, but she knew it was not impossible with and through Jesus. She had faith, enough faith to ask Jesus for help even when she had no right to do so, and Jesus responded to that faith.
When you think about it, we really have no right to ask Jesus for help either. After all, it’s not like Jesus owes us anything. Yet, not only does Jesus allow us to ask for help, he wants us to ask for help. He’s eager for us to ask for help. When, finally, we do ask, Jesus will always give us the help we need. Not the help we want, necessarily, but the help we need.
We cannot control our hearts by ourselves. We cannot become clean and fit to be God’s people by ourselves. The good news is that we don’t have to do it by ourselves. In fact, we’re not supposed to. All we need to do is turn to Jesus. All we need to do is rely on Jesus’ great love and great power. Nothing is impossible for our Lord, Jesus Christ.
No comments:
Post a Comment