22nd Sunday 2024
Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8; James 1:17-18, 21-22, 2; Mark 7:1-23
Many moons ago, standing with a group of Year 10s (4th Years in old money) at Castlerigg Stone Circle, I commented to one lad “The Bee-Gees had a photograph taken here for an LP cover”. His subsequent question took me by surprise, as he asked not, as I had expected, “Who are the Bee-Gees?”, but “What is an LP cover?”
You, I assume, know what an LP cover is—perhaps I should have said “album cover”—and most of you will remember the Bee-Gees. They were three of the Gibb brothers, Anglo-Australians, who burst onto the musical scene in 1967 with the song “Massachusetts” and who continued, despite the death of Maurice Gibb until a second death, that of young brother Robin, around a dozen years ago.
Today’s readings put me in mind of a song of theirs: “How deep is your love?” All three readings raise that question for us. Moses, in entrusting the Law to the people of Israel, commends it as a demonstration of God’s closeness to them. “Indeed,” he asks “what great nation is there that has its gods so near as the Lord our God is to us whenever we call to Him?”
In other words, the Law is a gift from God, intended to express God’s love for His people, and to draw that people closer to Him. It must therefore take root in their hearts. It is not to be a collection of arbitrary rules to be observed for their own sake, but an expression of mutual love between God and His people. It will show the pagan nations how close God is to Israel, but only if the people strive to be close to Him, assisted by the Law, which must always be a means to an end, not an end in itself. The question which Moses implicitly puts to the people in confiding the Law to them is “How deep is your love?”
How are the people to answer that question? St. James points the way to an answer. They must have the Law, and the subsequent words of Jesus “planted in them”: the original Greek word means implanted by nature. In other words, it must be part of their, and our, being—something as natural to us as breathing—and it must lead us to action. “You must do what the word tells you, and not just listen to it” says James.
He goes on to give an example of a response to the word, a response which we can give only if God’s word has taken root deeply within us. “Pure unspoilt religion in the sight of God our Father is this: coming to the help of orphans and widows in their need and keeping oneself uncontaminated by the world.”
What happens though, if the Law and the rules generally, instead of being a means of drawing us closer to God, and expressing the mutual love between God and ourselves, become an end in themselves? We see that in the Gospel, where the scribes and the Pharisees, instead of opening their hearts and minds to the presence of Jesus, focus on finding fault, on nitpicking. “Why do your disciples not respect the tradition of the elders?”
How often do you or I nitpick? How often do I look for an opportunity to criticise the little things that people do or say, instead of recognising the good things, and reaching out in love? I remember a teacher at Our Lady’s saying to me “If some people on the staff realised what some of these pupils have to go through in their everyday lives, they would marvel that they ever make it to school at all, rather than complain if they occasionally step out of line”.
There is another danger, namely of seeing the rules as the maximum to which we aspire, rather than as a foundation for deepening our relationship with God. I have, I suspect, told you before of an experience in a two priest parish, where I went on an errand while the parish priest was saying the evening Mass, but timed my return to be able to greet the people as they left the church at the end of Mass.
As I approached the church on my way back, I was taken aback to see people already leaving, and assumed that I had mistimed my return. Not so: they were living by the old rule that to “fulfil the Sunday obligation” we had to be present for “the offertory, the Consecration, and the priest’s communion”. The priest had received communion, so they were off, having fulfilled the obligation. How deep was their love? How deep is my love? How deep is your love?
