What a Gospel, What a Message! A Very Thoughtful Blessing from God to Keep in Mind!

 

I love the Gospel reading for this week in church! Wow, so true! God cares more about what comes from our hearts, than washing hands before we eat. We often pretend to stick to traditions and what we think God wants us to do, Jesus says, "You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.” He summoned the crowd again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand. 

Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile. “From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder,

adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these evils come from within and they defile.”" All so true! Instead of worrying so much about if we wear shorts to go to church, priest should care more about what it is in peoples hearts, if they are good people and do what God wants us to do. This Gospel reading is so nice! It is a blessing and miracle if we can practice what we hear and read from the Bible in our lives. We get struck in traditions, like facing a certain direction to pray, yet God is in all of us and sticking to traditions like these are not what really matters to God. How do we all defile God and others? How can we change and be more like God, be more like Jesus Christ when He walked this Earth! God sees what is in our hearts!  

When the Pharisees with some scribes who had come from Jerusalem

gathered around Jesus,

they observed that some of his disciples ate their meals

with unclean, that is, unwashed, hands. 

—For the Pharisees and, in fact, all Jews,

do not eat without carefully washing their hands,

keeping the tradition of the elders.

And on coming from the marketplace 

they do not eat without purifying themselves. 

And there are many other things that they have traditionally observed,

the purification of cups and jugs and kettles and beds. —

So the Pharisees and scribes questioned him,

“Why do your disciples not follow the tradition of the elders

but instead eat a meal with unclean hands?” 

He responded,

“Well did Isaiah prophesy 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 as doctrines human precepts.

You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.”

He summoned the crowd again and said to them,

“Hear me, all of you, and understand. 

Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person;

but the things that come out from within are what defile.

“From within people, from their hearts,

come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder,

adultery, greed, malice, deceit,

licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly.

All these evils come from within and they defile.”

-Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23