Jesus called the people to him again, and said to them, "Hear me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him; but the things which come out of a man 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? Do you not see that whatever goes into a man from outside cannot defile him, since it enters, not his heart but his stomach, and so passes on?" (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, "What comes out of a man is what defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man."-St. Mark 7:14-23
When Jesus first said, "there is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him," it was, from a Jewish perspective, about the most revolutionary thing He had ever said. Over and over throughout the gospels we see Jesus arguing with the Jewish legal experts about different aspects of the traditional law. But now Jesus says something which is unthinkable to the orthodox Jew by declaring that nothing that goes into a man can, in and of itself, defile him, since it’s only received into his body and then passes through him in a natural way.
No Jew ever believed that, and to this day, no orthodox Jew would ever believe that. In the Old Testament we find long lists of animals that are considered to be unclean and which may not be used as food. In fact, there were many times in the history of the Jews that people were willing to be put to death rather than to eat something which was declared to be unclean. During the time of the Maccabees, there were horrific deaths inflicted on Jews for not eating swine’s flesh. It was in the face of that historical reality that Jesus made this revolutionary statement that nothing which goes into a man can make him unclean. Jesus seemed to be sweeping aside the laws for which Jews had suffered and died.
Of course, what Jesus was teaching was that it wasn’t the thing, in and of itself, that could be clean or unclean. It is the act of obedience or disobedience which can defile. It’s much as is the situation with the matter of meat on Friday for Catholics. It’s not so much the meat that was somehow “unholy” on that particular day; rather, it’s the fact that this was the sacrifice which was required by the law of the Church, and to purposely ignore it was to commit an act of disobedience. And just as the Church still requires some sacrificial act on the normal Fridays of the year, so to ignore it is still an act of disobedience, and so can be the occasion of sin.
What Jesus was condemning was the attitude that the mere avoidance of unclean things was all that was required, rather than having an understanding that such things need to flow from our love for God, and our desire to be obedient to him.
Jesus says that what can make a man unclean is what comes from within his heart – not what goes into his mouth. And then Jesus lists a number of things which are much more serious in the total holiness of individuals than externals. A list such as the one contained in St. Mark’s gospel surely is a sobering thing, and really calls us to examine our lives, and what “comes out of our hearts.”