A homily for the Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 29, 2021
Dt 4:1-2, 6-8, Jas 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27, Mk 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
When we think of gifts, we usually imagine big boxes wrapped in colorful paper tied up with shiny ribbons and a big bow. And as we tear into them, first ripping through the wrapping and then digging through the tissue paper to find the surprises inside, we try to imagine what toys we’ve been dreaming of could be inside.
Unless, of course, the gift is a pony. Then we just try to figure out how Mom and Dad got it into the box.
Regardless of the occasion — birthday, Christmas, First Holy Communion — we expect any gift we receive to be fun, or pretty, or at least something to keep our feet warm in the winter.
We don’t expect gifts to be stone tablets that tell us “No!”
From the time we’re little, we develop our own sense of self by asserting our independence. We tell the authorities in our lives — our moms and dads, our teachers and preachers, the police and firefighters — we tell them, “You’re not the boss of me!” As if we really know better than they do about whatever danger or illness or embarrassment they’re protecting us from.
Yes, we know better than our protectors, despite their years of experience and the wisdom they learned in the School of Hard Knocks.
And, sad to say, all too often we think we know better than God.
In our passage from Deuteronomy today, we hear Moses reminding the Israelites that God’s commandments are for their betterment, for their own good. That those commandments are gifts that no one else on Earth had, at least to that point.
Moses explains to God’s Chosen People that God cared enough about them to establish guides for their lives. Those 10 guides — which Jesus would refine into the Two Great Commandments — have endured thousands of years and kept humanity from becoming extinct, and provided many other benefits.
Such as an eternal life of ultimate joy seeing the radiant face of our Creator.
We also have been chosen by God to be his people, and as chosen daughters and sons of God, we must maintain and improve our relationship with the Almighty.
We must choose to become closer to God. We must choose to do what God demands of good children.
This aspect of choice is a big part of what Jesus was telling the people about the Pharisees, about how the Pharisees clung so dearly to the letter of the law that they ignored the spirit.
Both the spirit of God’s law and God’s spirit.
The Pharisees and their followers, Jesus explained, were simply going through the motions. Every move they made was choreographed. Everything they said was scripted. Every word, every phrase they uttered had to be said just right.
They followed the rules, but why? Because they’ve always done it this way?
How mechanical. How mindless. How “Sir, yes sir!”
So, OK, the Pharisees and their crowd followed the rules to a T, better than anyone else could or would. But did they follow them from the heart?
Jesus says no.
When God gave us rules and laws as gifts, they were and still are among God’s greatest gifts. The laws of biology and math and physics … heck, even the law of gravity all came from God exactly the same way the Ten Commandments did. Every one of these laws, and probably some we haven’t even discovered yet, is designed by the love of God to make life on Earth joyous, sustainable, and a pathway home to Heaven.
So of course it’s in every person’s best interest not to break them. Especially the law of gravity.
But just as God was giving us the gift of laws, God also gave us the gift of free will. God gave us the option to break those laws. Even though, as we just said, it’s in every person’s best interest not to break them.
Hmmm. What was that all about?
Having the freedom to choose means God is challenging us to use our hearts as much as our heads when we do the right thing.
To do it wholeheartedly, to coin a phrase.
We should embrace the spirit of God’s guidance with joy and energy, with a sense of accomplishment and with the knowledge that we’re doing something in God’s name to make the world better.
We shouldn’t be following the choreography out of some fear of God’s wrath if we mess up.
Even in a world that’s continually beset with tragedies and conflicts large and small, even in a world where it seems as if the next struggle is just around the corner, God wants us to be happy.
God planted that joy in our hearts from the moment he created us.
That joy grows when we actively choose to share it, through random acts of kindness, through charity, through work for social justice.
That joy grows in us and in everyone whose lives we touch when we choose to act from the heart, any time of the day, any day of the week, dirty hands and all.
