16
Jesus replied, "You too? Are you being willfully stupid?
17
Don't you know that anything that is swallowed works its way through the intestines and is finally defecated?
18
But what comes out of the mouth gets its start in the heart.
19
It's from the heart that we vomit up evil arguments, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, lies, and cussing.
20
That's what pollutes. Eating or not eating certain foods, washing or not washing your hands - that's neither here nor there." Healing the People
21
From there Jesus took a trip to Tyre and Sidon.
22
They had hardly arrived when a Canaanite woman came down from the hills and pleaded, "Mercy, Master, Son of David! My daughter is cruelly afflicted by an evil spirit."
23
Jesus ignored her. The disciples came and complained, "Now she's bothering us. Would you please take care of her? She's driving us crazy."
24
Jesus refused, telling them, "I've got my hands full dealing with the lost sheep of Israel."
25
Then the woman came back to Jesus, went to her knees, and begged. "Master, help me."
26
He said, "It's not right to take bread out of children's mouths and throw it to dogs."
27
She was quick: "You're right, Master, but beggar dogs do get scraps from the master's table."
28
Jesus gave in. "Oh, woman, your faith is something else. What you want is what you get!" Right then her daughter became well.
29
After Jesus returned, he walked along Lake Galilee and then climbed a mountain and took his place, ready to receive visitors.
30
They came, tons of them, bringing along the paraplegic, the blind, the maimed, the mute - all sorts of people in need - and more or less threw them down at Jesus' feet to see what he would do with them. He healed them.
31
When the people saw the mutes speaking, the maimed healthy, the paraplegics walking around, the blind looking around, they were astonished and let everyone know that God was blazingly alive among them.
32
But Jesus wasn't finished with them. He called his disciples and said, "I hurt for these people. For three days now they've been with me, and now they have nothing to eat. I can't send them away without a meal - they'd probably collapse on the road."
33
His disciples said, "But where in this deserted place are you going to dig up enough food for a meal?"