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Peace be with you.
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Friends, we turn now from
our Johannine hiatus.
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We were looking at chapter
six of John's Gospel
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for the past several weeks.
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We return now to our reading
of the Gospel of Mark,
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which we're doing during
this liturgical cycle.
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And the readings today,
all three of them,
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are about the law.
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And the law is a very
interesting theme
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now in the Bible.
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And I think from an
American standpoint,
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we have this very ambiguous
relationship to law.
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On the one hand,
we're a nation of
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independently minded people.
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Don't tread on me,
don't tell me what to do.
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There's kind of a libertarian
streak within Americans.
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We don't like the law
imposing itself on us.
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At the same time,
let's face it,
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we are a hyper
litigious society.
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Lawyers and laws are very thick
on the ground in our society.
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People will make fun sometimes
of the ancient Jewish law
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with its 600 and some precepts.
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That's nothing compared to the
American book of legal statutes.
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Are you kidding?
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It would dwarf
anything in the Bible.
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So we kind of
balk at the law.
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At the same time, we have
this great reverence for law.
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I remember Cardinal George,
my mentor,
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used to point out that
America is very much
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shaped by a Protestant culture.
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And the two great
Protestant reformers,
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Martin Luther
and John Calvin,
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were both lawyers.
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They were law students
early in their life.
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And so this kind of legal
preoccupation marks our society.
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Well, I think the same kind
of ambiguity about law,
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you can see reflected
in these readings,
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that there's something beautiful
and necessary about law
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and there's something a
little dangerous about law.
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And I'll just say something simple
now about each one of those.
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Listen first now.
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Our first reading is from
the book of Deuteronomy,
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this marvelous final
book of the Torah.
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Moses lays out the
benefits of God's law.
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Listen.
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“Now, Israel, hear
the statutes and decrees,
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which I'm teaching
you to observe.
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Observe them carefully
for thus
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you'll give evidence
of your wisdom
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and intelligence to the nations.”
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The law, that's
what Torah means, right?
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The law was the pride
and joy of Israel.
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It's what made Israel
the chosen people,
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the great people they were.
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They couldn't claim
political power.
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They couldn't claim great
artistic accomplishment.
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They weren't an
economic power,
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but they had the
law from the Lord.
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It made them distinctive,
it gave them their power.
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And think of it this way.
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Whatever we take seriously,
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whatever we think
is beautiful,
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we tend to
surround with laws.
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Why?
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Well, to protect the
integrity
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of that which we find
good and beautiful.
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So there's a lousy,
like a vacant lot somewhere.
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There's not going to be
a lot of laws about it
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because we don't have
reverence for it.
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But take something like
the game of baseball.
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People that love baseball,
they reverence it
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because of its beauty
and its integrity.
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Well, baseball,
are you kidding?
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It's marked by all kinds
of laws
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that define how
it should be played.
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There are all kinds of limitations
that hem in the game
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so as to protect
its integrity.
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I've used probably
tiresomely for some of you
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the example of golf a lot.
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But not only is the rule
book of golf pretty thick,
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I mean all the rules that govern
the actual playing of golf.
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But think of those rules that
govern the golf swing itself.
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Golfers love those laws because
we reverence the golf swing.
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We want it to become better.
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It gives us great joy
if we do it properly.
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And so we want laws
to surround it.
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We like the laws.
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We don't think
they're an imposition.
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We think they
actually liberate us.
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And now with that
golf example in mind,
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listen to this line
from the second reading,
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from the letter of James.
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“Humbly welcome the word
that has been planted in you
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and is able to save
your souls.”
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There's a whole
world in that line.
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Let me say it again.
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“Humbly welcome the word
that's been planted in you
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and is able to save
your souls.”
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What's the word here
but the word of God?
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The Torah, if you want,
the law of the Lord
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that has come to us
through hearing
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as St. Paul says.
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And in St. James' language,
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it has been planted in us.
