It is this subject of kosher food laws and allied practices that gives rise to the question by the Pharisees and some scribes of Jesus in the gospel for today. It is important to say at the outset that the Pharisees and scribes are not to be seen as the “bad” guys in this dialog with Jesus. Rather the questions raised are sincere ones of one religious person to another. There is even in the language of the text that they were “gathered around Jesus” a sense that they as observant Jews were wanting to learn from Jesus the teacher. Discussion of the meaning of Torah and its commentaries is still the stuff of traditional Jewish Orthodoxy.

But their question seems to us in the broader context somewhat petty or nit-picking. And Jesus takes opportunity to pronounce rather sharply on their approach. But before looking at his response Mark’s placement of today’s gospel passage is worth noting in itself. This passage about the law and its interpretation comes in the middle of chapters six and eight in which we have heard of two generous feedings of great crowds, the Feedings of the 5000 and the 4000, as well as a description of wholesale healings and is followed directly in chapter seven with two healings of non-Jewish people, the Syro-phoenician woman and the gentile man with the speech impediment, who most certainly did not keep the Jewish Law. It is this broader context that highlights even more the pettiness and almost irrelevance of the Pharisees question. There are far bigger issues at stake here.

Before looking at Jesus’ reply it is worth noting that on one level the Pharisee’s concern seems to us quite sensible. I was talking to a friend in Melbourne only last week who had recently returned from Burma where he had picked up some terrible bug which he blamed on eating carelessly in the market place. There is nothing wrong with washing your hands properly. In fact you are stupid not to be hygienic. But Jesus’ reply goes to a very different level of concern and that is making what he calls “a human tradition” or the “tradition of the elders” the equivalent of the law of God. In fact the Law was concerned with priestly ritual, a practice which the Pharisees had extended to laypeople. But even more importantly Jesus attack on this emendation of the Law was that by so doing the purpose of the Law was being obscured. Jesus’ concern was that the Law was becoming an end in itself; that the keeping of the Law with all its precepts was the chief expression of religion. Jesus was not attacking the Law. To the contrary Jesus was a defender of the Law: “I came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill the Law.”

The clue to Jesus’ concern with the Pharisees question lies in the first reading from Deuteronomy which is by tradition Moses’ last will and testament to the people of Israel on the verge of their entry into the Promised Land. Here the Law is seen as the response of God’s people to what God has given them, that is their liberation from slavery in Egypt and the gift of the Promised Land. This relationship is not simply historic but is a living and intimate one: “for what other great nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to him?” The Law not only is a response to this relationship but it undergirds and supports it. And furthermore the Law is to be the instrument that will shape the new community of Israel as it settles into the Promised Land so that people will say “Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people.” The keeping of the Law is not simply about correct actions by individuals but about corporate identity and witness.

But the reaction by Jesus is even more substantive with his quoting of the prophet Isaiah: “ this people honors me with, but their hearts are far from me.” To which Jesus adds that what defiles comes not from what or how you eat or but from within, from the heart. “For it is from the human heart that evil intentions come.” The condition of the heart is of far greater concern than the food one eats or whether or not you wash your hands correctly. Here Jesus picks up the concern of the great prophets who spoke against outward religion when their was an evident lack of generosity, justice and mercy in the communities to which they spoke. St Paul echoed that same concern in the Letter to the Romans with his exposition on the Law and the Spirit. Ultimately it is not one or the other that is Law over Spirit or Spirit over Law or all heart and no head rather than all head and no heart but “both and” as we say. It is a healthy and dynamic tension between the two: Law tempered by and interpreted in the Spirit or mercy and wisdom and a religion which is from the heart but articulated with reason, intelligence and discernment.

It is this balance which we see expressed in the life and ministry of Jesus who not only upholds the Law but radically extends its import for all people and restores it to its true place as a response to God’s great and generous love.

The familiar reading from the Epistle to the Ephesians reminds us that our religious life needs the gifts of the Spirit to make it true. So we are reminded to “pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication.” It is so easy to slip back into a formal and outward practice of religion if it is not sustained by spiritual intent and commitment.

A great prayer for regular use is today’s collect which is one of Thomas Cranmer’s best and which was the favorite prayer of one of my saints, Archbishop Frank Woods of Melbourne, who ordained me. Listen to it once again: “Lord of all power and might, who art the author and giver of all good things: graft in our hearts the love of thy Name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and bring forth in us the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord etc.” The prayer says it all. In other words we pray for four things: a healthy relationship with God; a religion that is from both heart and head; and the gifts of the Spirit that we need in order to respond fully to God in our daily lives and actions. It is a prayer I warmly commend to you. Let us say it together once more.   Amen

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