ORDINARY 22

Deut 4;1-2;6-8

James 1:17-18; 21-22; 27

Mk 7:1-8; 14-15; 21-13

Today’s readings can be summarised in the phrase, “Action speaks louder than words.” Simply believing is not enough. What is needed is for us to live the Faith.

The first reading is part of the farewell speech which Moses gave to the Children of Israel as they prepared to cross the Jordan and enter the Promised Land. Moses had brought them out of Egypt and had given them the Ten Commandments, God’s revealed word which had to be learned, believed and handed on to future generations. These words of God were meant to liberate people because they described the sort of community God wanted his people to create.

Moses warned them not to change the meaning of the Ten Commandments, nor their intention. Humans have no mandate to change what God has revealed, for it is in obedience that God’s blessings is received. This message needs to be given again to many modernists who claim to be discovering the hidden meaning of Scripture. They are saying that what is written in Scripture is not exactly what God intended, so they are ‘correcting the record.’

Jesus battled with this same issue. The religious leaders of his day were putting their own slant on the Law. Jesus cleansed the Temple as a protest against the empty ritualistic religion of his contemporaries. Rituals such as hand washing had become more important than moral purity. Jesus argued that what a person eats has nothing to do with inner cleanliness and holiness. It is not food that contaminates a person; it is the thoughts and actions of a person that can cut that person off from God. What separates us from God is not physical contamination, it is moral corruption. It is holiness that is contagious, not ritual impurity.

The epistle of St James urges us to listen to God’s word, exercise self-control and above all put our brain into gear before we open our mouth. Yet listening to God is not enough. There must be a willingness to let that Word shape our lives. God gave his people a set of laws, but he totally and completely revealed himself in and through Jesus Christ.

The Church, which Jesus gathered into a community, expressed what God revealed through him in the Creeds. The Creeds are what we believe and what we must hand on. They are not negotiable. They cannot be ignored, changed, edited, substituted for other statements of belief, or treated simply as quaint historical documents. We may struggle to understand the teaching they contain, but that is our problem, not the Church’s. The creeds are not our private possession which are validated if we assent to them. They belong to the Church, and that includes the Church of the past as well as the future, and we must believe them if we are to remain members of the Church. This why we say, “I believe,” not “we believe.”

As we approach this year’s Annual General meeting, let us not see it as a boring chore that has to be got through. Let us see it as our affirmation of our membership in the Body of Christ, and use it to re-dedicate ourselves to the mission and ministry which Jesus laid on us.

Action speaks louder than words.