22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
If we were to capture our readings today in pithy phrases or slogans, what would these phrases or slogans be?
Imagine Moses, long before it was popular in small towns to appoint somebody with a powerful voice as “town crier,” standing before the people and crying out loudly, “Hear ye! Year ye!” Moses does essentially this in the first reading we hear today, from Deuteronomy. “Now, Israel, hear the statutes and decrees, which I am teaching you to observe,” Moses says to the people he is leading through the desert into Israel. Moses’ message is more important than that of any town crier. Moses, unlike a town crier, is not simply reciting the daily news aloud in the town square for all to hear. Moses is asking the people to hear the Word of God; the Law of God. In the Hebrew culture of the time, before the Word of God was widely read or seen, it was primarily a message to be heard.
“Hear ye! Hear, O Israel!” For the people of Israel, whether or not they hear Moses’ message attentively is a matter of life and death. It is a matter of whether or not they will be able to inherit the land God has promised them and to prosper in it. “Hear the statutes and decrees, which I am teaching you to observe,” Moses says, “that you may live.”
What are some life-and-death messages we might hear today? I suppose that if a disaster were to strike where I am and I had a chance to avoid it and maybe to help others to safety in the process, I would want to hear: How long until disaster strikes? Where can we go for safety? If we or one of our loved ones were to become severely ill, and some kind of medical treatment were able to increase quality if not time of life, would we not want to hear this message from a doctor?
Yet most messages we hear, see, or read today are not, at least immediately, life-and-death. I do not mean by this that to hear, see, and read the daily news is not important or to be encouraged. I and many if not most of us read the newspaper; watch newscasts on television; connect to the internet on a daily basis. Our news is interesting; informative when it is not infuriating or distressing, like seemingly continual news about recent violence in our city; our nation; our world. But our daily news is usually not life-and-death. Yet how many of us would think of the Word of God as a life-and-death message?
I do not wish to discourage us if we have difficulty hearing God’s Word as life-and-death. Most if not all of us are here because we receive what we would not receive if we were not here. We receive nourishment of body and spirit from Christ really, truly present in our Eucharist. We are here in the presence of God and of one another as beloved friends; ourselves “one Body; one Spirit in Christ.” We receive the gift of the Word of God. And then we are sent forth from this celebration strengthened to act with truth, justice, and kindness in our world and in our everyday relationships.
But for Moses, for the people he leads through the desert to their promised land, and ideally for us, God’s Word; the Law, God’s Commandments means more than nourishment. To hear the Word of God well means more than impressing other people or nations, although Moses promises that other nations will say of Israel if they hear God’s Word well: “This great nation is truly a wise and intelligent people.” To hear God’s Word well means more than the recognition by people of other faiths of how close our God is to us: At the same time our best friend and our Savior. God’s Law, or any law, means more than the greatness of the rule of law in and of itself. For Moses; for the people Moses leads through the desert; for us, the Word of God; the Law of God that we hear in Scripture is life-and-death. “That you may live”: This, our salvation, is Moses’ goal; God’s goal for us in inviting us to “hear”!
“Hear ye”! If this is Moses’ message in Deuteronomy captured in a pithy saying or slogan, St. James’ message in our second reading might be summed up as, “Just do it.” This predates Nike and its sales of high-quality shoes with a simple yet fashionable “swoosh” logo by almost two thousand years. Go James!
“Just do it,” we hear from the Letter of James today. To hear the Word of God is not enough if we do not act upon it. To hear but not to act on the Word of God, James says, is to delude ourselves. In this same part of his letter (this verse is left out of today’s reading), James compares the hearer of God’s word who is not also a doer to one who “looks at his” or her “own face in a mirror” and “then promptly… forgets what he” or she “looked like.” This image is absurd, and so we become absurd if we hear the Word of God but do not act on it. For us to hear and then not to act on God’s Word is impossible.
So how does James ask us to act on the Word of God we hear; “the Word of truth” that “is able to save [our] souls”? First, James says, care for society’s most vulnerable: “orphans and widows in their affliction.” We could add in our time refugees and migrants, those who are poor, especially the working poor; the underemployed and unemployed; those who are sick; people whose lives are marred by violence; the homeless… James does not say, “Check their papers to see if they are legally entitled to our care; to be in our country.” James invites us to hear and to act on the Word of God. “Just do it”! And do not act in ways contrary to the Word of God. “Keep oneself unstained by the world”; unstained by gossip; by passive-aggression; by violent actions or speech; by ideological polarization; by indifference to those in need; by any form of indignity toward human life and creation.
“Just do it”! Better yet, James says, if we hear the Word of God attentively we will naturally act on it. Jesus’ message in Mark’s Gospel is similar to that of James: Hear and then act on the Word of God. If James cautions those who hear and then do not act on God’s Word, Jesus addresses perhaps a much more common problem, both in his time, with the Pharisees, and in our time: Those who act without properly hearing the Word of God that is the foundation of all we do as people of faith. The Pharisees’ ritual purification of vessels; of beds; of their own bodies was not wrong. But it had become an obsession. Many had not paused to ask a brief but important question: “Why”? Why do we wash our “cups and jugs and kettles and beds”; our hands? Are we paying enough attention to what is within us that needs purification? Are we attentive enough to purify ourselves of the “evils” Jesus lists in our Gospel reading; of our prejudices and unjust judgments of one another; of divisions among races, among Christian people, among nations, and among and within families?
If Moses says to us today, “Hear ye,” and James says to us, “Just do it” (better yet, if you hear rightly you will also naturally do, but this slogan loses its pithiness), might Jesus be saying: “Hear and do, but for the right reason”?
Jesus invites us to discern; not be afraid to ask, “Why? What are our reasons; our intentions for acting in a particular way; for our acts of personal devotion; for gathering here to worship; for any of our good works”? As individuals and as Church, we can only be strengthened by this careful discernment of our intentions. And so indeed, “Hear ye”! And when we hear the Word of God as Christians, “Just do it”: Act on the Word of God we hear, but for the right reasons and with the right intentions.
