Sunday Gospel Reflection, September 2, 2018: Be doers of the word and not hearers only...

 Be doers of the word, and not hearers only… 

What use are all these rules and commandments? 

   Communal life has always involved rules.  In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses enjoins the people to hear the statutes and decrees which I am teaching you to observe, and the people must listen not only with their heads but with their hearts, so they can give evidence of their wisdom and intelligence to the nations.  In essence, Moses is asking the people of Israel to reconsider how they live and why.  Psalm 15 enumerates the conduct necessary for one who would like to live in the presence of the Lord, that is, one who is fully open to living according to the God’s Word:  they must do justice, the psalmist tells them.  In both cases, a consideration of society’s rules challenges the people to step beyond what their heads can understand to absorb what their hearts intuit.  Taking in God’s Word means opening to the transformation that God’s word works in us, and living accordingly.

   In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus will challenge the Jewish authorities to reconsider the basis for the many, many rules they have established to govern daily life.  When they ask Jesus, Why do your disciples eat a meal with unclean hands? Jesus responds with a clear understanding of God’s commandment and human tradition’s reinterpretation of that commandment:  This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.  In slavish attention to rules without any attention to the meaning behind those rules, the people have lost their connection to God; they are too caught up in tangibles that don’t lead them beyond the surface.  The Word of God, Jesus is saying, must touch the core of our very being, must change us – but it can only do so if we are open to it, if we hear it with our hearts.  And if that Word does change us, the fruits can be infinite, as we will naturally follow James’ advice and be doers of the Word and not hearers only. 

   Rules are indeed necessary to our daily life, but if we only understand them at their literal level, hearing with our heads and not our hearts, we are missing out on that perfect gift that ours, the transformation that God wills for us, and that will ultimately effect salvation for all.

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.

Image source:  www.wordle.net

Sunday Gospel Reflection, September 6, 2015: Immediately the man's ears were opened...

Immediately the man's ears were opened…  

How has God restored order and healed the brokenness in your life?  

In Sunday's reading from Isaiah, God reassures those whose hearts are frightened because of the chaos resulting from human transgression, illness, infirmity, and environmental destruction.  In its place, God proposes a new order, an order in which the eyes of the blind are opened, the ears of the deaf are cleared.  Even the landscape is restored:  Streams will burst forth in the desert, and rivers in the steppe.  Psalm 146 adds justice for the marginalized to this list:  food for the hungry and freedom from oppression for those who are enslaved. Only God can restore order, transform our existence, renew our lives -- and we are called to praise and thanksgiving:  Praise the Lord, my soul!

Jesus, God incarnate, is similarly concerned with restoring order, touching the lives of the marginalized so as to bring them back to community, setting things right within the context of the social fabric.  In Mark's Gospel, his healing of the deaf man is intimate and personal:  Jesus puts his finger into the man's ears, spits and touches his tongue, groans, and says Ephphatha, Be opened.  Reaching into this man's existence, Jesus is fully present to him, entering into his brokenness, operating radical change, drawing him back into a just existence in community, showing no partiality, as James exhorts in his letter, and as we, too, are called to do.  God's order must be our order; God's justice must be our justice; God heals our brokenness so that we might, in turn, bring that healing to others.

How might you help to restore order and heal brokenness today?

This post was based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class.

Image source:  Wordle

Sunday Gospel Reflection, August 30, 2015: In vain do they worship...

In vain do they worship...  

Is religion just about following a bunch of rules?  

The Book of Deuteronomy, from which this Sunday's first reading is taken, is primarily concerned with Jewish rituals and the proper rules for celebrating them. When Moses teaches the people to observe a set of statutes and decrees, that list is meant to define them communally, as a people, an identity derived first and foremost from their relationship with God.  Psalm 15 names some of these rules:  the people of Israel are called to walk blamelessly, to embrace the truth rather than slander, to harm or reproach no one… The list is extensive, detailed; more importantly, it is other-centered, promoting a justice that looks always to the needs of our fellow human beings.

By Jesus' time, the law has atrophied into a set of rules that are no longer just or life-giving.  Participating in law of God was meant to bind people to the love of God and the love of other, Jesus tells the hypocritical Pharisees and scribes in Mark's Gospel, whereas their proliferation of human laws tends to generate only ritualistic motions:  in vain do they worship, Jesus says.  Faith is not something we can just do ritualistically; we have to allow it to grow, to transform us; it is ongoing, an evolving process.  And it requires our active participation, starting from a place of other-centered humility.  As the Letter of James notes:  Humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you.  Be doers of the word, and not hearers only.  Care for orphans and widows. 

If religion is just about following a bunch of rules, if it is a practice that does not transform our relationship with others, then it is useless and empty.  But if we allow ourselves to be recreated by the Word, we can be channels through which God's love can come into the world, binding us to others and to God in the true etymological sense of the word religare… not by laws or rules, but through love, the greatest law of all.

This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class.

Image source:  Wordle