15th Sunday after Pentecost

Text: Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23; James 1: 17-27
Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

I’d like to begin with a lesson from history. Growing up in Puerto Rico, if you paid attention to history class, we learned of the conquest of the Americas by the Spaniards, and we give special attention to a man named Bartolomé de las Casas. Las Casas was a Spanish priest of the Dominican Order, and he was the most vocal opponent of how the Spaniards treated the indigenous populations. He came to witness how all these faithful Christians acted like wolves among the sheep. He described a horrendous barbarity, how these conquistadores that came under the sign of the cross, oppressed, exploited, and killed without mercy. So much so, the indigenous populations of the Caribbean islands were almost wiped out. Las Casas had to engage in a godly challenge, not to the non-Christian indigenous that he met in the New World, but to his own Christian brethren, the ones who went to Mass and paid deference to the symbols of Christendom. Those who on externals were Christians. This dissonance that Las Casas witnessed made him say something like the following about the Spanish Christians: “Christ seeks souls, not property. … He who wants a large part of mankind to be such that … he may act like a ferocious executioner toward them, press them into slavery, and through them grow rich, is a despotic master, not a Christian; a son of Satan, not of God; a plunderer, not a shepherd.” Perhaps in the minds of many of the Spanish Christians, their behavior in the New World, their atrocities, were justified by their own political, economic, imperialistic, even religious ambitions. They thought themselves legitimized in the name of law and order. But Las Casas saw right through the lie and self-justified sin. He knew that even the justification of evangelizing the non-Christians, ignored the essence of God’s law and gospel, which in his words he summed up as: “Christ wanted love to be called his single commandment. This we owe to all men. Nobody is excepted.” You can’t bring people to Christ through oppression. This clarity, consonant with the example set by Jesus in our Gospel reading today, led Las Casas to advocate for the rights and protections of the indigenous populations in the early Spanish colonization of the Americas, for which he will forever be known as the “Protector of the Indians”. This episode from history highlights some important aspects from our readings today. In our first reading in Deuteronomy, God gives the people Israel a standard, a way to live in the world: the Torah, better understood as the laws, ordinances, and commandments that honor God. God instructs: “You must observe them and perform them, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples”. So if you do these things, people will look at you and praise you for the good things that come out of that way of life. Even more so, God assures that “when they (meaning the surrounding nations) hear all these statutes, they will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!’. For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is whenever we call to him?” So the people of God, when they abide in the Torah, become the moral envy of the nations! They perhaps might even feel seduced by the fruitful wise-living of these Torah-followers. But more than anything, others marvel at the nearness of God, when the Torah is lived out. What a great feeling that must be, that others could say, surely God is present in you because of what you do, I feel God near in the way you act. Not following the Torah, however, can lead to the opposite of the good. Instead of compliments one might get disparagement, and perhaps deservedly so. Clearly, there are actions of life that distance us from God’s nearness. God is always near, approachable through the paths He has revealed, but that we take those paths are another matter entirely. Our readings today, even more so, highlight that we can believe and preserve customs and Torah, we can identify with God’s laws, yet fail to capture the purpose and essence of the law, meaning the true change they are supposed to effect on us. We can find ourselves in the unfortunate situation of being hearers of the word who deceive ourselves, and not doers of the word; that we be followers of a worthless religion and not one that is pure before God because it concerns itself with what matters to God and therefore what faith moves us to do: to care for the suffering and be beacons of God’s reign by following Christ. For we can participate in all our church customs, we can be faithful hearers of the Gospel, yet in our own obtuseness to get our way we can neglect the push of the Gospel, resisting the rearrangements God makes in our lives . Like the Spanish Christians, perhaps not as blatantly, we might confess we worship God, yet allow all kinds of sins to govern our hearts and minds.

Today we also heard how Jesus handled this problem. The pharisees, who were experts in keeping the laws and customs, questioned Jesus, asking why his disciples had not done the traditional washing of the hands before eating, a purification ritual. Of course, the background of this questioning is that they want to find the instances in which Jesus can be evidenced to be a lawbreaker and therefore discredit Him. But Jesus was perceptive, and revealed what the true situation is. He first accuses them of keeping the law with their lips, but not their heart. Bypassing the commandments of God that seek to give life to people in need, sacrificing human wellbeing for the sake of religious authority and obtuse piety. The disciples indeed were probably a physically hungry bunch. And Jesus did not deny them their fill or chastise them because of this. For there is something that cuts deeper than just purifying the hands, and God knows our both our physical and spiritual needs. For what does it matter to clean one’s hands, to keep the externals aspects of the law, when one’s heart remains far from God and shuns the suffering of your neighbor? Jesus, the radical that He was, goes to the root of the problem. The true defilement, what needs to be cleaned is our hearts. From our hearts comes all the intentions and machinations that may lead us astray. It is in that realm where we struggle with doing what is right, conflicted by what conveniences me and putting my own interests above the love and compassion of neighbor, it is there where we judge others and not see the state of our own life. So Jesus corrects where the priorities of Torah are, it is to tend to human need and to mold our self-centeredness into solidarity with the poor. That is the path of Torah that God established. It is the pathway to His desire for humanity.

Therefore, as people who are gathered around the Lord’s table, we should aspire to praise God by being doers of His Word. But remember the truth of this gathering always, Beloved, to not despair in the way. God is working out His vision in You through Christ. By putting our trust in Him, God clears our hearts, renews them, gives them strength, to focus in what exactly what matters most. It is God in Jesus Christ who made possible a Bartolomé de Las Casas, it is God in Jesus Christ, the Word made Flesh, Love from which our love receives its meaning, that builds up in us the movement towards God’s Reign. In Christ and through Christ, the world is each day being restored according to the will of God. A world where true worship abounds in the grace that feeds the hungry, that clothes the naked, and the light of hope shines once more.

So let us pray:
Lord God, focus our lives into what matters most. Let us perceive the essence of your commandments, to foment the spirit of solidarity within us, so that Your will may be done here on Earth as it is in Heaven. Thank You God, because You do this for us and in us. Have mercy on us when we fall short, and may we get up back again as You have promised. In the name of Jesus. Amen.