Dear Friends,
COVID or not, our youth are off to college. Part of the
excitement of college or more precisely, the excitement of moving out of their
parents’ home, is that they are free. No more parental obligations. I am free
to come and go as I want, when I want. I can wash my hands of all those rules
and regulations that made life at home so tiresome.
What college freshmen learn – what we all learned when we
went out on our own, is that we are never completely, totally free. Housing
complexes have rules, income tax needs to be paid by April 15, roads have speed
limits. We escape one set of rules and immediately find ourselves under another
set of norms.
Generally, our experience of law is negative. “Don’t.” Religion
in particular is viewed as laying on its members multiple negative
prescriptions.
So, when we turn to today’s first reading, we are skeptical. Moses maintains that observing the law of God will be life-giving for the Israelites. It would enrich them and free them. Indeed, the Israelites did experience God’s law this way, referring to it as “honey on their lips.”
That idea of law as freeing, as life-giving, takes effort for us to comprehend. The closest we come to law as freeing would be the laws that freed slaves, gave women the right to vote, allowed the freedom marches to pass unharmed from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to present their grievances to Governor George Wallace, the laws in South Africa that put an end to apartheid.
In today’s Gospel, the Pharisees and scribes accused Jesus’
disciples of being unclean – not observing the ritual washings, referring to
the ritual laws of washing hands, kettles, cups, without meaning. Lip service
to God.
We know about lip service. That is the result of being a minimalist.
I will do the least amount in order to stay in God’s good graces. I’ll get to
Mass by homily time and leave after communion. That will fulfill my obligation.
I’ll punch in on time at work and take as many coffee breaks as I wish. Just
enough to stay on the right side of God and people in charge at work.
But Moses says that God’s invitation to live by the Law is
characterized by a freedom of spirit. James says it will be recognized by a
sensitivity to people on the periphery of life. Jesus holds up love of God and
love of neighbor as the essence of the Law.
Once we have let God’s Word take root in our hearts, we will
more likely allow this Word to change us, make us more whole, as individuals
and a community, make us other-centered. We move toward being ready to embrace
right order and daily living with God’s ways as our guide. In other words, we
put law into perspective and make it the servant of life. It is what is in the
heart that matters.
~Sister Joan Sobala
