Our heart drives us forward

Homily

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sunday 1st September 2024

First reading

Deuteronomy 4:1-2,6-8

Responsorial Psalm

Psalm 14(15):2-5

Second reading

James 1:17-18,21-22,27

Gospel

Mark 7:1-8,14-15,21-23

 

My mum has a saying, you may have heard it yourself, she says, “If things don’t change, they’ll stay the same”. However, what I have found is everything changes, nothing stays the same. The clock keeps ticking, the sun rises and falls. The seasons change. The garden changes, the weeds grow, so does the brambles, as does the grass. There is a constant need for maintenance. And if you don’t keep up, then things do get on top of you. Sometimes it can be hard to decide where to start.

Many find the workday goes past so fast and it seems like nothing gets done. The harder you try to get through the tower of paperwork, the higher it gets. In our technological age, where everything has gone paperless, the evidence may not be littered around the office, but the email folders certainly do, bulging with hundreds of emails each day. I remember having 32,000 unread emails in the Inbox, and it took ages to delete. And they remained unread. There wasn’t enough time to go through them and take any actions.

We have become slaves to what our offices require of us, demanding more of our time, but we must be more productive and efficient. Are these the human traditions that we are clinging to now?

I heard a story of a Chinese immigrant who had fought for his faith in China, and no matter what the authorities tried to do to him, they could not shake his beliefs. Yet as soon as he arrived in the West and started to work, he could find no more time to go to Church. Where he thought he would have religious freedom, the traditions we have all succumbed to in our daily lives had robbed him of his Christian practice.

Our laws and customs, the ones we are forced to follow in our daily lives do not seem to be designed to give us life but appear to be robbing our souls of eternal life. We are conditions through our education and on into work to practice in a certain way. But our lives seem to have been robbed from us. We are constantly being encouraged to think about the future, when we can have a better life, yet like a dangling carrot, that future never seems to materialise quite as we may have expected.

If we read the Bible, quite often we will find how life was not too dissimilar to ours. The technology may be different, but people’s attitudes seem to be the same. Most want to rebel against the rule of Law, seeing it to be restrictive. Moses was given ten simple rules to follow, but the Pharisees had over complicated everything in their interpretation which seemed to tie people up in knots. From the start of the Bible to the end, the stories told are of how God had tried to lead humans into a prosperous life, if only they would follow his simple methods. But we humans tend to want to go it alone, to do things our way, and when we do, everything goes wrong.

Moses simply asked the people to observe the laws he had been given, and by following them God had promised they would have eternal life. By carrying out these laws, the Israelites would be able to demonstrate wisdom and understanding, that would be recognised by others, who would want to follow them.

In James’s letter, he reminds us that we have all been planted with the word of God, which guides us to the truth. He encourages us to make it our lives not simply listen to it and deceive ourselves into thinking we do not need to practice what the word says.

Jesus warns us not to pay lip-service, to simply practice our faith without our hearts being in it. If we are acting in automatic mode, without understanding what it is we are doing, then our worship is worthless. What is in our heart’s matters. If we are driven by our selfish ways, then we will be letting evil be our driver. Jesus tells us that it is from our hearts that evil emerges which leads to sexual relationships outside of marriage, theft, murder, sexual relationships with someone other than our married partner, greed, spitefulness, deception, vulgar behaviour, jealousy, lying about another to damage their reputation, being arrogant and scornful, and being foolish or stupid.

It is from our hearts that we are motivated. Our heart drives us forward, it is the beat we march too. If what influences us is this world, our path will lead us to death. If our focus is on following God, our journey will lead to eternal life. If we follow the Word of God, we will never wrong our brother or sister. If we keep our promise, no matter what, help others without taking interest, do not accept bribes that will allow the innocent to be convicted, we will stand firm for eternity and live in the presence of the Lord.

Your words are spirit, Lord, and they are life.

Amen.