but the things that come out from within are what defile."
Purity is a word that few would consider pejorative; it sits alongside other words we associate with virtue
such as honesty, courage, etc. It is even more effective as a marketing
tool to entice the consumer that you are getting 100% of what you are expecting.
The other word associated with this one is perfection. In a sense, purity is a
type of perfection, and when you begin an endeavor, it common to hope for
perfection.
It is this struggle to be perfect before
God that the Jews turned to Torah (the first five books of the Bible).
These books contain a little over six-hundred laws that were composed between 600 and 400 BCE. These laws were extended to interpretive texts that were
designed to help people apply these laws to everyday life to keep better the original six-hundred or so
laws in Torah. By Jesus' time, some of these laws became impediments to
the spirit that informed them. Like so many good ideas, when people who
have lost sight of why the law exists simply follow the law "because it is
the law", the spirit suffers the ignorance of the law-abiding.
In today's gospel, those whose job it was
to interpret and admonish adherence to the Law (Pharisees and scribes) were
incensed that Jesus seemed oblivious to the demands of the Law. He did not seem to chastise those among his disciples
that did not wash before meals in violation, not of the law, per se (Leviticus
15:11), but explicitly from the Talmud, a group of interpretive statements to
apply the Law. When questioned as
to why Jesus seemed such a scoff-law we get a two part answer: You are
like the hypocrites of whom Isaiah speaks "They honor me with their lips;
but their hearts are far from me", and the spiritual insight that
"Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the
things that come out from within are what defile."
Jesus' statement in the fifth chapter of
Matthew intends not to abolish the law but to fulfill it, and now he seems
clear as to how the Law is fulfilled:
intention.
The other day, I had a
rather distressing conversation with a man who insisted that undocumented
immigrants should not be allowed to receive any public services such as
education and a driver's license. He said this about the poor entering our
southern border. He
felt quite confident that his view wasn't
obstructed by racism, but that "it was the law". He
insisted that being acting unlawfully was the fundamental transgression that
could only be remedied by these people returning
to their native country, and following the procedure for properly entering the United States. He was so focused on the
violation of the law that the broader question of justice seemed to him as a
distraction from the core issue of these folks breaking the law.
The law serves justice, but so many today
have it reversed thinking that if it is law
it presupposes being just. Needless to
say, in recent memory laws that kept blacks segregated from society, women from
voting, and prohibiting consenting adults who are gay from marrying are
examples of laws most would find difficult to reconcile with concepts of
justice.
Jesus understood this
insidious tendency to focus on law rather than justice.This focus provides a
false sense of comfort to those who don't want to deal with the messiness of
justice and opt for the simplistic purity of law. For many Christians, the Bible has become the modern
equivalent to the religious law--studied to discover transgression rather than
compassion in the false promise that by doing so one may become perfect.
But perfection does not lie in the observance of the law, but in its
fulfillment as Christ fulfilled it: love of God and love of neighbor--the two
most important commandments according to Jesus.
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