Word to the Wise
Tuesday, August 5, 2008 - Tuesday in the Eighteenth Week of Ordinary Time
[Jeremiah 30:1-2, 12-15, 18-22 and Matthew 15:1-2, 10-14]Some Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, "Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They do not wash their hands when they eat a meal." He summoned the crowd and said to them, "Hear and understand. It is not what enters one's mouth that defiles the person; but what comes out of the mouth is what defiles one."
The reason for washing hands before meals in the Mosaic Law was not the same as that which our parents were concerned about when they demanded we wash our hands before eating! The Mosaic Laws of purity were more concerned with the fact that a person might have handled a forbidden food, which in turn would make even a permitted food impure by touching it later on and would make the person who eats that food ritually impure! Our folks would have been concerned about germs! Jesus shows his exasperation with a way of looking at "impurity" as a ritual and external reality! It is the interior purity (or impurity) of the person's character that leads to wrong actions or statements. When relationships and behavior are "surface" realities alone, they are shallow and unreliable. For some folks, that's the only reality. Virtue and character are irrelevant. Right and wrong are simply a matter of parties externally adhering to an agreed upon convention. Love is an "attraction" which is expressed only in external sexual behavior. The barrenness and poverty of this approach is appalling, but it is a popular secular view. Jesus challenges us to a deeper and more intimate sharing which springs from the very integrity and character of the person. It is more than common observance of ritual, social conventions or sexual sharing of bodies. The gospel opens our very identity and souls to God and to one another in a true sharing that is real love. In this view, "impurity" comes from a character that cares only for self-gratification. lLust for power, money, sex, substances, etc. become the expression of the warped character who will sacrifice self and anyone else for these things. To cover all of this over with a veneer of religion in the form of "social impurity" is a form of blasphemy. As the disciples quickly point out, Jesus' view is offensive to the religious authorities. We in our time will find that being of good character can be offensive to secular authorities or the social and sexual pundits of popular behavior. I've had many a college student in my office who has experimented with all those secular attractions and come up with nothing. Their question is, "Is this all there is?" The answer is, "No!" Jesus offers something much better! AMEN
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