22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B. By Tobe Eze

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B.

FIRST READING
Deuteronomy 4:1—2, 6—8

SECOND READING
James 1:17—18, 21b—22, 27

GOSPEL
Mark 7:1—8, 14—15, 21—23

THEME: THE SPIRIT OF THE LAW NOT THE LETTERS OF THE LAW.

In many communities of the world, people try to obey every letter of the law guiding the community without thinking about the spirit of the law. Many are more interested in what did the law say and forget what the law is trying to achieve. They also forget the mercy God is giving us example of it in our everyday lives. Some even like to multiply rules given them to guide the people to the extent that it will be very difficult for the people to obey them. Some villages make wicked rules that will favour some and not some. Continue Reading............................

In the first reading, God through Moses gave his commandments to the people to obey. He continued explaining them to his people through Moses and other leaders he appointed for them but they seem to be doing more of hearing without doing. In an occasion, they shouted, all that the Lord said we shall do. Few steps after, they will do otherwise and you will be thinking, these commandments, are they for who? It is not enough to hear those laws but what are the effects? That is what the second reading is saying.

The Lord has given us many gifts from above and St. James is telling us to allow those gifts planted in us to bear good fruit through being hearers and doers of the word of God not only taking only hearing and leaving doing. We must combine the two if we want to go into the Promised Land as Moses told the Israelites today and to us now.

The gospel brought it to bare, the act of obeying the letters of the law and not the spirit of the law. They were complaining about not washing hands not for cleanness or health purposes but because the tradition said. This tradition they are talking about is gotten from multiplication of the Lord’s commandments. They were not interested in the origin of those traditions, effects and so on but do people obey it.

Many communities now especially in this part of the world are going back to some things they call traditions without asking proper questions. In my own place now, people especially the young are going back to masquerading in the name of maintaining culture or tradition, they go back to paganism in the name of tradition or culture. (Akatakpa, Omabe, Otimkpu, Odo, Kapko, Edi, Ori okpa, Ogede, Otunju and many of them)

Many of these are men’s invention when they had not seen light. Some are for merriment or entertainment. The attachment of other fetish things are to make people think that this or those things are from the land of the spirit. When we were small, they were telling us that those masquerades we see come out from the ground and we believed them. They show off some gestures that people attribute charms to. The church in their quest to inculturate some of these things are now playing those masquerades and doing those things they do in other to tell people that they don’t use charm to perform that.

Jesus is warning us not to stick to the letters of the law and not the spirit of the law. All we do in this world is born out of our wills. That is what Jesus is trying to tell us by saying that what goes into one does not destroy one but what comes out of one. He is talking about our different behaviours and characters not the food we eat. Let us watch how we stick to things we don’t know there origin in the name of tradition and law and embrace the trend of life that Jesus brought to us. THANKS AND HAPPY SUNDAY.