Purity, uncleanness, and a third baptism
Sermon for Pentecost XII, 2023, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY
Text: Matthew 15:10-28
We have yet another baptism this morning, Navy, daughter of Stephanie and Bill, and granddaughter of Linda. I’m getting good practice with my baptism sermons from so many of them recently. We’ll come back to Navy’s baptism in a moment. There’s something we need to explore first.
There is a midrash, or part of a Jewish set of rules based on the Hebrew Bible, regarding things we eat and drink from. One of the midrash passages reads as follows: “When the outside of a vessel is contaminated by an unclean liquid, its exterior is unclean;...but its interior and its rim and its hanger or its handle are still considered clean...When one is drinking from a cup with an unclean exterior, one need not worry about the liquid in one's mouth, that it will be contaminated by the outside of the cup and in turn will contaminate the cup.” In other words, if the outside of a cup is unclean, what we drink from it remains clean. To us, this may seem trivial or too deep in the details of a simple drink from a cup, but to Orthodox Jews, this is vitally important. It is not just about cleanliness, or food safety, or morality as we often imagine, but it is instead about how close we are to God in every aspect of our daily lives. Clean or unclean is a measure of how close or how far away we are from God at any moment in our lives. In order to understand what Jesus meant about clean, unclean, and what defiles a person in the Gospel reading, we have to keep this midrash in mind and back up a few verses in Matthew’s Gospel. There, the Pharisees were challenging Jesus, asking him why his disciples didn’t wash their hands as part of the purity rituals before they ate. To wash hands was to show reverence for the food which came from God’s Creation. To us as we understand illness, washing hands before eating is a no-brainer - you clean your hands so that you don’t contaminate yourself or others with germs on them. But Jesus is talking about ritual purity and he answers the Pharisees indirectly, when he talks about the concept of purity to the disciples and says that the external purity is not what is important, but rather internal purity is.
Immediately after Jesus tells the disciples about this new idea of clean and unclean, pure and defiling, a Canaanite woman falls at his feet and begs him to heal her daughter. Jesus treats her the same as the Pharisees treat unwashed hands: they are unclean, and should be avoided. The Canaanite woman was unclean because she didn’t believe what the Jews, including Jesus, believed, and that separated her from God in their eyes. That separation was a sign of uncleanness to Jesus. But what comes out of the mouth of the Canaanite woman, and what came out of her heart is pure, as Jesus witnesses. She speaks her truth to his power and challenges Jesus on his assumption of her uncleanness, and she becomes a physical reminder of what he had just said to the disciples about where uncleanness comes from. In that moment, the Canaanite woman challenges Jesus by saying that “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”
The disconcerting mix of purity from her heart and her non-Jewish exterior gets Jesus’ attention. He realizes that the idea of clean and unclean that he had shared with his disciples is now standing before him in undeniable flesh and blood.This attention to what makes us pure or defiled is important because we come across people proclaiming that this or that person is unclean for any number of reasons. The irony is that when we speak with evil intentions, or bear false witness, or slander someone else by saying that they are unclean we risk defiling ourselves with our words. This disconcerting mix of uncleanness and purity makes us uncomfortable, and we want to run away from it, or try to correct it so that we won’t feel uncomfortable anymore. But it is in that uncomfortable place where God works on us to help us see beyond what we think is unclean. Jesus’ words on what truly makes a person unclean are important because Navy may find herself in a situation like the Canaanite woman finds herself in, where she will have to stand up like the Canaanite woman and by speaking as her baptismal vows guide her, remind others that she is not unclean or defiled.
Now, having raised children, I know from experience that young children are messy. They get into everything as they discover the world and have fun as they explore. You could go so far as to say that they can be unclean on the outside, but then they do or say something that would melt the coldest heart. And they do these things in joyful innocence. This is a similar uncomfortable mix of purity and uncleanness that Jesus saw in the Canaanite woman, and that you will no doubt see in Navy, and it wakes us up. That purity flows naturally from children, but if they learn to be judgmental, or jealous, or self-centered, they can grow into adults whose words defile themselves. That is why it is so important to preserve innocent purity in a covering of love, love from others, and love for others. That love is given purpose and structure in the baptismal vows we will recite for Navy in a few minutes. That love is expressed as fellowship, in worship, and as thanksgiving for the love we receive from God. That love from God is reaffirmed in God’s forgiveness of our sins. It is offered to others unconditionally as the good news about God. It is made real by seeking justice and recognizing the dignity of all others. These vows come from the fount of purity that Jesus talks about.
If I were to write a midrash about them, I would say that those vows purify us on the outside, regardless of what we look like to others. I would think that will be the same for Navy, that people will see how close she is to God by how she speaks to others and what she says to them. Today is where we start to help her understand what that internal purity of heart looks and feels like, and we do that by symbolically washing her with blessed, holy water, giving her a clean beginning in her spiritual life. And after we have washed her, we will welcome her into a community of faith that will support her and her family, and we will listen for the purity of her heart that comes from being loved. She will change as she grows and becomes her own person, and that change may look like uncleanness, but it is up to us to look beyond that to see what is in her heart.
