Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9.

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1 Biblical Words Vol. XI, No. 16B [257] Lectionary readings for 14 th Sunday after Pentecost, September 2, Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9; Psalm 15; James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, The ancestors of old received the fixed word of God, but sometimes God puts a comma in place of a period. (The readings from the Hebrew Scriptures continue to be the alternate readings given by the Lectionary.) The readings for this Sunday are about the authority of God s word as it directs the people s conduct. Deuteronomy presents the unchanging character of the written law, the Epistle the transforming power of the divine word, and in the Gospel Jesus sets law against human tradition, ending by freeing followers from most of the ceremonial law of Deuteronomy and Leviticus. Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9. This Torah reading stands at the beginning of one of the Moses speeches that introduce the Deuteronomistic History. Deuteronomy 1-4 is the introduction to the entire History, encompassing events from Moses to the exile (including most of the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings). This opening speech of the whole History foresees the exile, including the change of heart that the defeated and scattered people will experience after the judgment has come upon them (4:25-31). The setting of the speech presents Moses addressing the people in the eleventh month of the fortieth year of the wilderness sojourn (Deuteronomy 1:3). The speech declares that Israel is here receiving a magnificent body of instruction from God which they must be absolutely certain to observe. Give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am giving you to observe, so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you (verse 1, NRSV). Keep the law so you can live in the land. The torah says that was the original instruction to Israel. The hearers in exile understand that it is again the instruction God gives if they want to return to the land and flourish in it again! A body of law has been delivered; its integrity must be protected. You must neither add anything to what I command you nor take away anything from it (verse 2). The essential requirement for a canon of scriptures down through the ages really began (for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) with Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy is to be written down, kept in a sacred place, and publicly attended to from time to time in the life of the people (31:9-13; note also the king is to have his own devotional copy of the law, 17:18-20). Later politicians must not tinker with this constitution on the pretext of updating it (...neither add anything...nor take away anything... ). Though they were the progressives of their own age in many ways for example in their attitude toward animal sacrifice the Deuteronomists did not intend to assist future progressives who would also face the need to modernize this scripture!

2 Psalm 15. If in Deuteronomy those who are acceptable to God are those who keep the law, the psalm reading announces who can qualify to enter God s presence in the holy place (God s tent, verse 1, here a metaphor for the temple). At the security check-point for entrance to the sacred palace (the temple is structured as a royal residence), the following qualifications must be met by ticket-holders. Actions. o Walk blamelessly. o Do what is right. o Do no evil to one s friends. o Keep one s oaths, even when it hurts. o Charge no interest on loans (within the community). o Do not sell influence for bribes. Speech and attitudes. o Speak the truth from the heart. o Do not slander friends and neighbors. o Despise wicked behavior. o Honor those who fear God. Whoever the attendants at this security check-point may be, they must have penetrating vision and insight into both the actions and speech of those who would reach God! One s whole social conduct as well one s neighborly attitudes must be cleared if one is to complete this journey with the Lord. James 1: The Epistle readings now shift to another letter in the New Testament, the Letter of James, quite different from the letter to the Ephesians we have heard from for the last several weeks. This writing is addressed to the twelve tribes in the Dispersion (1:1), which at least means people outside Palestine, whether Jewish, Jewish-sympathizers, or entirely non- Jewish believers in Jesus as the Christ. Comment on James the Brother. It is romantic to think that the James who writes this letter is the brother of Jesus as Church tradition in the fourth and later centuries gradually decided but the concerns of the letter and the circumstances of those addressed do not fit well the historical situation of James the Just (as even his Jewish opponents called him). This James, the brother of Jesus, was the head of the Jerusalem church from around 41 CE (see Acts 12:17; Galatians 2:9 and 12; Acts 15:13 and 19). That James was murdered in 62 CE by Zealots during the turbulence leading to the Jewish revolt against Rome (reported by the Jewish historian Josephus).

3 The Letter of James was written in Greek and is a collection of memorable sayings in the manner of wisdom literature. It does not have a structure of thought so much as a succession of themes with sayings grouped around each theme. In the passage for today there is strong emphasis on the power of the word. [God] gave us birth by the word of truth (verse 18, NRSV), [W]elcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls (verse 21). This passage goes on to make very clear that the word involved is an instruction for how to live. The hearers of the letter must be doers of the word and not only hearers. They should be not hearers who forget but doers who act (verse 25). Our passage concludes with a declaration that is truly memorable: Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress Wherever God s people, of whatever description, are dispersed, this should be the word implanted in them that constantly receives new birth. Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, After many weeks pondering the Bread of Life in John 6, we return for the Gospel reading to Mark. In one sense this is a big shift, but in another it continues the Jewish-Christian tensions of John s Gospel. Our reading is selected verses from a passage that establishes a major break between the Jesus movement and the Pharisees and later Rabbinic Judaism. As a reformer, Jesus is not simply reinforcing the old law; he is changing it. He is definitely leaving out something (Deuteronomy 4:2)! He is leaving out the whole body of dietary rules that so fractured table fellowship, even among Christians themselves (Galatians 2:11-14). (For an impressive interpretation of this passage from a Liberal Jewish viewpoint, see the Special Note below.) The entire passage, 7:1-23, is a very composite, even inconsistent, block of Markan tradition. Most careful interpreters agree on this, but differ a lot in how they describe its development. As likely as any is a simple reading of four successive stages in the development of the tradition behind the passage. (This is NOT a description of stages of writing; it is stages in how Jesus people evolved their discussions of these related topics.) 1. The first issue was hand-washing before meals (verses 1-2, 3-4), a challenge raised by Pharisees against Jesus disciples not against Jesus, but against his disciples, that is, a conflict between Pharisees and early Jesus followers. This issue is raised but not actually addressed in the passage. It is now subsumed in the next, later issue. 2. The second issue is scripture versus traditions (verses 5, 6-8). Here Jesus elevates the hand-washing issue into a scripture issue: He cites a prophetic passage

