NOTES for Mat 15:10-14

Today we perhaps do not understand very well what defilement is. In the language of Scripture, a defiled person is someone who has become ritually unclean, so that he cannot enter the temple until he has performed a sufficiently long and troublesome ritual of purification. The inability to enter the temple means being cut off from communion with God and with people, failing to fulfill God's commandments and, accordingly, inevitable punishment. Therefore the Jews were so afraid of ritual uncleanness, and they had to be very careful not to touch anything "unclean" or eat anything "unclean." Imagine such a life, constantly looking over one's shoulder, and you will understand that Jesus truly brings liberation to a person from dependence on the external world. But separation from God is nevertheless possible; it is connected with sin, with the sinful state of a person's heart, and this state in turn determines how we communicate, how we speak. "What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart," says Jesus (Matt. 15:18). This means we need to watch not what is around us, but what is within us, and how it shows itself in our words, in our communication with one another; otherwise we too cannot enter the temple (cf. Matt. 5:23-24).