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Now, stay with the golf
thing because
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you can read a book
about the golf swing.
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I do that.
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All golfers good
and bad do that.
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And we study,
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here's how you swing
the club properly.
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But the whole point
is not to keep those laws
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out there in the pages
of a book.
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It's to bring them into you
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so they get into
your muscle memory,
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they get into your instincts,
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they become part of you.
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So when you pick
up the golf club,
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you're not tempted
to swing it poorly
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because the law of golf
has been so internalized.
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It's able to give
you a good swing, right?
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Now, put it in the
spiritual context,
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the law of the Lord.
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The Lord always imposing
his laws on me
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and always telling me
what to do.
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Well, that's the
stupid attitude.
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That's a bad attitude.
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That's like a golfer saying,
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"Don't hate Ben Hogan
and Arnold Palmer
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and Jack Nicklaus
and Tiger Woods.
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Don't give me your laws.
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Don't lay your
hangups on me."
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No, the golfer
wants those laws.
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What I wouldn't give to have
in me what's in Tiger Woods
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or what's in Jack Nicklaus?
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Well, the same thing here is
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the law of the Lord,
the word of the Lord
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seeps into our hearts,
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into our minds,
into our instincts,
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into our bodies.
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Who are saints, but those
who have so internalized
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the law that they effortlessly
move according to its dictates?
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Mind you, that's not slavery.
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It's the opposite.
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That's finding freedom.
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I'm free to swing that
darn golf club properly
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because I've internalized
the rules of golf,
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the laws of the swing.
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So the saint is able
to move with great
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freedom through the world
because she
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has welcomed the word
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and understands how that
word is able to save her soul.
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So all of that is
meant to emphasize
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the goodness of the law,
the importance of it.
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We should overcome this sort
of immature preoccupation with,
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"Hey, walk in my own way and
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don't lay your hang-ups on me."
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It's silly adolescent talk.
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Now, the more spiritually
mature you are,
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the more you want.
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You want the laws of
the Lord inside of you.
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Okay? So far so good.
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But when we turn
to the gospel,
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and this is a very
helpful balance.
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In the gospel,
we see if you want
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the shadow side of law,
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what can happen to law
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when it's kind of
misappropriated
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or when it's misconstrued.
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Let me just read
you a little bit.
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It's from the Gospel of Mark,
and
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he's talking about the
Pharisees and the Scribes
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who have gathered
around Jesus
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and he's trying to explain to us
what these people are about.
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He says, "The Pharisees
do not eat
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without carefully
washing their hands,
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keeping the tradition
of the elders.
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On coming to the marketplace,
they do not eat
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without purifying themselves.
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There are many other things that
they've traditionally observed,
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the purification of cups and
jugs and kettles and beds."
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So he's laying out this
sort of preoccupation
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with the minutiae
of the Jewish law.
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And so these men who
are kind of obsessed
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with this minutiae
are coming to Jesus
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and his disciples and
complaining that they don't follow
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all of these pre-scripts.
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So what's the Lord say?
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“How well did Isaiah prophesy
about you hypocrites?
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This people honors
me with their lips,
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but their hearts
are far from me”,
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listen, now,
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“you disregard
God's commandment,
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but cling to mere
human tradition.”
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So now we're looking,
as I say,
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at the shadow
side of law.
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I'm not going to take
back one little thing
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I said about the law and the
beauty and importance of it.
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Jesus is the
Torah made flesh.
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That's the way to understand
the word becoming flesh.
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He's the law of
God made flesh.
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So I'm not saying one
little thing bad about that,
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but I'll say just a few things
now about the shadow side.
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The first is what
Jesus points out here,
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a tendency to mistake the
essential for the non-essential
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or the non-essential
for the essential.
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Are there certain laws that
are really fundamental,
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that are so basic?
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Yeah, that govern the moral life
and govern the spiritual life.
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Think of the 10 Commandments,
for example,
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things that are so central to
being spiritually morally healthy
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that they can't be disobeyed.
