I am a terrible composter. I have a messy pile of scraps loosely surrounded by chicken wire in my backyard that I call my compost pile, and I don’t really keep track of what I throw into it. I toss in veggie scraps, garden waste, coffee grounds, baked egg shells, random piles of leaves, dried weeds, and basically anything organic that will break down in a relatively short amount of time. When my dad first began composting, he meticulously researched how to do it. He knew the correct ratio of greens to browns – a scientific understanding of how best to maximize the decomposition of your compost by not adding too much of the stuff that takes forever to break down. He regularly turned over his compost, and he even watered it when it needed it. His compost produced gorgeous, rich, dark soil. And none of the veggies he threw in ever started growing again because he had the right heat and decomposition rate to prevent that from happening.

My compost pile, on the other hand, grows random things all the time. I’ve had onions, garlic, potatoes, and squash plants grow out of my compost almost every summer. I don’t do anything with the plants, and they usually die off after I bury them in more kitchen scraps. But, a couple of summers ago, Jeff decided to give the volunteer squash plants a chance at survival. He dug out a couple of sprouts and planted them in a garden box near the alley. The plants began to thrive and take over, and soon, they were producing kinds of squash I had never seen before. One of the plants made some kind of pumpkin/gourd hybrid, and it was so prolific we didn’t have to buy any gourds for decorations that fall. One of the other plants grew what looked like zucchinis, but shorter, fatter, and with thicker skins. They were like little footballs. 

Plants in the squash family happily cross-pollinate with each other. If you grow, say, zucchinis and gourds one year, the plants could cross-pollinate without you knowing it. That year’s harvest would be unaffected. But, the seeds produced in the fruit would not be true zucchini seeds or true gourd seeds–but a strange mixture of both. If you plant those seeds, you end up with what I call “frankensquash” – just like I did with my compost squash. I ended up feeding the zucchini footballs to my chickens all summer, and they were delighted. I used the gourd hybrids as fall decorations. But, neither of them were suitable for people to eat. They weren’t purely what they were supposed to be; they were something different.

As we continue our sermon series through the attributes of Philippians 4:8, we arrive at the fourth attribute Paul encourages us to think about – whatever is pure. When I first realized I was the one who would be preaching on this attribute, I think I groaned out loud. The word “pure” comes with so much baggage and so many traps we can fall into. For those of us who were raised in the late 80s or early 90s, the word “pure” might cause us to think about the purity culture movement, and the teaching that we had to guard our purity with everything we had. I remember sitting at a youth group meeting and being told that if we did not save ourselves for marriage, we would become impure, unfixable, and no one would ever want us. Is that the kind of “purity” Philippians 4:8 is encouraging us to think about?

Or, what about purity as perfection or superiority? I think about the famous play Romeo and Juliet, and the division between the Capulets and the Montagues. They saw each other as impure, as less than, and they forbade any mingling of the families because they looked down on each other, all because of some ancient feud that probably none of them could remember. This story was just part of a play, but it captivates us because it is true to real life. We talk about bad neighborhoods, or “those people,” or look down on others because they aren’t like us. Is this what we are supposed to think about when we think about whatever is pure? 

The word used in Philippians 4:8 that is translated as “pure” is the word hagnos. It is a word that means “clean,” but can also be used to mean “innocent” or “perfect.” It is related to the word hagios that means “holy.” Paul wrote this letter while he was in prison, and it was delivered to the church at Philippi, a church made up of both Jewish and Gentile converts to Christianity. For those who were Jewish, the word “pure” likely would’ve brought up the question of what was clean and unclean according to the Scriptures. And while the Gentiles in the church would not have been as immersed in the theology of clean and unclean things, I imagine they knew well what it meant to be considered unclean. Paul writes to this diverse congregation of believers while he is sitting in a prison cell because of his faith, and he urges them to think about whatever is pure. Is he referring to those laws about clean and unclean things? Is he talking about superiority and perfection, or does he mean something else?

Jesus, too, grew up immersed in the theology of clean and unclean things, and yet, as Jill Duffield writes, “He eats with the wrong people. He heals on the wrong day. He touches the wrong people. The categories of clean and unclean, in and out, approved or forbidden, get murky” (p. 62). Paul, who held tightly earlier in his life to this separation of what is clean and unclean–to the point that he persecuted the early Christian church–had been forced to realize that those clean and unclean categories weren’t always as simple as they seemed. He recognized the movement of the Holy Spirit in Gentiles who had not kept Jewish law, and he pushed the early church to welcome these Gentiles, even though many who had been raised to separate things into clean and unclean categories resisted fiercely. It wouldn’t make sense for Paul, whose heart had been transformed, to suddenly urge people to think about these clean and unclean categories in the old way anymore. Instead, I think he was calling them to something much more profound and inclusive.

