A somewhat feisty pastor gave a very brief homily on today’s Gospel. It
consisted of only three short statements: First, fifty million people on
this planet go hungry every day. Second, most of you don’t give a damn.
Third, more of you are upset that I said “damn” in church than that
fifty million people are starving!
Happily, I can say with some confidence that
you are not among the upset ones! But maybe I got your attention, and it
does raise a worthwhile point. It’s about perspective, and we can all
lose perspective at times: lose sight of what is important and what is
not, get caught up in things that are fairly insignificant in the grand
scheme of things.
Today’s readings deal with such things: with
law and things that may look like law but really aren’t. Or put it this
way: they deal with God’s Law and it can get distorted. The reading from
Deuteronomy puts Moses, the great Lawgiver, front and center. He reminds
the people that God’s Law was a great gift to them - the very foundation
of the Covenant – and therefore, a holy thing, a sacred thing, a gift,
not a burden. The Law was the people’s part of the bargain in the
reciprocal relationship of love that was God’s covenant with Israel.
That’s why Moses speaks of the Law in such positive terms: in terms of
life – a full and rich life - and about how close God is to the people.
No other nation, he reminds them, has statutes and decrees as just and
lifegiving as theirs.
So, there we have law at it best. A gift from
God, an invitation to freedom not a shackle or a burden or a drag, but
an invitation – even an enticement - to walk in love, love of God and
love of neighbor.
In his exchange with the Scribes and Pharisees
in the gospel, Jesus tries to awaken them to this vision of the Law. The
Scribes and Pharisees, at their best, were God-fearing teachers who
revered the Law and observed it down to the last letter. But so absorbed
were they with the Law and their interpretations of it that they often
confused it with things that were not part of the Law at all: traditions
that no doubt had some value and reason for being, but were merely that:
human traditions – rituals and practices that too often took on an
importance they didn’t deserve.
Today’s exchange between Jesus and the Scribes
and Pharisees shows just how wide of the mark they could get. By
criticizing Jesus and his disciples for not observing human traditions
like the ritual washing of hands before meals, they completely
overlooked more important things. The hand-washing had its importance,
of course, but was entirely secondary to the far more important things
that Jesus and his disciples were doing – things like casting out
demons, caring for the poor, and healing the sick.
And Jesus spared no words in telling them that
God and people are always more important than even the most hallowed of
traditions. “Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites,” he said,
“when he wrote, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts
are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human
precepts.’”
In the second reading, James goes right to the
heart of this, right to the heart of true religion. “Religion that is
pure and undefiled before God…is this: to care for orphans and widows in
their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”
Now, let me offer an example of how the
legalist mentality can infect us. I think of the hue and cry Pope
Francis got a few years ago when he issued his ground-breaking
encyclical, Amoris Laetitia, (“The Joy of Love”). The encyclical sets
forth in a strong and compelling manner the Church’s teaching about
marriage in all its beauty. In one section of the letter, the Pope
opened up a path whereby some people, for whom the traditional marriage
annulment process was unavailable or impossible, might be able to return
to the sacraments after resolving the matter in confession - the
Sacrament of Reconciliation. As a pastor, Pope Francis was aware
that
there are cases where such an approach is appropriate and even
necessary. But this pastoral approach was too much for some legalists.
They were convinced that the Pope was violating Church teaching on
marriage. They even accused him of heresy, thereby – to my way of
thinking - lining themselves up with the Scribes and the Pharisees who
made life so difficult for Jesus.
How well Jesus would have understood this. Or,
I should say, how well Jesus does understand it. So much of his ministry
was spent in dealing with small-minded heresy hunters - “doctors of the
Law,” he calls them - people who not only honored traditions but were
trapped by them, people who turned human precepts into dogmas.
My
friends, the question before us today and every day is: what is really
important and what is less so, when it comes to our faith? What comes
first - human precepts and traditions, or God’s liberating Law of love,
and God’s holy people?
Our answer must always be God’s Law of love,
and God’s holy people!
Father Michael G. Ryan
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