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| El Greco -- St James |
- Song of Solomon 2:8-13 and Psalm 45:1-2, 6-9 •
- Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9 and Psalm 15 •
- James 1:17-27 •
- Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
It is relatively
rarely in the Lectionary that the connection between the Epistle and the Gospel
is quite so clear as it is on this Sunday. The subject of both is the concept
of ‘defilement’, what it is and why it matters. ‘Defilement’ is not a term we
use easily, nowadays, partly as a result of the fact that we live in a much
less religious world than previous generations did. Yet something like this
concept is hard to dispense with. How are we to capture the particularly
loathsome nature of child pornography or the vandalizing of graves, except with
language that goes beyond customary moral concepts of right and wrong, and captures
something of the revulsion that the idea of ‘defilement’ expresses?
At the same time, we
know that human beings easily create merely conventional taboos. The
violation of these is a ‘defilement’ that then licenses contempt and
oppression against those who do not, or will not conform to them. It is this
conventionalism that Jesus condemns in this week’s Gospel passage. Such people,
he says, treat ‘human precepts’ as though they were fundamental ‘doctrines’,
and thereby ‘abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition’. They
venerate mere codes of action, when what matters is the heart and spirit from which our
actions spring.
In the Epistle,
James extends the thought to make us more circumspect in this regard. Moral outrage is simply
anger; it ‘does not produce God’s righteousness’. Religion ‘pure and undefiled’
requires ‘meekness’ -- which is to say humility
in our judgment of others, and a close watch on our own sincerity.
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