The Rules for Using Rules
by Fr. David M. Knight

September 1, 2024
Twenty-Second Sunday of the Year
Lectionary 125
Dt 4:1-2, 6-8/Jas 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27/Mk 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Wisdom and Intelligence
Deuteronomy 4:1-8 explains the Gloria’s transition from “Lord God” to “heavenly King.” When God gave laws to Israel, he came down from his lofty status as “Lord God” to participate in human history as King. “For what great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the Lord, our God, is to us?” In the next phrase the Gloria celebrates the even greater intimacy we now have with God as Father.
Moses emphasizes how “just,” “wise” and “intelligent” God’s laws are and make us appear to be if we keep them. If we thought about this more, asking why God gives these commands, and what life would be like if everyone did as he says, we might appreciate them enough to obey them!
Moses tells us to keep God’s laws integrally: Don’t add or subtract, water them down or make them say more than they do. It is just as false to think you are obliged to do more as to make excuses for doing less. Be as strict with yourself as you want, voluntarily, but don’t blame God for it. Puritans are just as disconnected from God as libertines.
Being Connected
James 1:17-27 makes the point that it is not laws we obey, but God. Laws can be idols if we forget that “every worthwhile gift, every generous benefit comes from above, descending from the Father....” Laws that are not at this moment expressing God’s mind and heart and will are as useless as hands on a stopped clock. Obedience to God is life responding to Life for the sake of living more fully.
Break the living link to God, and you are left with the dead and deadening “literal observance” of the Pharisees who flourish in every age. God “wills to bring us to birth with a word spoken in truth,” a word conscious of the actual circumstances in which it is spoken. The true word of God is not the same as dead words written on a page. The word of God we follow is the living Word, whose “ life was the light of all people;” the Word who “became flesh and lived among us,” and is still living among us and within us that we might “ see his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” The only way to truly “hear” God’s word, or the words of his law, is to listen through them to the living Word speaking in us.
But his words must be “made flesh” in actions. “Act on this word. If all you do is listen, you are deceiving yourselves.”
What counts
In Mark 7:1-23 Jesus blasts those who put all their focus on scrupulously keeping little rules about things that aren’t very important, and because of this think they are religious. But they don’t even think about the big things.
These are the people in parishes who criticize every departure from minor liturgical rules, but have never read the Vatican II declaration on liturgy; or, if they have, ignore completely the aim of the whole document, which is to bring about “full, conscious, active participation” in the Mass. They don’t sing, sit up front together as a body, or really unite themselves intensely to the words of the Eucharistic Prayer; much less foster “communion in the Holy Spirit” by interaction with others.
Another example: those who claim to be “faithful to the magisterium”—who unceasingly broadcast the Vatican position on a few selected doctrines—but do not read, accept or practice anything Vatican II said about the reform of the Church or anything the popes have written about social justice. They reduce Christian fidelity to living out “mere human precepts.” These are the divine ideals of God stripped of mystery, “dumbed down,” dried out and served up as “instant Christianity” in the form of a few concrete observances that don’t require live faith, hope or love.
Jesus here is calling for two reforms. The first is to see all the laws of God as calling for a conversion of heart prior to behavior. Just to “do” what the law says is not Christian obedience. What God wants—and offers—is union of mind and will and heart with him.
The second is to live out in action, not just the limited demands that can be spelled out in rules, but the deep, radical principles of the new value system Jesus teaches. These are too profound and all-embracing to be spelled out in concrete rules. When the heart sees, the will reacts unpredictably. To effect change.
Insight: How do you see God’s laws now? Are they bottled water or a spring within you?
Initiative: Make a study of all the laws and rules you keep. Study with mind and heart.
Reflections brought to you by the Immersed in Christ Ministry

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