Year B Proper 17 Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9 Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

“So now, Israel, give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe, so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you.

It is the last step of a long and arduous journey. The Promised Land is in sight, but first, God lays down the ground rules.

You must neither add anything to what I command you nor take away anything from it. You must observe it diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples.

Sounds simple, but it isn’t easy. We know this, because, while all along God has been good to the Children of Israel, and clear about Divine Law, the Laws have been broken. On their way to the Promised Land, many Israelites drifted from the path and followed the Baal of Peor, a pagan god of the land of Moab. Rather than using wisdom and discernment, they chose to ignore the Truth, and went astray. But why?

Why would a people who have been led from Egypt and promised so much by God through Moses fall into the debauchery of the pagans?

We’ve all heard this story so many times we have no trouble coming up with the answer. They broke their covenant with God, a covenant they found sometimes difficult to honour, in order to do something pleasurable, and easy. They were swayed by the attitudes and practices of Baal worship, were distracted from the Truth by the superficial, and not only that, the Baal worship was a lot of fun on many wicked levels.

If we’re honest, we can relate to getting distracted from our faith. The secular world has pushed into our lives in ways we sometimes feel we cannot control. There are undoubtedly a number of us who, for example, have skipped Sunday worship for a child’s sporting event, a party, a trip – you can come up with a list. We like what people like – the comfortable, the fun, family gatherings, interesting journey’s, and we’re good a rationalizing why they take precedence over keeping the Sabbath holy.

The Children of Israel took things a step further than we sometimes do. They totally abandoned their faith, and became involved in a socially endorsed religion. It was popular. Everyone was doing it. Why not? For their folly, God wiped them out. Only those who remained steadfast were spared.

Those who remain are cautioned to have a care, “watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children's children.”

“Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them.”

We all know people like this, and at times, we may even be people like this. The Pharisees do not approve of Jesus, His teachings, His followers, and so on…. Needless to say, they keep a watchful eye on what is done by both Jesus and His disciples. We’ve grown accustomed to hearing about the many ways they try to argue with Jesus, and the criticisms they level at His followers. The Pharisees are looking for any way they can find fault, and while we’re accustomed to hearing about them, we might still ask, who are these people?

The Pharisees are descended from the long ago Israelites, those people who were told to watch closely, to not forget what they have seen, and to make them known to your children and your children's children. They are good at remembering the ways and warnings of the past, and at keeping the rules. To us they appear antagonistic, and they annoyed and no doubt frustrated Jesus. However, among the Jews of Jesus’ day, they were the most faithful. Their religious system was designed to release the worship of the true God from the confines of the Temple and make it more accessible to all people in their daily lives.

Usually, with the best of intentions, they applied the Law to every aspect of life, and most of all, they were scrupulous about honoring the food which they received from God. God had brought them to a land flowing with milk and honey, and they gratefully took to heart what the Lord commanded them to do in return.

However, there is a delicate balance between practices that shore up our ability to engage God faithfully and practices that tend more to simply make us feel safe or in charge or special. The Pharisees got caught there in our Gospel this morning. There was simply more to being faithful than hand washing, but the fear, anger and perhaps genuine angst in their hearts betrayed them.

How often does this happen to us? We all like to feel special, like we know better than others, that we have the “right” answer when others do not. We will “correct” the faults of our family, friends, coworkers, perhaps not even realizing how we come across – as arrogant or smug or self-righteous. Even in church we will sometimes “know better” than everyone else.

The Pharisees meant to fulfill Jeremiah's prophecy, “give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe, so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you,” but Jesus points out they are instead fulfilling Isaiah's prophecy: "This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines."

Thus when ‘the Pharisees and the scribes asked Jesus, ‘Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?’ Jesus responds to their seemingly blameless criticism, “You abandon the commandments of God,” and hold to human tradition.” “You have,” He is telling them, “become distracted from what matters to God, and become absorbed in what matters to you.”

The trouble for the Pharisees was that their scrupulosity about observing the Law, and the way doing that made them feel powerful and “special”, led them to depend, not upon God, but on their own ability to channel their lives into certain predictable routines. Though they began with the best of intentions, they ended up trying to do God’s work, not as God wished for them too, but in their own way. This is the sin of pride.

Jesus quotes Isiah as a caution to His listeners and to us, “in vain do they worship [God], teaching human precepts as doctrines.”

And that’s a pitfall into which we all sometimes fall. It is the temptation that attacks each of us, to do God’s work in our own way, to interpret God’s will according to our own standards, to rationalize and excuse ourselves when we do those “little sins” – well – because they’re popular, or pleasurable, or just - everyone is doing it. Falling into temptation is human, combating it requires that we pay attention and do our job as Jesus’ has commanded us. Do our job as His followers and as His friends.

Mother Teresa once offered a way of doing things that can help us make sure that we are doing that which is most pleasing to God. That we are acting with hearts filled with Love.

Each time we begin a new task, a new venture, make a plan, we need to ask ourselves, is this something of which Jesus would approve? Every work we do is one we need to be doing with Jesus approval. And then we need to be able to say that what we are doing, we are doing for Jesus, that we are doing it with selfless love. Then comes the reminder that whatever we are doing with Jesus, and for Jesus, we are also doing to Jesus. If what we are doing is not something we would do with, for, and to Jesus, then it is time to stop.

“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. It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come.”

Let us pray:

O God, you have bound us together in a common life. Help us, in the midst of our struggles for wisdom, discernment and truth, to always seek You and Your Will, and to embrace one another in love, working together with mutual forbearance and respect; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.