The 22nd Sunday of Ordinary time.
Today is Sunday the 29 August, beginning the 22nd week of Ordinary Time.
Salt of the Sound sing, ‘Your Ways’.
Today’s reading is from the Gospel of Mark.
Mark 7:1-8,14-15,21-23
Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?’ He said to them, ‘Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,
“This people honours me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.”
You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.’
Then he called the crowd again and said to them, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.’ For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.’
What strikes you about this reading? How do you notice yourself responding to this scene about rules and doctrines? What stirs in you?
In the world around you, where do you see people “teaching human precepts as doctrines”? Where do you see God’s commandments being neglected in favour of ‘human traditions’?
Jesus takes the Pharisees’ notion of ‘defilement’ and turns it inside out. Instead of it being a word you might use self-righteously to mean being ‘sullied’ by unholy people and unholy things around me, it becomes a check on myself, a warning not to defile yourself by allowing evil to enter the world through you. How do you react to that warning?
As you listen to the reading once more, remember that you are a temple of the Holy Spirit, that God dwells in you. What is Jesus telling you about what goes into and what comes out of that temple?
What feelings has hearing these challenging words of Jesus stirred up in you? Do you feel angry? Challenged? Uncomfortable? Uncertain? Confused? Whatever your thoughts and feelings are, bring them before the Lord now, speaking to him, and listening to him, in complete honesty and openness.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.