Perfect freedom in worship means doing something

There are pendulum swings in seasonal transitions as there are in the liturgical life of the church. For example, the student transition from the laissez-faire environment of summer to the fall academic session of attentiveness, homework and team competition. The pendulum movement  might be felt by some attentive “hearers of the word” this Sunday, as the readings shift from the mystical bread of life discourse to a set of passages centered on practical matters related to the law.

Law is one of those broadly inclusive terms in Scripture, frequently used and misused in the sacred pages. Our first reading from Deuteronomy, known as the “second law” because it recaptures all the legal discourse from the books that come before it, captures the sense of law as a catch-all term. Moses says to the people, “What great nation has statutes and decrees that are as just as this whole law which I am setting before you today?” (Dt 4:8). 

When Moses says the phrase, “this whole law,” it could be interpreted as describing everything that comes within the accepted boundary of the written and oral legal tradition. We often think of the sacred text as binding a community to observe strictly a specific set of rules and customs that were written down. In the history of ancient Israel, however, the law meant everything from the wisdom of elders, the mandate of parents and the unwritten local dietary customs to the spirit of the prophets, as well as the written Torah. 

Holding on to this tension between moral and ritual observances, the Gospel today enters into the longstanding tradition of interpreting the law, an appropriate Jewish practice even to this day. At stake is the Jewish dietary observance, which is a growing concern for the increasing number of non-Jewish disciples of Jesus. “Nothing that enters one from the outside,” says Jesus to the gathering crowd, “can defile that person; but the things that come from within are what defile” (Mk 7:15). While all foods are being sanctioned by Jesus in this passage, this does not change the fact that dietary rules and customs continued to be followed in biblical times as they continue to be today for Jewish religious communities. What we see in this text is the universal phenomenon of discerning between the spirit of the law and the letter of the law. Every human community in every generation must struggle with the question of purpose and meaning to any law set upon a people.

What might be inspirational for some is the way James in the second reading today attempts to interpret law in light of defining religious sentiment. “Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves” (Jas 1:22). James ties the freedom to act as the core of law, calling it “the perfect law of freedom” in his rhetoric. The exhortation is meant to call all hearers of the word into responsible action (Jas 1:25). He goes so far as to define true worship. “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world” (Jas 1:27). 

The word religion is quite rare in the New Testament; when used, it usually implies the act of worship. May our worship, understanding of law and sense of freedom never drift too far from the theological option for the poor, as it holds true within the Letter of James.