Tuesday, 4th August 2020

Collect

Glorious God, you shower creation with abundance: awaken in us a hunger for food that satisfies, that in the miracle of being fed we will be empowered to feed the hungry in Jesus’ name ;who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever . Amen.

Eucharist Readings:

Jeremiah 30:12-22        Psalm 102:16-22         Matthew 15:1-14

Good morning Parishioners,

The opposition was never far away and here again the trouble arose from the Pharisees and teachers of the law, but now there is a wicked tradition, they had travelled from Jerusalem to Galilee , maybe a group sent to investigate Jesus? This act makes it noticeably clear that it is from Jerusalem. Jesus must expect trouble. To wash their hands before they eat was not simply a question of hygiene but of a religious duty. The OT Law made no such rule, except for priests going about their cultic duty. The Pharisaic tradition, however, had extended the principle to daily life, and Jesus, as a religious teacher, was expected to enforce ritual purity among the disciples.

Jesus’ response to the charge comes in (vs 10 ’Jesus called the crowd to him and said: Listen and understand -11 What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them’). He first launched a counterattack on their whole attitude to religious authority. By insisting on their tradition, they were in effect setting aside the command of God. Jesus thus drew a sharp distinction between the OT law and all human rules and regulations. The quotation from Isaiah 29:13(These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught) indicates that a religion based on the latter is empty and not pleasing to God. Jesus went beyond merely defending the OT law. In returning to the specific question of clean and unclean in v11, he laid down a radical principle which would ultimately lead his followers to abandon the food laws of the Old Testament altogether. He stated that ‘uncleanness’ is not contracted by what you eat but comes from the inside.

These days we are concerned about the kind of food we put in our bodies, and how we are doing it. We follow specific diets, checking our calories, our fat consumptions, because of health risk conditions. Washing our hands before preparing the food, washing our hands before eating (teaching our children), and yet when we buy the food do we, say thank you Lord for the privilege to buy food, when preparing the food, to say thank you , I can put food on the table for my family, before eating do we still pray or teach our children  to say thank for this meal , do we and are we still thankful and appreciative of the mercy and grace God is bestowing upon us. 

Or are we also caught up in the human made rules like the Scribes and Pharisees that we are losing our focus. Like Jesus said it is not important what goes into your mouth that makes you unclean but what comes from the inside, from the heart. We need to feed our hearts with the right ‘food’, with ‘low calories. Low fat or maybe fat free’ so that whatever we share with others must be good. Also, sometimes we spend our energy and time on irrelevant issues and what matters to God is not so much how we act, but why we act; not so much what we actually do , but what we wish in our hearts of hearts to do .

According to William Barclay: ‘If religious consists in external regulations and observances it is two things. It is very much easier to abstain from certain foods and to wash the hands in a certain way than it is to love the unlovely and the unlovable, and to help the needy at the cost of one’s own time and money , comfort and pleasure.’. What matters for Jesus is the heart of a person – ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God – Matthew 5:8