4 (reflecting early Christian searching of the scriptures) that indicts the Pharisees because they place their oral tradition on an equal footing with Moses written torah. Verses 9-13 (not included in our reading) is an add-on example to support the charge about that oral tradition: the Pharisees supposedly elevate qorban vows above the written commandments concerning parents, which most scholars recognize was not historically true. 3. The third issue is Jesus revolutionary declaration about what actually defiles people (verses 14-15, 17-20). Not what goes into people (like food from unwashed hands) defiles them, but what comes out of people (verse 15). The basic concept is so far-out that Jesus has to have a special in-house session with the disciples to reinforce it (verses 17-19), a standard technique in Mark for identifying issues that came up in the later church. This discussion does not develop naturally out of what precedes but is a profound theological extension of the rejection of the Pharisaic purity laws. This is no longer a critique of the oral torah; it is a rejection of major parts of the Mosaic legislation itself. It is the freeing of Jesus believers from living by Leviticus. 4. Finally, a Hellenistic (non-jewish) inventory of what comes out of people: a list of human defilements (verses 21-23), which resembles lists of vices that appear in Paul s letters (Romans 1:29-31; I Corinthians 6:9-10; Galatians 5:19-21). The entire passage has moved from a local Pharisaic purity issue to a basic separation between two emerging world religions. This section marks the departure of Jesus followers from mainline Jewish practice, by at least 70 CE. Special Note: A Jewish Interpretation of Mark 7:15. The following is from C. G. Montefiore, The Synoptic Gospels (2d ed., 2 vols., London: Macmillan and Co., 1927), Vol. I, pp Mark 7:15: There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. (NRSV) (Paragraphing has been added to what in the original is a long unbroken text.) This section is of profound significance and value; it raises questions of the deepest importance. Indeed, from the point of view of Liberal Judaism it might be said that this section is the most important section in Mark, and that its salient and outstanding feature is verse 15 [quoted above]. For here Jesus enunciates a doctrine which appears not only to be new and emancipating, but which seems to constitute one of the two chief justifications or reasons for the main way in which Liberal Judaism looks at the old ceremonial law. For first of all came the old prophets of the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. They said: The true service of God is not ceremonial, but moral; God desires love and not sacrifices, the knowledge of Him rather than burnt offerings. Or again, as the Psalmist, upon the basis of this prophetic teaching, declared: Thou desirest not sacrifice else I would give it; thou takest no pleasure in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, thou, O God,

5 dost not despise. This teaching is resuscitated by Jesus; we have already met with it [earlier in Mark], and shall meet with it again. But here he says something which is akin to the prophetic doctrine, but is yet novel. There were two aspects of the old ritual and ceremonial practices, two sides to them. Some of them were supposed to affect God, and some of them were supposed to affect man. The prophets dealt mainly with those which were supposed to affect, please, or propitiate God, and they tell us that God does not care for them: it is not so that he is propitiated or pleased. In this section Jesus deals with those which were supposed to affect man, and these were mainly rules and customs about clean and unclean, which again depended upon conceptions very old, widespread conceptions about clean and unclean. Just as the prophets upset the old ideas about the service of God, so here Jesus upsets old ideas about clean and unclean. As the prophets moralized and inwardized men s ideas about the service of God, so Jesus moralizes and inwardizes men s ideas about clean and unclean. In a religious sense it is only man who can be clean and unclean; nothing else. Only man can make himself clean and unclean; outside things cannot make him clean or unclean. The conception of ritual or Levitical purity and impurity is overthrown and abolished. Upon these two doctrines, the doctrine of Hosea, upon the one hand, the doctrine of Jesus, upon the other, the new attitude of Liberal Judaism towards the ceremonial Law depends. But let this also be noted. Liberal Judaism does not stop there. It knows and realizes that human nature needs forms and ceremonies, and that a religion which is to satisfy human nature needs them too. After it has cleaned up the matter theoretically, after it has established the prophetic truth about the true service of God, and the no less essentially prophetic truth about clean and unclean, it can, in its freedom, bring back, reintroduce, or retain, such forms and ceremonies as it may think good.