Listen and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles. A friend of mine told me about some problems she is having with her daughter. Katie is eight, small for her age, overweight and is near-sighted making her wear glasses. All of these outward personal traits have made her an easy and regular target for schoolyard bullies. Although she is not physically attacked, she does suffer verbal abuse from her peers, making her life, at present, a fairly lonely and unpleasant one. Children can be so mean sometimes when they see someone who is different from the rest of the group. As is so often the case, Katie is just the nicest child: caring, loving, funny and lively. These harsh words directed at her, the snide glances given, Katie's simply being ignored as if she does not exist are all very hurtful and wounding at a very deep and personal place. This impacts all aspects of Katie's life and is a cause for great concern to her Mom.

What comes out of the mouth is what defiles us. Jesus is doing something pretty radical today. Just before today's passage begins, Jesus is criticized by the Pharisees for allowing his disciples to eat without washing their hands, without following the purity laws. These rules and regulations controlled Jewish life for thousands of years. Instead of answering the Pharisees directly, he turns to the crowds and abrogates all the food laws: he says, enough with these rules and regulations. Jesus gets rid of thousands of years of rules and regulations today. The magnitude of this statement can easily be lost on us. Jesus is saying here that what we do externally (washing our hands and feet) and what we actually eat, is not what defiles us before God. What makes us unworthy to approach God is what comes out of our mouth, which Jesus says comes from the heart. What is our intention, what is in our heart when we say and do things?

The state of a person's heart is much more important than any rules and regulations. Rules and regulations cannot be the ends of religious practices but are meant only to be a means toward religion. Our tradition in The Episcopal Church, our liturgy that can bring such comfort, is not religion in and of itself. These traditions are a way to being religious, not the only way, but are a way toward getting to know God and opening ourselves to God.. When our heart is turned away from God and we act in vile manners, we are defiling ourselves; we are moving ourselves away from God by these actions.

Jesus' actions in the second part of our Gospel today seem to fall into this category of acting inappropriately. We have an insulting and condescending Jesus here. Not a very nice Jesus at all. There are a number of explanations for Jesus' actions given by different theologians, mostly apologetic in tone. I do not buy any of these apologies. If we believe that Jesus was fully human and fully divine, well I think today we are seeing an aspect of Jesus being fully human today. To me this is very bad behavior. Shocking in fact. To call anyone a dog, even if they were ancient enemies of your people who were a hated, indigenous, rural people, is a disturbing thing to hear coming from God's son. This is a woman, kneeling in front of Jesus, begging for help for her ill daughter, and she is treated quite poorly by Jesus. What was in his heart when he said these things?