Spirituality is not a matter of private practices and knowledge: it is about learning to be oriented to life rather than death in the whole of your being and in your relations with others. – Ramon C. Gonzales

Texts: Mark 7.1-8,14-15,21-23; James 1.17-27; Song of Solomon 2.8-13.

P eople are different. They cannot be neatly sorted into the categories of good or bad according to their appearance, their manners, their beliefs or lack of them, or any of the other labels we attach to them.  Perhaps that ought to be a statement of the blindingly obvious. But mostly the world chooses to operate as if something else was the case - that people are to be favoured or disfavoured because they are unwell or tidy, native or foreigner, like us or not like us.

Just read the newspapers or watch the TV news with that thought in mind.  It soon becomes apparent that a major part of the human instinct is to respond positively or negatively to others (both individually and corporately) according to where they fit into our scheme of things - to see them as Christians or non-Christians, Muslims or non-Muslims, Jews or non-Jews, Catholics or non-Catholics, Evangelicals or non-Evangelicals, believers or non-believers, atheists or non-atheists.  In short, us or non-us, whoever 'us' happens to be.

Editor’s Notes: The author is a Filipino expatriate who is based in the United Kingdom. This website took the literary liberty of reprinting Mr. Gonzales’ posting in an Internet discussion group of Overseas Filipinos and participants from the Philippines. The thread of the online discussion is “Incarnated Soul Versus ‘Soul and Body’.”

B ut although there are moments of exclusivity in the New Testament, the predominant direction is towards a different way of valuing people, as Mark's Gospel and the Epistle of James make plain.  It is the often underplayed virtue of faithfulness (loyal stickability based on trust) that provides a sure path from this kind of mundane death-dealing with each other to the realization of shared abundant life.  But who or what do we stick with, and how?

Let us start with chapter seven from the Gospel of Mark - Jesus' confrontation with some Pharisees and scribes (one of many) concerning true purity and true pollution.  The context is that he and his followers have been accused of breaking the ritual law because they have been eating with unwashed hands.  Jesus' point is not that cleanliness is to be hated.  Rather He is saying that in the eyes of God it is whether you show a good heart that matters, not whether you can meet certain standards of physical perfection or symbolic purity.

To us this probably seems uncontroversial - well, until our kids decide that they don't need to use the bathroom before the next meal, at least! But in Jesus' setting it was much trickier, much more fundamental to the identity and sense of belonging (even entitlement) of a people.  This is how it worked.  The Jewish religion, Jesus' faith community, was felt by those who cherished it most to be in deep trouble.  It was threatened by the Roman Empire and it was squeezed with internal uncertainty.  What is more, the development of the Law on which it was based seemed impossibly hard for many ordinary people to understand and implement.

So in order to preserve the endangered path of God, teachers and maintainers of the faith came up with clever ways to turn what seemed like a 'big ask' into small manageable tasks.  Such as remembering to purify your hands before you ate, for instance: because in this way you would know that the food you were receiving was a gift of God, not just any old bit of candy.  So it would be even more nourishing.

In other words, though you might not know it from reading the Gospels, the Pharisees (whose concern was to interpret the Law in a modern context) were often the good guys.  They were trying, in theory, to help some people who would not otherwise manage it, onto the right path. That is what Jesus wanted too. But he spotted a major problem. Some of these religious leaders were now using the ritual law to enslave people rather than to liberate them. Regulations which were meant to help the masses were actually being employed to find petty fault in others by a group of elders who thought that they were better and more pious than others.  Meanwhile, they ignored what really mattered to God – right relationships and active social evidence of an inner depth of love and faith.

In identifying His critics' hypocrisy, in other words, Jesus was attacking a form of religion which neatly categorized people as good or bad according to whether they were in 'the right group' and did or believed 'the right things'.  What He says, again and again, in His healings and in His arguments with the religious authorities, is this: "You think God loves you more than these unwell types – like my followers –  who are rendered impure by your increasingly characterized by excessive precision and attention to trivial details interpretations of the Law. You couldn't be more wrong.  What you are doing is usurping God, who actually loves us like a perfect parent and therefore wants the best for us all. In fact you've got it so wrong, that even prostitutes, whose very existence breaks every rule in the book, are entering God's realm before you are"! That's in St Matthew's account, by the way. One wonders how it might play out in our contemporary 'Anglican wars', and other brawls among the churches that claim to be Jesus' body today.

God’s Love Is Redemptive, So Amazing and So Divine . . .

W hat becomes clear, the more we plunge ourselves in these awkward (for us) Gospel narratives, is that the way and the life and the truth that is Jesus, in His incarnation of God's uncontainable love, challenges every method of a priori exclusion we human beings try to set up against one another – especially when it employs a 'religious' label. Instead, Jesus invites people into a new community where we recognize each other not as competitors for God's love, but as fellow citizens in a kingdom of limitless generosity made possible by the kind of love which is truly dispossessing – it does not operate from some secret self-interest, as ours often does. Rather, its redemptive quality is so amazing, so divine, that it even enables us to treat the enemy as a friend.

Elias Chacour, the Melchite Catholic archbishop, has put it like this with regard to one modern example of how Christ's love could transform us. Palestinians and Jews, he says, presently see each other mostly as a threat that must be contained or eliminated.  That is why conflict often seems the only logic.  This will only change when the different parties can see each other instead, as two wounded peoples loved equally and unsparingly by God.  In that way they will be able to look each other properly in the eye.  And then, instead of wanting to kill, they will want to cry over the hurt they have caused each other.  Because by recognizing the wounds of the other, rather than first finding fault, we find ourselves in the presence (whether we name him or not) of the crucified and risen Jesus who makes this possible in His body.

Jesus spotted a major problem. Some of these religious leaders were now using the ritual law to enslave people rather than to liberate them. Regulations that were meant to help the masses were actually being employed to find petty fault in others by a group of elders who thought that they are better and more pious than others.  Meanwhile, they ignored what really mattered to God – right relationships and active social evidence of an inner depth of love and faith. – Ramon C. Gonzales