12th Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 17)
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem
gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating
with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees,
and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus
observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from
the market unless they wash it and there are also many other traditions
that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the
Pharisees and the scribes asked him, "Why do your disciples not live
according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?" He
said to them, "Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is
written,
'This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.'
You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition."
Then he called the crowd again and said to them, "Listen to me, all of
you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in
can defile, but the things that come out are what defile."
For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come:
fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit,
licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come
from within, and they defile a person."