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But along with those,
are there
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traditions that have come
into the law
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that probably originally
had a very good purpose?
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So for example,
the cleansing
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of the jugs and the kettles
and the plates and all that.
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Sure, it's a gesture
toward ritual purity.
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It's a way of signaling
your reverence
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for the Lord and all that.
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But is there a tendency,
and it's just built in,
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I think, to any religious
structure
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to mistake the non-essential
for the essential
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and to become preoccupied
with
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the sort of trivial minutia
of the law?
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Can I give you
an example here?
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Not that long ago,
I was on YouTube
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and I saw this old video
of Pope Pius XII,
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sometime in the
1950s probably,
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being carried into Saint
Peter's on the sedia gestatoria.
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Remember, that was the seat
that the people would hold up,
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and he was surrounded by
courtiers with ostrich plumes,
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and they were kind of
fanning him as he went by.
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Well, from an historical
standpoint and as a
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Catholic student
of Catholicism,
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I find that sort
of fascinating.
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But those moves fell
away after Vatican II,
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Paul VI got rid
of most of that.
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John Paul II
never revived it.
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Neither did Benedict XVI,
nor has Pope Francis.
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The point is those things
which originally
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borrowed from European
court ceremonial
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was meant to signal the reverence
to the Pope and all that's great.
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But I think more
contemporary popes have said,
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"Yeah, but they carry
such a negative overtone
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of kind of triumphalism"
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, and so they were allowed
to fall to the side.
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Are there some people that mistake
those merely human traditions
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for what is essential
to God's law?
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That's the first problem.
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Here's the second one.
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Maybe keep the jugs and
the kettles and the plates
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and all that stuff in mind and
all the little moves of purification.
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Can there be a stifling
quality to the law
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if it's not properly
understood?
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What I mean is
I'm so aware of
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all of these laws, both
central and non-essential
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that I become essentially
paralyzed by them.
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I become obsessive-compulsive
about them.
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Think here of, go back to
golf again, I'm sorry,
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but there's a famous poster
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and it shows this golfer and
he's lining up to the ball
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and there's a list of
about a hundred recommendations
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and tips that he should
have in mind
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as he's over the ball.
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And the last one is
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relax and swing away.
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If you've got all of that,
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both essential and
trivial in your mind,
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you're not able to swing.
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In fact, it's undermining
the golf swing.
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We call it paralysis
by analysis.
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Well, something similar can
happen in the spiritual order
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if the law has become this
kind of obsessive preoccupation
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with detail and minutiae.
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Here's just a
last observation,
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and boy, read the letters
of Paul
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if you want to see this.
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Can the law in
all of its beauty,
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I'm not saying one little
thing against that,
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but can the law at times
become a means of aggression?
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Do you know what I'm saying?
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Since I know the law so well,
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I can point out exactly
what you're doing wrong.
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Can you permit me one more
golf example is
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if you want to undermine
your golf partner,
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this is a really bad etiquette,
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but if you want to undermine
your golf partner,
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just say,
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"I notice that when
you are coming down,
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your elbow is a little
too far from your side,
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and that's why you're
coming across the ball."
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Now, as I say,
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you should never do
that in the golf course.
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You should never give
people unsolicited advice.
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But see, what you doing there
is you're taking a law of golf,
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which is legitimate,
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and you're kind of
planting it aggressively
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in that guy's mind.
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You're using the
law to attack him.
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Now, I know we
all say piously.
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"Oh, I would never do that.
No, no.
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The law of God is
just wonderful."
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Read Paul again,
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how the law can become
a source of aggression
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if it's used
not in a spirit of love.
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Okay.
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Law. It's great.
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It's beautiful.
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We love it.
We reverence it,
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and law carries with it
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a certain shadow side.
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How wonderful that
the Bible is so frank
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about the problem,
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even as it sings
the beauty of law.
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And God bless you.
