Sunday,
August 31, 2003
22nd
Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings:
Deuteronomy 4, 1-2.6-8: The law of Israel
Psalm
Response: 14, 2-5
James
1: 17-18.21-22.27: Reject impurity and evil
Mark
7: 1-8.14-15.21-23: The law of the pure and the impure
In
the first reading we find Moses’ words which prepared the
people of Israel with an understanding of the law that would
guide their lives in the land they were going to possess. The tone of these words is filled with
persuasive elements.
They are an invitation to listen to the law and keep
the commandments in order to live and possess the land.
Through the commandments of the law, God establishes
a direct relationship with the people: no foreign god guides
his followers with his own word. Through obedience to the commandment,
the people draw close to God and establish a direct relationship:
where might you find a nation so great that their gods draw
close to them like Yahweh does?
And where is there a nation so great that it has
norms and commandments as just as this law which I give
you today? TO
keep the law of love is for Israel the only guarantee of
life and abundance.
The
fundamental idea that the second reading transmits to us
is that authentic faith supposes a corresponding lifestyle.
For this reason, the author at the beginning of the
writing makes a call to those who have accepted toe Word
of God, to live it.
At the same time he exhorts us to turn away from
impurity and the excesses of evil, to receive with simplicity
the Word that has the power to save. Finally, this Word of truth with which
God questions all human beings is a word that really works,
it is not mere concepts and theories.
To believe is to make a commitment in behalf of the
marginalized and oppressed, it is to take as one’s own the
cause of the poor which is Jesus’ cause because “true religion
consists in this: to help the orphans and widows in their
needs and not contaminate oneself with the corruption of
this world”.
Mark’s
Gospel text places us among the traditions and customs of
the people of Israel in relation to the laws of cleanliness
and uncleanness that their religious experience that constructed
over time. To
understand why the Jewish people came to see cleanliness
in this way, we have to make an effort to enter into their
mentality, their cultural mind set.
In
the Jewish religion, the law of cleanliness and uncleanness
is a very important matter in the cultural life.
One could not participate in the worship when unclean.
The word “purity” does not have the same content
for the Jews as it has for us. For them, a human being was clean when
he or she had not contaminated themselves even unintentionally
by things prohibited by the law.
For example, to not wash one’s hands, or cups, containers
or trays, to eat pork or rabbit meat, to draw near a woman
in her period or any person with hemorrhages, were activities
or situations that made one unclean, which contaminated
a person for a determined time.
A leper was permanently unclean, the same as those
who had any incurable disease. Anyone who was contaminated by these things
or persons, even inadvertently, had to purify themselves,
normally with water, sometimes offering sacrifices.
Today’s
Gospel tells is that “Jesus’ disciples took food with unclean
hands, that is, without washing them first”.
For this reason, the Pharisees and Teachers of the
law, faithful observers of the Jewish traditions, could
challenge Jesus with the accusation that his “disciples
do not respect the traditions of our elders and eat with
unclean hands”. To attack the Pharisees, Jesus responds
with an allusion to the prophet Isaiah, who struggled in
Israel against a rigid, legalistic and puritan conception
of the law, and denounced the inconsistency of those who
establish a relationship with God solely through worship:
“this people honors me with their lips but their hearts
are far from me”.
The
words of Jesus declare abolished – for the Christians –
this law, because nothing created by God is unclean; God
is not offended because we touch a dead person or because
we have eaten certain foods.
What is unclean is all that premeditatedly comes
out of our hearts and not what we do inadvertently. For Jesus, cleanliness (that which makes
a person clean) is good thoughts, love, solidarity, justice,
service and giving oneself for others, etc., that is, the
opposite of anything that premeditatedly and maliciously
comes out of our hearts.
The
three readings this Sunday allow themselves easily (and
this is not frequent) to be united in one theme or group
of themes. It
is the theme of the law, legalism, the true law and the
true religion.
It
is clear that Jesus’ rejects totally legalism, the exaggerated
weight of the law, the putting the law above love, or above
human beings (the Sabbath is for humans…). It is clear that for Jesus – and for a
legitimate Christianity – the law is a means, not an end,
and as such is it always a limited means, one that you absolutely
cannot make an absolute!
Another
aspect is “Pharisee-ism”. Christianity has developed a biased attitude
toward this word, limiting its meaning to refer to the attitude
of those who demand a strict, and even Puritan, fulfilling
of the law when really they are very far from the law’s
original sense. Jesus clearly disrespects this attitude
of separation or “schizophrenia”.
Another
related theme is that of the essence of the law, the spirit
of the letter of the law. For Jesus the most important is not the
literal fulfillment of precepts, the letter of the law;
what is really important is to fulfill the spirit of the
law, which sometimes may even permit or even demand an exception
or even a non fulfillment of the same. “The letter kills”, or “the law takes
vengeance” some people say.
Because the law is not an absolute, and because it
is a means, therefore it is necessary to discover the finality,
the spirit, the nucleus, the sense of the law.
What we say about laws of means, not ends, can be
extended to the religious ritual practices, the religiosity
of external practices, which also too often have been enthrones
in Catholicism as central, as what really saves.
The text of Saint James in the second reading today,
responds to both this point and the previous one: “true
religion”, says Saint James, consists in visiting the orphans
and widows and being on guard against corruption.
The word that Saint James uses here is «threskeía»,
which normally refers to the cultish precepts, rites and
practices. Saint James tells us that the cultish
rites, precepts and practices are valid are those of committed
fraternal charity and honesty.
This is an affirmation of the “secular” character
of Christian religiosity.
A
post-conciliar book by the theologian Gustave Thils, was
significantly titled “Christianity Without Religion”, and
was not simply a negative criticism, but rather a proposal
that nuclear Christianity is far beyond this anthropological-sociological
format of “religiosity” of rites and cultural practices,
and therefore it is possible and would not be an error to
live a “Christianity without religion”, even though this
will not be the way of the majority even in our time and
our society. A human being that is cultures, critical,
illuminated, and even “post-modern”, is very critical of
all legalisms and religion-isms, of laws and moral precepts
on one hand, and the ritual practices or empty rituals on
the other. The
thesis of Thils comes to the conclusion that this is a natural
historical evolution, and evolution whose path will be followed
by increasing sectors of humanity in the future and this
evolution responds to the nature of things and to the logic
of history and there is nothing bad about it. Those who feel good – and the great masses
are still there, for now … in a religion lived out through
the classic means of law, precepts, rites and practical
rituals … can continue the way they are.
But those whose personal cultural evolution leads
them to feel reasonably uncomfortable with these legal or
ritual mediations, should know that the Biblical message
and the message of Jesus are perfectly compatible with more
human religious expression that is more austere, profound,
beyond the laws, legalisms, fulfillments, rites and religious practices; based indeed
in the spirit of the law and the rides: “to visit the widows
and orphans and keep oneself far from corruption”, to use
the image of Saint James. It is possible to be a Christian and be
one very seriously and profoundly, leaving aside these legalisms
and ritual-isms. Jesus’
message today in the liturgy of the word is a truly liberating,
“good news”.
For
Personal Reflection