RBWords

     In both scriptures today we see an impassioned response to a faith that is only concerned with performing certain religious observances with the idea that the performance is what counts, not the intention.  Jesus puts it very succinctly: "Did not the maker of the outside also make the inside?"   St. Paul was once a Pharisee's Pharisee!  He knew the "rules of the game" in that regard.  Indeed some Pharisees were people of integrity whose heart of faith was expressed not merely in physical performance of certain behavioral regulations such as washings, but also in love and care of neighbor.  St. Paul's conversion to faith in Christ led him to the insight that it is "faith working in love" that made the difference.  Since circumcision was a sign of commitment to the law of Moses, Paul is castigating the Galatians for "backsliding" from his message that circumcision and the law of Moses were not required for Christians, but rather faith working through love.  Jesus does the same to the Pharisees in the gospels.

     As a pastor, I would occasionally find a pamphlet stuffed into the rack of religious publications in the back of the church that promised that if the particular observances outlined in the pamphlet were performed exactly as described then a particular outcome was guaranteed.  The words, "never known to fail" were often part of the language!!  This is precisely what Jesus and St. Paul were opposing!  

     In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the Samaritan traveler would have been expected to ignore the Jewish victim of the robbers.  There was a great prejudicial barrier between the two socio-ethnic groups.  Instead, he was moved with compassion.  It is this "love of neighbor" instead of "fear of neighbor" that our faith should foster.  Our culture of individualism in this country seems to be promoting the latter instead of the former.  Jesus challenges us to look inside so that our motivation by faith matches our external actions.  This is the meaning of Christian integrity.  AMEN