There is a midrash, or part of a Jewish set of rules based on the Hebrew Bible, regarding things we eat and drink from. One of the midrash passages reads as follows: “When the outside of a vessel is contaminated by an unclean liquid, its exterior is unclean;...but its interior and its rim and its hanger or its handle are still considered clean...When one is drinking from a cup with an unclean exterior, one need not worry about the liquid in one's mouth, that it will be contaminated by the outside of the cup and in turn will contaminate the cup.” In other words, if the outside of a cup is unclean, what we drink from it remains clean. To us, this may seem trivial or too deep in the details of a simple drink from a cup, but to Orthodox Jews, this is vitally important. It is not just about cleanliness, or food safety, or morality as we often imagine, but it is instead about how close we are to God in every aspect of our daily lives. Clean or unclean is a measure of how close or how far away we are from God at any moment in our lives. In order to understand what Jesus meant about clean, unclean, and what defiles a person in the Gospel reading, we have to keep this midrash in mind and back up a few verses in Matthew’s Gospel. There, the Pharisees were challenging Jesus, asking him why his disciples didn’t wash their hands as part of the purity rituals before they ate. To wash hands was to show reverence for the food which came from God’s Creation. To us as we understand illness, washing hands before eating is a no-brainer - you clean your hands so that you don’t contaminate yourself or others with germs on them. But Jesus is talking about ritual purity and he answers the Pharisees indirectly, when he talks about the concept of purity to the disciples and says that the external purity is not what is important, but rather internal purity is.
Immediately after Jesus tells the disciples about this new idea of clean and unclean, pure and defiling, a Canaanite woman falls at his feet and begs him to heal her daughter. Jesus treats her the same as the Pharisees treat unwashed hands: they are unclean, and should be avoided. The Canaanite woman was unclean because she didn’t believe what the Jews, including Jesus, believed, and that separated her from God in their eyes. That separation was a sign of uncleanness to Jesus. But what comes out of the mouth of the Canaanite woman, and what came out of her heart is pure, as Jesus witnesses. She speaks her truth to his power and challenges Jesus on his assumption of her uncleanness, and she becomes a physical reminder of what he had just said to the disciples about where uncleanness comes from. In that moment, the Canaanite woman challenges Jesus by saying that “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”
The disconcerting mix of purity from her heart and her non-Jewish exterior gets Jesus’ attention. He realizes that the idea of clean and unclean that he had shared with his disciples is now standing before him in undeniable flesh and blood.This attention to what makes us pure or defiled is important because we come across people proclaiming that this or that person is unclean for any number of reasons. The irony is that when we speak with evil intentions, or bear false witness, or slander someone else by saying that they are unclean we risk defiling ourselves with our words. This disconcerting mix of uncleanness and purity makes us uncomfortable, and we want to run away from it, or try to correct it so that we won’t feel uncomfortable anymore. But it is in that uncomfortable place where God works on us to help us see beyond what we think is unclean. Jesus’ words on what truly makes a person unclean are important because Navy may find herself in a situation like the Canaanite woman finds herself in, where she will have to stand up like the Canaanite woman and by speaking as her baptismal vows guide her, remind others that she is not unclean or defiled.
Now, having raised children, I know from experience that young children are messy. They get into everything as they discover the world and have fun as they explore. You could go so far as to say that they can be unclean on the outside, but then they do or say something that would melt the coldest heart. And they do these things in joyful innocence. This is a similar uncomfortable mix of purity and uncleanness that Jesus saw in the Canaanite woman, and that you will no doubt see in Navy, and it wakes us up. That purity flows naturally from children, but if they learn to be judgmental, or jealous, or self-centered, they can grow into adults whose words defile themselves. That is why it is so important to preserve innocent purity in a covering of love, love from others, and love for others. That love is given purpose and structure in the baptismal vows we will recite for Navy in a few minutes. That love is expressed as fellowship, in worship, and as thanksgiving for the love we receive from God. That love from God is reaffirmed in God’s forgiveness of our sins. It is offered to others unconditionally as the good news about God. It is made real by seeking justice and recognizing the dignity of all others. These vows come from the fount of purity that Jesus talks about.
If I were to write a midrash about them, I would say that those vows purify us on the outside, regardless of what we look like to others. I would think that will be the same for Navy, that people will see how close she is to God by how she speaks to others and what she says to them. Today is where we start to help her understand what that internal purity of heart looks and feels like, and we do that by symbolically washing her with blessed, holy water, giving her a clean beginning in her spiritual life. And after we have washed her, we will welcome her into a community of faith that will support her and her family, and we will listen for the purity of her heart that comes from being loved. She will change as she grows and becomes her own person, and that change may look like uncleanness, but it is up to us to look beyond that to see what is in her heart.
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