Aug-29 Liturgical Study Twenty-second Sunday

 

Twenty-second Sunday



  • Laws are made to preserve and protect what we behold to be valuable and sacred

  • The 613 mitzvot or laws of the Torah are all derived from the 5 books of the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy). According to the Talmud (meaning a study of the Torah published around the year 200 CE by Rabbi Judah the Patriarch), they can be characterized as 365 prohibitions (don’ts) and 248 prescriptions (do’s) covering opinions (ideas), acts, virtues (traces of character) and speech. 

  • Jesus also says it's not the rituals that draw you closer to God but what comes from within (the heart). Nothing from outside can defile a person, it is the evil from the heart that takes one away from God.

  • Jesus clears away the rituals and gives one overarching commandment: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself."



1st reading - Deuteronomy 4:1-2,6-8

The book of Deuteronomy (from the Greek “deuteronomios”, literally, “second law”) consists of a series of speeches given by Moses between 1250-1200BC to the generation of Israelites who are about to enter into the Promised Land.

Just as Yahweh is life-giving, so too are his laws. If we keep his laws then we remain close to God.

Moses explains that nothing is to be added to, or taken away from these commands. The law shares God’s attributes of completeness and wholeness.

In the missing verses 3-5, Moses reminds them that those who deserted Yahweh in favour of the Moabite God Baal of Peor were destroyed whilst those who remained true to Yahweh survived.


Psalm 15


Psalm of David meditates over the character of the person who lives in the presence of God – who walks in close fellowship with God because the heart, the mind, and the life are all in step with the heart, mind, and life of God. The last verse is very curious: The idea of lending money with interest has a clear cultural reference within Judaism (it was legal for a Jew to charge interest to foreigners but not to fellow Jews), yet this verse doesn’t seem to make the distinction to whom it is lent.  It is better to give to others with no strings attached.



2nd Reading - James 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27


James the Just was the half-brother of Jesus (Matthew 13:55) who saw the resurrected Christ before the Apostles (1 Corinthians 15:7). As a result he followed Jesus with great devotion. An early history of the church says that James was such a man of prayer that his knees had large and thick calluses, making them look like the knees of a camel. It also says that James was martyred in Jerusalem by being pushed from a high point of the temple. Yet the fall did not kill him, and on the ground, he was beaten to death, even as he prayed for his attackers.



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


The Pharisees preserved their religious and national identity through Torah law practices and traditions associated with food laws, hand washing, and Sabbath-keeping. Jesus does not criticise the laws of Torah which are God-given but instead focuses on man-made traditions that were followed to comply with the Torah. 


Often these traditions were contrary to the Torah (In the missing chapters of Mark 7:9-13 Jesus talks about the tradition of CORBAN which allows Jews to bequeath their inheritance to the Temple in violation of the commandment that says one should honour your father and mother, including providing financial support to ageing parents.) 


Jesus declared that the people of God are not set apart by particular traditions or ethnicity, but by a purity that emanates from the heart, manifested by love for others. He thereby opens the doors of salvation to Gentiles. In the next chapter of Mark, Jesus travels to Gentile lands to perform miracles and spread the Gospel.


The church today is similarly tempted to ignore it's core ministry—word and sacrament—and focus instead on tradition.


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