EARNING GOD'S REWARD?

February 9^th, 2021: Mark 7:1-13

“You hypocrites,” Jesus says in the gospel. He spoke those words not to open and notorious sinners, but to Pharisees: people who prided themselves on their exact fulfillment of God’s law. He condemns them with words taken from the prophet Isaiah: “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts.”

Jesus follows these words with an example of what he is talking about. You Pharisees, he says, are careful to obey purely human rules (washing of cups, cleansing of your hands after you return from a shopping expedition). Yet you explain away the fifth of God’s Ten Commandments: “Honor your father and mother” by saying, “If someone says to father or mother, ‘Any support you might have had from me is korban' (meaning, dedicated to God), you allow him to do nothing more for his father or mother. You nullify the word of God in favor of your tradition that you have handed on.”

Who are today’s Pharisees? They are people who think they can earn rewards from God. In reality, God’s love and our salvation are not things we can earn. They are God’s free gift. God bestows his gifts on us not because we are good enough, but because He is so good that he wants to share his love with us. God’s law is not the list of rules and regulations that we must first obey before God will love us and bless us. God’s law is, rather, the description of our grateful response to the love and blessing which God has already bestowed on us out of sheer generosity.  

          Does this mean that there is no “just reward” for those who do try to obey God’s law? Of course not. God’s reward for faithful service is certain. Jesus tells us this in many gospel passages. He warns us, however, that those who try to calculate their reward in advance will be disappointed. The people who are most richly rewarded – who are literally bowled over by God’s generosity – are those who never stop to reckon up their reward because they are so keenly aware of how far short they still fall of God’s standard. 

          If we want to experience God’s generosity (and is there anyone here who does not?), we must learn to stand before God with empty hands. Then we shall experience the joy of Mary, who in her greatest hour, when she learned – astonished, fearful, and confused – that she was to be the mother of God’s Son, responded with words which the Church repeats in its public prayer every evening:

          “The hungry he has given every good thing,

                   while the rich he has sent empty away” (Lk 1:53).