Mark
Some Pharisees and religious teachers gathered around Jesus when they
had come from Jerusalem.
They saw that some of his disciples were eating
with impure, unwashed hands.
The Pharisees and all Jews do not eat until
they have ceremonially washed their hands, following the traditions of the
elders.
Also when they return from the market they do not eat until they have washed themselves. They have many other rituals they observe, like the
washing of cups, pots, and pans.
So the Pharisees and religious teachers
asked Jesus, “Why do your disciples not follow the tradition of the elders, but
eat their bread with impure hands?”
Jesus replied, “Isaiah was right when he
prophesied about you hypocrites. As it is written, ‘These people honor me
with what they say, but their hearts are a long way from me.
Their worship
of me is in vain, because they are teaching human rules as doctrines.’
You have given up God’s commands and instead observe man-made
traditions.
“You are experts in setting aside God’s clear command in order to keep
your own traditions!
Moses said, ‘Honor your father and mother. Anyone
who speaks evil of their father or mother is to be put to death.’
But you say,
‘If someone says to their father or mother, “Anything you might have had
from me is now Corban (that means a gift dedicated to God),”’
then you do
not permit them to do anything more for their mother or father.
So you
negate the word of God by your tradition which you hand down, and you do
many things like this.”
Jesus called the crowd to him again and said to them, “Everyone listen to
me and understand this:
nothing which is on the outside and goes into you
can make you unclean. Instead it is what comes out that makes you unclean.
[Whoever has ears to hear, listen!]”
When Jesus had left the crowd and gone into the house, his disciples asked
him about the parable.
“Do you not understand either?” he asked them. “Can you not see that whatever goes into a person from the outside cannot make him unclean?
For it does not go into his mind, but into his stomach, and is then excreted.” With this remark he pronounced every kind of food clean.
He said, “It is what comes out of a person that makes him unclean.
From inside, from
people’s minds, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder,
adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, indecency, envy, slander, pride and
foolishness.
All these evil things come from inside and defile people.”
Then Jesus departed and went to the region of Tyre. He went into a
house and did not want anyone to know, but he could not avoid being
noticed.
A woman whose young daughter had an evil spirit heard about him,
and she immediately came and fell at his feet.
The woman was a Gentile, of the Syrophoenician race, and she kept asking Jesus to cast out the demon
from her daughter.
Jesus said to her, “First let the children eat until they are
full. It is not right to take the children’s food and throw it to the little dogs.”
She replied, “Yes, lord, but even the little dogs under the table eat the
crumbs from the children.”
He said to her, “Because of your answer go on
your way. The demon has gone out of your daughter.”
She went home and
found the child lying on the bed, with the demon gone.
Jesus left the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of
Galilee, in the region of Decapolis.
There they brought him a deaf man who had difficulty speaking. They begged Jesus to lay his hands on him.
Jesus
took him aside from the crowd, and put his fingers in his ears, and after
spitting, touched his tongue.
He looked up to heaven with a deep sigh and
said to him, “Ephphatha,” which means, “Be opened!”
Immediately the man’s ears were opened, his speech returned, and he began speaking clearly.
Jesus gave
them orders not to tell anyone, but the more he said so, the more they kept
spreading the news.
They were absolutely astonished and said, “He has
done everything well. He even makes the deaf hear, and the mute speak.”
Mark