Week 14

Psalm: Psalm 15
Old Testament: Deuteronomy 4:1-9
Gospel: Mark 7:1-23
Epistle: James 1:17-27

Happy Labor Day, or whatever you want to celebrate this weekend. I would like to celebrate the unofficial end to summer except we’re still in the 90’s and humidity is back with a vengeance thanks to the remnants of Hurricane Isaac. This week we have a very clear theme present across all four scriptures, which doesn’t always happen.

Beginning with the Psalm, the writer asks, who may travel in God’s tents or dwell where God lives?  The answer is one “who walks with integrity, and works righteousness.”  This Psalm also has this strange line that the righteous person will not loan money at interest. It is generally agreed that this rule was in place for Israel to avoid oppressing the poor.  The people were to help and honor the poor and placing an interest on a loan could lead to oppression.  Similar teaching was in place for Jews, Christians, and Muslims throughout history and led to Jews being the bankers in Europe where interest was charged to Christians during the medieval ages.  A real interesting history to be studied there, but now is not the time.

Deut 4:5 says, “See, I have taught you statutes and judgments just as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should do thus in the land where you are entering to possess it.”  Much of the Old Testament and the history of Israel can be summed up by saying that those who obey the commands and statues of the Lord will be blessed.  Those who fail to follow the Lord’s commands will be cursed.  This is reiterated again in Moses’ last speech in Deuteronomy when he says, “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live.”

This command and choice is picked up and even intensified in the Gospel of Mark.  Jesus teaches that not only are we to follow the commands, but that we are to guard our hearts and thoughts.  This passage in Mark is interesting in a lot of ways.  We see that the Pharisees were more concerned with human tradition and setting that up against the divine law.  We see that the Pharisees were taking advantage of their own parents in the name of tradition.  We also see that the writer puts this little editor’s note, “Thus he declared all foods clean.”  No small thing to write if the debate between early Christians was still being had over what Old Testament laws needed to be followed.

James makes this exact point.  In verse 22 he writes, “But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.”  The question we have to ask ourselves at this point is what word, or whose word?  I found it interesting that even in Deuteronomy 4:2, the admonition is given not to add or take away from the word Moses has given.  What do we make of the writings of the prophets or the rest of the Old Testament, then?  What do we do with the New Testament?

I bring this up because I feel that some Christians think the answers are easy and we just open up God’s Word and there everything is in black and white.  Those Christians claim to read the Bible literally, but then wear clothes of different kinds of material and break Lev. 19:19.  We are always making judgment calls and reading some Scripture through the lens of other Scriptures.  We Christians believe that Jesus was the Messiah and Son of God, thus we read the Old Testament through that lens.  But this isn’t straight-forward or easy.

If we want to say anything, perhaps it might be that the distinction we make between the Old and New Testament is inappropriate.  We can’t set up one against the other.  I don’t pretend to have all answers, but I think some Christians really think all the answers are simple. Luckily for us, we have almost 2,000 years of Christians who have come before us to help us understand our faith.

Let me wrap up by kind of contradicting myself.  As much as our faith can be difficult to understand and there is TONS to talk about (it is what I’ve been studying for 8 years), this week reminds us our faith is about doing and not always understanding.  It doesn’t take a Ph.D.  to understand that we must love our neighbor.  We don’t need to read Greek to understand that Phil. 4 tells us to follow Jesus in his servanthood.  We don’t put our heads in the sand and ignore our questions, but we also don’t let our questions prevent us from loving as God has commanded us.

This week let us strive to not only be hearers (readers) of the word, but also doers.  Let us not only talk to God, but let us strive to hear and obey Him.

Grace and Peace.