“Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you” (Dt. 4:1,2). Keeping the law was to be Israel’s fame among the nations. Israel was not to be known for its wealth (although Solomon’s riches were immense); not known for its military power (although David was a fearsome warrior); not know for its diplomatic muscle, physical prowess, beauty, or culture. None of these was to define who Israel was as a nation. Israel was called to be a people of obedience, of observance, of “wisdom and understanding.” They were called out of all nations to be God’s own: “For the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted inheritance” (Dt. 32:9). When Israel prays, their God is near. God always loved His people. And He gave the Law to help Israel love Him and be faithful to Him. Old Testament scholar (and fellow Anglican) Peter Craigie put it this way: “The life of the Hebrews as a nation would depend on the law, not in a totally legalistic sense, but in that the law was the basis of the covenant, and in the covenant rested their close relationship to their God” (Craigie, 129).
“Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely” (Dt. 4:9). Israel must watch closely, must keep their hearts pure and blameless. That same word translated as “keep” in verse 2 (“but keep the commands of the Lord you God that I give you”) and and “observe” in verse 6 (“Observe them [the decrees and laws] carefully”). Keep the commands and keep yourselves.
But it is easy, too easy, to forget the deeds of God. “You saw with your own eyes what the Lord did at Baal Peor” (v. 4). “Only be careful…so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your hearts” (v. 9). What happened at Baal Peor? It was there that the Israelites joined with Moabites in worshiping Baal, engaging in fertility rites, and God sent a plague that killed 24,000. To give some perspective, that would be like 2 million people in the United States dead. The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami left 230,000 dead in its wake. Baal Peor was a tragedy etched into the mind of the nation. But like the 2004 tsunami, hurricane Katrina, or September 11, the memory fades year by year.
So too I know God’s work in my own life, but I must constantly recall it and fight to hold on to and keep fresh the memory. For Satan bombards us with diversions and irrelevancies and “urgent” thing, so that what is truly important we forget. Like Martha, we easily become “worried and upset about many things” when only one thing is needed (Lk. 10:41). We must choose the better part.
We must constantly recall the great deeds of God. This attitude pervades the Psalms. “Say to God, ‘How awesome are your deeds. So great is your power that your enemies cringe before you. All the earth bows down to you; they sing praise to you, they sing praise to your name” (Ps 63:3,4). “I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago. I will meditate on all your works and consider all your mighty deeds” (Ps. 77:11,12). “Among the gods there is none like you, O Lord; no deeds can compare with yours. All the nations you have made will come and worship before you, O Lord; they will bring glory to your name. For you are great and do marvelous deeds; you alone are God” (Ps. 86:8–10). We need to remember the great wonders, awesome deeds, fearful acts that God has done.
Do you remember a great thing that you did or that happened to you? A trip, party, a present? How do you keep that memory fresh? How do you keep it alive? You recount the event. You write about it in a journal to preserve the details while they are still fresh—we have the Bible and the Lives of the Saints. You tell your children and your grandchildren about it, and anyone else that will give ear. This keeps it fresh in your mind and instills the memory in others—we have Sacred Tradition, the “good deposit of faith that was entrusted to us” (2 Ti. 1:14).
Saints, we are not here to bury the Church! God is not dead. “Faith of our fathers living still / in spite of dungeon, fire and sword: / O how our hearts beat high with joy, / whene’er we hear that glorious word: / Faith of our fathers, holy faith, / we will be true to thee till death.” The faith of our fathers still lives in us, and we plant the seed of life in others. Man apart from God is dead, at best in the process of death and decay. We are here to take the talent that we were given and pass it on to our children, and that with interest.
What have I seen of God? What did my father and his father see? It gets fuzzy quickly. I had an amazing experience not terribly long ago—coming up on 5 years—a theophany. What is that? It’s when God shows himself to man. I must fight to remember now more than one hour or one day after it happened. On the way to Holy Eucharist, I blurted out, not from my flesh but the spirit within me, "Jesus, show me the horror of my sins." Shocked at the words issued aloud from my mouth, I hoped that no one, especially God, heard me. Then, I was making a holy hour prior to communion and, honestly, my prayers seemed to be bouncing off the ceiling. I was not receptive to God's touch. Then I saw that an elderly woman, crippled in the knees was struggling up the stairs outside. I got up, assisted her through the door and into her pew, then went back to my place and knelt. And Jesus answered my earlier prayer. He appeared to me, whipped, crowned with thorns. I was weak; I couldn't stand. I fell, and Jesus caught me. My arms embraced him, and I felt the gouges in his back, hanging flesh, sticky with dried blood. I was repulsed and wanted to depart. But Jesus held onto me, strengthened me for the moment. It was a powerful vision. Christ was a real to me as the pew I was sitting on.
So what now? Was that revelation, that experience of God’s might for me alone? Shall I take this talent and bury it in the ground till my master returns for it? Or did Jesus show me that vision, that theophany, for Steven and Nathan, for Deven and Micayla, for Rebekah and Matthew and Eli, for all the children? And for your sake too?
What great deeds of God have your own eyes seen? Did you see a Baal Peor, a fearful judgment of God? Did you see “sandals not wearing out,” God’s provision? And have you survived for a generation on manna? Have you seen Sinai cloaked in cloud, burning with fire and lightning, and shaking with thunder and the trumpet blast? Have you seen Zion clothed in myriad angels, with the saints in their white robes wending their way up the slopes, reverberating with the cry of the four living creatures, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come” (Rev. 4:8). Are you keeping it in constant remembrance? Are you sharing it?
