Opening Prayer Series: Collect for 22nd Sunday of Year B

The Collect for the 22nd Sunday of Year B reads as follows:

God of might, giver of every good gift,

put into our hearts the love of Your name,

so that, by deepening our sense of reverence

You may nurture in us what is good 

and by Your watchtful care,

keep safe what You have nurtured.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ Your Son,

who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God for ever and ever. 

In making this prayer tangible for during the week, the following reflection questions emerged:

1. What does it mean to me to love the name of God?
2. Why do I need love of the name of God?
3. What does reverence mean to me?
4. Why should I desire a deeper sense of reverence?
5. What does it mean to me to be to be nurtured by God?
6. What does it mean to me not tobe nurtured by God?
7. What is good in me and how can I nurture this good this coming week?

One of the great obstacles to mobility and flexibility in the mission of the church during the first decades of Christianity were the interpretations of the Jewish law which resulted in long lists of community practices and ritual observances which many of the first Christians, as Jews, brought with them.  It is probably why St Mark introduces this passage and the next into this fourth part of his Gospel (6:6-8:30), which describes missionary journeys of Jesus with His disciples.  Both passages describe the attitude of Jesus towards certain Jewish religious practices.

When the local Pharisees with learned scribes from Jerusalem some of of His disciples eating without first ritually purifying themselves, they confront Jesus.  They had many rules for ritual washings of the body before eating  and for the washing of pots, cups and dishes.  All these things were to be done according to the ‘Halakah’ or Jewish oral law, considered by the Pharisees to bind as the “Torah” or God’s law itself.  

In reply Jesus first quotes the prophet Isaiah, who warns: “your worship is worthless, your doctrines are only human rules ( Is 29:13).  Jesus tells the Pharisees they have put aside God’s law and clung to human rules ( 6-8).

The second reply of Jesus picks out the Jewish practice of Corban, or consecrating things to God.  Human relationships are abused by declaring things consecrated to God.  Jesus shows how this become a way of putting aside God’s law by denying one’s natural duties and relations to others. Even the special relation of Children to parents was left aside in the name of God.  Such rules and practices empty the true meaning of God’s law through Moses (9-13).

Jesus goes to human needs when He teaches what God’s law means.  Religious practices are not meant to destroy genuine freedom and a true concern for others.

 

Jesus in this passage continues as He calls the people around Him and teaches what religious practices is meant to be, and what constitutes uncleanliness or impurity in God's eyes.  Jesus gives His teaching in two ways: first there is a teaching for all (7:14-15), second a deeper teaching for the disciples ( 17-23).

To the crowd, Jesus tells a brief parable.  A person can never be made unclean by something which comes form the outside.  it is what come from within a person that bring uncleanliness.  The source of true purity and religion that unites one with God is inside a person not outside.  Merely external circumstances or situations can never separate a person from God.  Only personal choices can do this.

For the disciples, in the privacy of a house, an early Christian symbol of the church, Jesus explains His teaching.  He first points to the lack of understanding of His teaching among the disciples, as He has already done before (4:13, 6:52).  Then He gives the earthy parable of food passing into and out of the human body (16-19).

By this comparison He clarifies for the disciples His emphasis that a right interior disposition, and not merely exterior religious practices, constitute in God's eyes genuine purity.  Jesus twice repeats to His disciples what He has already taught the people.  Real evil can come to a person only from within one's own heart ( 20 and 230.

The teaching  of  Jesus on the need for interiority in religious practices ends with a systematically arranged list of different kinds of evil that can follow for interior uncleanness or disorder in the human heart.  In Mark's list, there are 12 evils, six in the plural indicating particular actions: sexual vices, thefts, murders, adulteries, acts of coveting and wickednesses, and six in the singular describing habitual attitudes: deceitfulness, wantonness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly or lack of moral judgement.