Soren Kierkegaard, 19th century theologian, author, and philosopher, wrote a work about purity of heart, and in that written work, he said he believed that purity of heart was when the heart willed only one thing–that which is good, that which is from God. For Kierkegaard, and I believe also for Paul, purity of heart wasn’t so much about being extra careful to avoid unclean things; it was about having a singular focus. Purity is about wanting what God wants with our whole hearts, rather than just part of ourselves.

In our passage for this morning from Matthew 15, Jesus teaches about the rules of cleanliness and what truly defiles a person. He says, “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.” The disciples take him aside and tell him that the Pharisees are offended that he said this. And it makes sense that they would be. The Pharisees were very concerned with keeping the law perfectly. They lived and breathed the rules of what was clean and what was unclean. For Jesus to say that these rules are not what keeps a person pure would have been highly offensive to people who had centered their whole lives on trying to be pure by following these rules.

The disciples could see that the Pharisees were offended by Jesus, and yet, they could not understand what Jesus meant by his teaching. Peter, always the brave one and first to speak up, asks Jesus to explain the teaching to them. Jesus said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.” It’s not about keeping an outward list of dos and don’ts; it’s about having a heart that wants what God wants. What good is outward purity if our hearts don’t match what we see on the outside? What good does it do for us to keep a lengthy list of rules if on the inside we are not in alignment with who God is and what God is doing in the world?

I’m a rule follower. I always have been. My mom often tells people I was the perfect child for the first several years of life because if she said, “No,” I listened and obeyed immediately. Even now, I sometimes find it a struggle to do what I know is right for me if I know someone else is expecting me to do something different. One of the many gifts of getting a little bit older is that you start to care what other people expect a little bit less, which has the potential to free us up to do what’s authentic and right rather than merely what’s expected. That freedom to step away from the crowd is a beautiful gift, but as Christians, it is important that we don’t exchange the pressure to do what other people want for the pressure to do what we want without thinking about what God wants. 

If we want to be people who think about whatever is pure, there are at least two things we need to consider: first, we need to make space to listen for what God wants. Do we regularly check in with God in prayer? Are we in the habit of pausing to ask for guidance from God before we take action? This can be a challenging thing to get in the habit of, especially in a fast-paced world that often expects us to give our answer right now. Part of thinking about whatever is pure is slowing down and releasing our desire to meet those expectations so that we can make sure our heart is in line with God’s. 

If someone asks you to do something and you don’t immediately feel compelled to say “yes,” it’s OK to slow the situation down and say, “I’d like a day or two to think about that.” We might even find that the only pressure there is to answer right away is pressure we are putting on ourselves. But, even if it’s not–even if the person asking us to do something wants an answer right away–there are very few times when we can’t take time to think, pray, and ask God for guidance. As we think about whatever is pure, we take time to consider what God wants and to see if our heart is in alignment with the heart of God.

Another step toward thinking about whatever is pure is a step outside our comfort zones. Is there someone you haven’t yet taken the time to get to know because they run in a different circle from your own? Or, maybe there’s a neighbor you haven’t yet met or said hello to because they’re from a different generation, or because you don’t think you’d possibly have anything in common with them? Thinking about whatever is pure means we work to get our hearts into alignment with God’s, but it also means recognizing the purity–the holiness–of the people God places into our paths. The word “purity” is very closely related to the word for “holy” – and holiness means something set apart by God for a specific purpose.

In the text we read from Genesis this morning, we saw that God created every human being in God’s image, and after creating us, God declared all of creation “very good.” What if, instead of judging a person or deciding that we would never get along with someone who is different from us, we looked at the person and thought “This person is a holy and good creation of God”? Besides, we aren’t like squash. We don’t have to change who we are just because we spend time with people who aren’t exactly like us. We are who we are because God created us that way, and we only become stronger and have deeper life experiences by getting outside of our comfort zones from time to time.  

This week, as you think about whatever is pure, I invite you to make space to check in with your heart and to ask God what God wants. Take a risk and get outside of our comfort zone and say hello to someone new. And, if you’re feeling especially brave, share a little known gift of yours with someone else – a friend or stranger. Or, let someone know a gift you see in them and why you value it. As we do this, we will be transformed from the inside out–our hearts reflecting the heart of God more and more each day. Amen.