1 September, Trinity 14: Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9, James 1:17-end
& Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Do you remember any of your school rules?
Reminiscing with my sister, we recalled being allowed to go as far as Wathen’s sweet shop; but also being forbidden from eating in the street.
We both remembered going to the fair at lunch time - waltzers, dodgems, the mexican hat - cash zipped into blazer pockets alongside pens, making it back just in time for the bell. Maybe it wasn’t banned, maybe rules were flouted, or maybe it was an accepted tradition: who knows!
We were definitely banned from ‘spinning out on cups of coffee’ in cafes which always seemed like a curious rule at that time as it didn’t seem a likely teenage temptation let alone habit.
Fast Forward 30+ years and that rule has been dropped from the list - replaced by the more ambiguous yet weighty generic of pupils remembering ‘that they are representing the School in public areas’.
That said, working in cafes is now more normative - both socially acceptable on the one hand and an irritation to owners on the other if coffees are ‘spun out’ for hours.
Rules and traditions are both given by communities and also form them. Within schools, they’re designed to maintain discipline and provide structure to underpin an environment where learning can happen.
It’s about more than that: some might be about ideas of etiquette, behaviour or personal development; others about protecting students from harm as part of safeguarding. The values that underpin the wider ethos might be political, social or religious - an overarching vision for human flourishing and fostering the common good.
Our first reading sets statutes and ordinances within the context of establishing a settled community after a period of nomadic life as God’s people trekked through the wilderness. They were to be a covenant community shaped by obedience to the commandments.
The ten commandments reflected a series of right relationships: loving God and loving one’s neighbour as oneself. They offered a framework which set boundaries on acceptable behaviour in worship and community.
Adherence to such teachings were to be a sign to others - who might find their way of life attractive, a means of stability and flourishing; a mark of wisdom and discernment. Their life together was to reflect the nature of God: a Holy One who knows the thoughts of our hearts, beyond our comprehension yet the source of goodness, justice, rest and joy.
Worship of this God - and the distinctive ways of this people - was to be passed down to future generations. Children would be taught these commandments - inhabiting a culture which set out how to show their love of the Holy One in worship and in their behaviour, honouring their obligations to their neighbour.
There is wisdom and discernment in this - inviting us to consider our motivations for doing the ‘right thing’. Is it about compliance or how we feel - or pointing to the kind of God we trust in?
Yet overtime, as the community faced new challenges and influences, those commandments prompted further questions. Fresh guidance was needed - clarification, interpretations, case studies.
All these things were ways of making sure that the holiness of God was honoured; that nothing impure would get in the way. Way of making sure the community was distinct: that food was safe to eat and that relationships were appropriate.
Every community does this. We have our rules which shape our culture and expectations. Every church has its ‘normal’: but we’re also shaped by beliefs and traditions - about God and how we live together.
Today Jesus is challenging his hearers to consider what flows from the heart. Do our attempts to live faithfully tempt us to judge others on externals? It’s easy for us to say ‘thank goodness we’re not like the Pharisees’ but we also have an opportunity to understand them - and in turn appreciate how Jesus’ words might challenge us.
The Pharisees took the call to be a holy nation very seriously. As the community settled into ordered patterns of worship, and sought to maintain a distinctive life, we can understand why the ritual of washing hands (done by the priests serving in the temple) might be extended to ordinary meal times as a way of marking it as sacred.
Those additional traditions of the elders became increasingly important to maintaining their faith and way of life - particularly in exile, when reestablishing community afterwards or under Roman occupation as they then were.
When they saw Jesus’ sitting lightly to some of those things with his disciples they were moved by fear that it was a step towards undermining God’s law itself.
Jesus’ words of reproach in response was perhaps undermining their expertise and seriousness: but rather an invitation to go deeper into. Jesus quotes Isaiah which teases out the distinction between keeping rules externally and neglecting our internal motivations.
‘This people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me’.
The external practices designed to demonstrate wisdom and discernment, to point others to God’s holiness and to be a blessing to others had become such a focus, that the life of the human heart had been neglected.
The focus on the external left some excluded or marginalised - women or foreigners for example. Yet they were those about whom the commandments of God were also concerned. Love of neighbour included the widow, orphan and stranger.
As people of faith we too want that commitment and trust to be reflected in the concrete realities of our lives. Sometimes we might be tempted to limit the scope of God’s grace - to think that some might be more or less deserving of that grace than others.
As Faber’s famous hymn puts it, there is ‘a wideness in God’s mercy’ and a ‘kindness in God’s justice which is more than liberty’.
Faithfulness to God’s ways is about loving God with all that we are - heart, mind, soul and strength - and also loving our neighbour as ourself. Sometimes as Faber continues ‘we make God’s love too narrow / by false limits of our own, / and we magnify its strictness / with a zeal God will not own.’
With the no nonsense pragmatism about the natural processes of digestion, Jesus stresses that nothing from outside of us can defile us. Instead look to our hearts: and the way bitterness or deceit, envy or pride, misdirected desires and selfish intent can take root there. What is in our hearts, can shape our thoughts, attitudes and actions, separating us from God and each other.
Yet this is also good news: because God knows all the secrets of our hearts. In Jesus love divine is known in human flesh - the one who dares to embrace the outcast, raise up the lowly, restore the sick, challenge the powerful. His life was given for all. There is welcome and grace, there is ‘mercy with the Saviour, there is healing in his blood’ as the hymn puts it.
That good news does have a claim on our lives: faithfulness is about attending to our heart and reaching out to others with lives that have been shaped by the radical love of God given for us in Jesus Christ. The breadth of such love is an invitation to rest on that assurance that ‘our lives would be illumined / by the presence of our Lord’.
The letter of James leans into the lessons of such a way of faith and faithfulness: he too contrasts the gifts of grace and acts of love which come from God, and the desires that separate us from earth other, the ways of death rather than life. How can we live as children of God, rather than as those shaped by solely worldly desires?
He talks about the importance of communication - of listening and keeping a cool head; warning against the danger of rising too quickly to anger. Yet at the same time seeking what is justice and good.
How we communicate impacts on how we are heard; how we listen shapes what we say. Allowing space for curiosity about the other or getting to the root of the concern might open up new ways forward. Though sometimes perhaps we have to take a deep breath, walk away, and allow the temperature to go down; or sometimes the mediation of others.
James also stresses the importance of faithful action - or action informed by our faith. He uses the shorthand ‘law of liberty’ for God’s commandments of love.
These should be things that shape our body language - not glimpsing in the mirror and forgetting what we look like - but practising those gestures of kindness, self-control, compassion, patience, generosity and joy.
For James faith and faithfulness is about caring for each other and those who’re vulnerable or marginalised: remembering that we are not just representing Jesus in the personal and public areas of our life; we are members of Christ's body called, by the power of the Spirit, to be a living sign of God’s ways. Amen.
© Julie Gittoes 2024
