Year B

Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

The Joyful Law of God

Martin Luther once said, “The bible is alive, it speaks to me, it has feet, it runs after me, it has hands, it lays hold on me.” Today all our texts are ones that run after us, have hands, and lay hold on us. They can inform our lives and ground us in what God has given us and requires of us. The God portrayed in the Hebrew Scriptures and in the life of Jesus are extraordinary because in them we get a glimpse of who God is and the truth we need to know. They are records of people struggling to understand how God deals with them and what God requires of them. We might say that the Ten Commandments and the greatest commandment found in the scriptures are the practice manual for living a full spiritually healthy life.

Only daily practice will tone the muscles, fill the lungs and secure the balance so that we can be spiritually healthy. This is wisdom, to live the gift of life to its fullness from God. For the Israelites the Law or the Ten Commandments was the practice manual for forming habits which would make possible their freedom to live a full spiritually healthy life. In our OT text today, we hear the farewell address of Moses to his people and the prologue to the Deuteronomic law given to the Israelites by the Lord God. Here Moses is telling the people of their need to live their lives in accord with the Commandments that they have been taught and that they are not to alter the law in any manner; it is holy, because it has come to them from God.

The name “Deuteronomy” means “the second pronouncement of the Law, for the Ten Commandments first appear in the book of Exodus, and then again in Deuteronomy. The people are not to add to the law nor subtract anything from it; it must be kept intact and obeyed by the people of God for their present and future welfare, and for their happiness which God is providing. God wants them to realize that theirs is a special privilege, that they have a unique kind of law; a divinely-ordered law, not a law conceived and carried out by human beings. They are to appreciate and respect this privilege and Moses reminds them of this as he asks “What great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is to us?

The laws of humans may be altered, even discarded, but the law of God shows God’s love for humanity and is perfect and, as such it must be the discipline by which they live their lives and make known to their children and their children’s children. Many, years later, in the centuries before the Christian era, a sect of Judaism called the Pharisees, the most powerful religious group among the Hebrews, who in the end actually plotted Jesus’ death, they developed a set of regulations or practices intended to be a “fence around the law.” As the world’s conditions changed there was a need to apply the laws to new situations. So the Pharisees set out modifications, changes to the law as added disciplines to refine the skills for living. But in many cases, the doing or the technique, the adherence to human traditions became more important than the obedience to God’s law.

And in the gospel today, Jesus’ disciples confront just such a situation: the washing of hands becomes more important than the inner cleanliness it signifies. The disciples by not obeying the detailed rules and laws of religious ceremonial handwashing had failed to carry out what had become the all-important externals of religious policy and procedure which had nothing to do with obeying the will of God and this became a faith hindering problem. The people’s practice of faith had become no longer based on living the commandments of loving God and loving their neighbor. It had become a complicated nightmare of trying to follow thousands of trivial traditions and people actually believed this was the way of following God’s will.

True, the disciples may have been eating with defiled hands, but as Jesus pointed out the religious leaders were living with defiled hearts. Jesus tells them exactly how it is, using Isaiah’s words, “This people honors me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.” The heart was thought to be the center of one’s will and decision-making abilities, so to turn one’s heart away from God was a grievous sin and pointed to a hardness of heart revealing a lack of compassion toward others. In these and other verses, Jesus urges us to examine our own defiled hearts rather than our dirty hands. The problem that Isaiah and Jesus identified in people thousands of years ago remains the same problem we have today.

We hold to traditions and rules that at times prevent us from being about and doing the very thing God calls us to do. It is so easy to be focused on ritual practice because following the commandments of God let’s face it can be very hard. Jesus makes it clear what’s most important if we are to have a good relationship with God and others. Change is needed and it must take place in the deepest part of our hearts. This is where the source of our spirituality lies and our relationship to God, which is not a matter of following a list of do’s and don’ts; it’s a matter of following God’s Spirit.

Now, this may sound simple but living life through the spirit, putting God first in our hearts, living a life based on the commandments of God, is far beyond our own capacities. Therefore James reminds us today that it is God who nurtures us, gives us gifts, and provides direction for our lives in God’s rule of life which is to love God with all our hearts, with everything we are and have and to love our neighbor as we do ourselves. We find that by following God’s rules, specifically the greatest commandment, we find wholeness and integrity.

James was struggling with a church community that had things out of order and in doing so had invited disaster into their midst. Therefore he tells them, “You must understand this, my beloved, let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.” We are called to restrain anything that might corrupt God’s perfect creation. It is of no value for us he says, to claim that we have heard God’s word unless we have become doers of that word, and have decided to live our lives by it. “Those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, he says, by being not hearers who forget but doers who act…they will be blessed in their doing.”

God who gives us life also gave us the law, the commandments and Jesus summed up the 10 commandments with the greatest commandment and insists we practice it every day. The law is indeed part of the gift of life. The true purpose of the law as Jesus pointed out is to liberate us so that we become capable of genuine spiritually healthy living. Only daily practice will tone the muscles, fill the lungs and secure the balance so that we can experience this joy. In this is wisdom, to live the gift of life to its fullness from God. As we practice being doers and not just hearers of the word, as we practice the discipline of the law to love God and neighbor, we will become free to live joyfully, we will become free to reflect God’s intentions for all humanity. This is the good news that speaks to us, that runs after us, to lay hold on you and me.”