"There is One whose heart was not like yours" Wednesday of Oculi 2026

11. March 2026
Wednesday of Oculi
Matthew 15:1–20

This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.

The Pharisees come from Jerusalem. That detail matters. They did not stumble across Jesus. They made a trip. They came with a question already formed, and an answer already decided. Inspectors. Gatekeepers. Men who had devoted their lives to the project of being clean before God.

"Why do Your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread." (Matthew 15:2)

Understand what this is and what it isn't. This is not about hygiene. Nobody is worried about germs. This is about a system — an elaborate, carefully maintained system of rules built up around the law of God. Rules about washing. Rules about what you touch and what touches you. Rules that, if you kept them faithfully, would tell you and everyone watching: I am clean. I am acceptable. God is pleased with me.

You heard a different set of rules read tonight. Thunder. Lightning. The sound of a trumpet. A mountain smoking. And when Israel heard them, they trembled and stood far off. "Let not God speak with us, lest we die." (Exodus 20:19) That is the right response to the law of God in its full force. Terror. The sober knowledge that you cannot survive direct contact with what God actually demands.

The Pharisees have lost that righteous terror. They domesticated the law. Trimmed it to something achievable. Something that leaves them looking good. They have built a sweater — carefully knitted, year by year, stitch by stitch — to keep off the chill of death. To convince themselves and one another: we are not the problem. We have kept our end of the deal. The sweater is never quite warm enough.

You have one too. It doesn't look the same as theirs. It's more modern. More reasonable. You don't tithe your herb garden. But you have your own version of the same project. The list of what you've done and haven't done. The ways you're better than you used to be. The quiet comparisons between yourself and those people over there. The moral accounting you run in your head to arrive at: I am not so bad. God should be reasonably pleased with me.

Then, Jesus pulls at a loose thread. "Why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition?" (Matthew 15:3). He goes straight for the Corban rule. You could declare your money given to God — and thereby excuse yourself from caring for your aging parents. Technically pious. Actually, a way out of something hard and costly. God's clear word — "Honor your father and your mother" (Matthew 15:4) — hollowed out and replaced with something you built. Something more manageable. Something that left you in control.

"Thus you have made the commandment of God of no effect by your tradition." (Matthew 15:6) Made of no effect. Emptied out. What was full of God's authority — drained, and your own juice poured in instead. But Your own juice doesn't get it done.

The heart surgeon cannot operate on himself. He will always stop before he gets deep enough. And so will you. When Jesus says the Pharisees have hollowed out the word of God, He is not only talking about them. He is describing what every man does when left to himself — and what you do. You adjust the terms. You find the exception. You construct the tradition that protects you from the full weight of what God actually says. And then you call it faithfulness.

Then Jesus turns to the crowd. Then, He turns to you.

"Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man." (Matthew 15:11)

The disciples are worried that the Pharisees are offended. Of course, they are offended. Pull at someone's carefully knitted sweater, and they will not thank you for it. We know that offense — when the word of God is spoken plainly to someone who has arranged their life to avoid hearing it plainly. But Jesus is not finished. Peter asks for an explanation. And Jesus — with something that sounds almost like exhaustion — says: "Are you also still without understanding?" (Matthew 15:16)

Are you?

"Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man." (Matthew 15:19–20)

There it is. Not what you eat. Not which rules you have or haven't followed. The heart. Your heart. The source. The well. And the well is poisoned.

Thus, this is not merely a problem of behavior. It is not only that you have done wrong things. It is that you are wrong, corrupted to the root, as the Epistle to the Romans says, without a righteous man among us, not one. What comes out of you: the anger you justify, the contempt you dress up as righteousness, the desires you protect and rename as needs, the prayers that are really negotiations, the words spoken and unspoken that proceed always, always from a heart bent back toward itself — all of it defiles.

No rule fixes this. No tradition cleans it. No careful washing on the outside reaches the source of the filth on the inside. The sweater, however beautifully made, is not righteousness. It is decoration over death.

You have felt this. On certain nights. In certain honest moments. The accounting doesn't balance. The list of good deeds is shorter than you'd like, and what has come out of your mouth and out of your heart is longer and darker than you care to admit. Bones vexed. Soul sore vexed. The question rising: "But Thou, O Lord — how long?" (Psalm 6:3)

That question is not despair. That question is exactly right. It is the only question worth asking when the law has done what it must. Not: how do I fix this? But: Lord — Thou. You. Do something. Because I am brought very low, and I cannot bring myself up. So what is to be done?

There is One whose heart was not like yours. One from whose mouth came no evil thought, no hollow tradition, no Corban-excuse, no self-justifying negotiation. "He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth." (1 Peter 2:22) One who did not hollow out the word of God but filled it full — every thundering syllable of it — in His obedient life, His obedient death. One who stood not far off from the darkness where God was, but entered it. For you.

He bore our sins in His body on the tree. The whole list. Evil thoughts. Murders. Adulteries. Thefts. False witness. Blasphemies. Not His — yours. Mine. He put Himself between that list and the God who will not deal with sin lightly, and He paid what the law demanded. The God who is just justifies the one who has faith in this Jesus.

This is what no tradition of men can produce. This is what no sweater, however carefully knitted, can give you. Baptismal covering in blood. A clean heart. Not yours — His, given to you. And the only right response to that is: "Do Thou for me, O God the Lord, for Thy name's sake: because Thy mercy is good, deliver Thou me." (Psalm 109:21) Not: here is my accounting. Not: here is what I have managed. Simply: do Thou for me. For Thy name's sake. Because Thy mercy is good.

You received this in the water of your Baptism, where the old heart was drowned, and you were brought up alive in Him. You receive it again tonight — in the absolution spoken over you, in the body and blood of the One who has no hollow tradition, only a real body and real blood, given and shed for the forgiveness of the sins that come out of your heart.

What He gives you at this altar is not your achievement. It is His presence. And in His presence — not in your careful rule-keeping, not in your long-labored sweater, but in His presence — is fullness of joy. The path of life is not a path you construct. You could not find it with either unwashed or clean hands. He shows it to you. He is it. And He sets it before you now. Come and receive it.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
St. John Ev. Lutheran Church & School - Sherman Center
Random Lake, Wisconsin