Israel’s greatness lies in being the chosen people. Why is it so hard for Israel, for us, to watch ourselves and not forget? Other peoples have a physical idol: a golden bull-calf, an Asherah pole. Today men have their own idols: money—how about the GEICO commercials—, a government—which alone can save us from our problems—, the scientific community—which can cure any sickness, solve any problem if given enough time and if not held back by antiquated morality—, a TV or TV show, food, sports, sex. Any number of idols is available for the picking, tangible in an earthly sense…sort of… But money is fleeting—if you don’t believe it, just look at my 401(k). Sex is fleeting—just watch the commercials for drugs designed to recapture libido. Political power is fleeting—just observe the true impotence of any government to solve a single problem, except for a few band-aid fixes. Every idol that man tries to hold to fails; it cannot meet the need we think it should.
And what if it did? What if that stack of money was enough for my needs today as I now see them? I would have new “needs” pop up as soon as my old “needs” were met. In architecture, we call this “scope creep”. A contract is signed for a particular set of services; and as those services are provided, more are expected. This or that idol promises all satisfaction and happiness, but it leaves nothing but emptiness, hollowness, want. What we need is not an idol. If “the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want!”
Man’s earthly desires are ephemeral. Power fades. Can Sen. Kennedy use it any longer? Does it now profit him? When his daughter was having cancer treatment, and when he was being treated for his own cancer, did he go to Obama for consolation? Did he clutch his money for comfort? No. He spent his money on treatment—would have given it all for a cure. Power was spent, favors used, debts repaid and new ones incurred. But he returned to his roots, to the Root. He spent time in Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica praying.
God and Sen. Kennedy alone know if his conversion was real, and I pray that he died in a state of grace. But we can see that when all other ground is sinking sand, only one sure place can be found, God. “He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he” (Dt. 32:4). We cling fast to the Rock and stand against the storms. We have not an idol. We have a God—the God of gods. Therefore, let us obey Him, and teach obedience to our children. So that, “Then the Lord alone [will lead us] and there [will be] no foreign god among [us]” (Dt. 32:12).
So what happens when religion is not true? We find out in today’s gospel. Some of the disciples ate with unclean hands. It’s not that their hands weren’t hygienically cleansed, nor that they had committed a faux pas. The word “unclean” is koinoς, which means common, usual, ordinary, or profane. The disciples’ hands were not ceremonially clean. The Pharisees saw this as a spiritual failure—the disciples were unclean before God. They exercised their spiritual gift of criticism. The disciples were not responsible to them; rather, they were under the Lord Jesus. Surely, if Jesus had issue with their behavior he would tell them. He was no stranger to rebukes: “Get thee behind me, Satan;” “Who are my mother and brothers;” “If anyone wants to be the first, he must be the very last;” and in our recent gospel on the feeding of the 5000, “You give them something to eat.” No, the Pharisees were not so much scandalized by the disciples’ actions, as by Jesus disregard for the tradition of the elders.
The Pharisee had in mind a particular type of man and anything that fell short was lesser. This standard was not the construct of God in the Law, but their own traditions. Christ redeemed us to be men—men of His own image and likeness. Jesus came for you to be a true Adam according to the new Adam, no longer sons of a fallen man in the broken likeness of the old Adam.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wrote (letter to Eberhard Bethage, 7/13/1944):
“To be a Christian does not mean to be religious in a particular way, to make something of oneself (a sinner, a penitent, a saint) on the basis of some method or other, but to be a man—not a type of man, but the man that Christ creates in us. It is not the religious act that makes the Christian, but participation in the sufferings of God in the secular life.”
Religion that is a mass of outward acts and words, this is not enough. The Shema that we hear every Sunday, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord your God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength,” is followed by the God’s desire for true worship. “These commands that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates” (Dt. 6:4–9). God wanted the Law to be internalized, to become part of their lives.
That is how religion becomes acceptable. Yes, there are outward acts, words, rituals that are to be performed, but they are to be meditated upon, and made part of the soul.
Jesus did not say that ritualistic washings are without value, but that the interior disposition of the heart is of prime importance. Insofar as the ritual quickens a man’s heart to purity, it is good—a reminder and a symbol—it is sacramental.
So how do we use this? Easy. We tell of God’s deeds and we meditate on his law and observe it. Isn’t that simple? Who needs to get out of the service quickly? Okay, make sure you tell someone here what you have seen that God has done. And tell someone tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day. I’ve gotten off easy, I’ve already told 100 people about what God has done; that should cover me for 3 months. And meditate on God’s law. Pick one religious act that you do—I’ll wait….have you got it?—and meditate on it. What does that mean? Thomas Merton defines meditation as, “to exercise the mind in serious reflection.” It’s absorbing what we’ve taken in; your intellect meeting your soul. How does your piety relate to scripture? How does it relate to the life of our Lord? I have found this very fruitful in my own life; just ask Fr. Tom, Dcn. John, or any of the recently ordained clergy, and they’ll probably groan!
It’s back to school time for all God’s children. You have your homework. Reflect on your own religious practice. Tell one person how great is our God. In the words of St. Francis, “Preach the gospel, and if necessary use words.”
