The Gospel According to Mark – 2018.09.02
The Way and Hypocrisy
The
Gospels must always speak to us of the challenges we face in our time.
We have to be mindful of this. The do tell
something of the challenges the gospel writers faced in their own time, and that
may be of interest to historians, but the intention of the sacred texts is to
speak to us of our time.
In
the case of the reading for today the Gospel speaks to us of a perennial
problem of the church, like the hypocrisy of Church leadership.
The
hierarchy today; priests and pastors, bishops and cardinals, they are often
concerned with outward expressions of piety, with measureable matters of ritual
purity, with creeds and codes, with canons and confessions, with the formula of
faith rather than the living faith itself.
Jesus
cared about the living faith, he cared about the real lives of real people.
Everything Jesus did was subordinated to that.
We
must do the same, we must have the same perspective, approach the world with
the same spirit of generosity.
It
is too often the case, and it is a problem that has plagued the church from the
time that Jesus walked with the disciples.
Each
and every one of us is a child of God, and God is present in the heart of all
of God’s children. God is already present with the people, to the people, for
the people the rituals that the church has organized for purification, they may
have some social value, but if they are used to teach people that they are
unworthy of the presence of God, then they are false teachings and they must be
rejected.
God
is not concerned with outward displays of piety, because evil resides in the
heart of the human being, and that is where sin is born, in our evil
intentions.
You
Put Aside the Commandment of God, to Cling to Human Traditions
The
Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered round
Jesus, and they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with unclean
hands, that is, without washing them. For the Pharisees, and the Jews in
general, follow the tradition of the elders and never eat without washing their
arms as far as the elbow; and on returning from the market place they never eat
without first sprinkling themselves. There are also many other observances
which have been handed down to them concerning the washing of cups and pots and
bronze dishes. So these Pharisees and scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples
not respect the tradition of the elders but eat their food with unclean hands?’
He answered, ‘It was of you hypocrites that
Isaiah so rightly prophesied in this passage of scripture:
This
people honours me only with lip-service,
while
their hearts are far from me. The worship they offer me is worthless, the
doctrines they teach are only human regulations.
You
put aside the commandment of God to cling to human traditions.’ He called the
people to him again and said, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand.
Nothing that goes into a man from outside can make him unclean; it is the
things that come out of a man that make him unclean. For it is from within,
from men’s hearts, that evil intentions emerge: fornication, theft, murder,
adultery, avarice, malice, deceit, indecency, envy, slander, pride, folly. All
these evil things come from within and make a man unclean.’
22nd Sunday in
Ordinary Time
