Perfect Gift From Above

Readings (Year B):

Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8
Psalm 15:2-3, 3-4, 4-5
James 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Law of Love

The Ten Commandments, a “perfect gift…from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17), inscribed the God who is love in stone but did not vivify stony hearts. Scribes and Pharisees steeped in the law drowned their hearts in the minutiae of tradition, which blinded their minds to real human needs. Warned by Moses not to “add to” nor “subtract from” God’s life-giving law (Deuteronomy 4:2), legalists rendered the law lifeless by oppressive misapplication.

The people of the word are called to embody its truth: “The one who does justice will live in the presence of the Lord,” the Psalmist sings. The “word of truth” begets new life, nurturing a “religion that is pure and undefiled,” which cares for the poor and afflicted (James 1:18, 27). 

Hand washing rituals and the purification of cups, jugs, kettles, and beds failed to produce interior purity, the goal of religion. Jesus shook his hearers out of their rigid conformity to pay attention to their center: “Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile” (Mark 7:15).

The Messiah, who came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17), lived and breathed the two tablets of Sinai in his flesh. The “Ten Words,” as the Israelites called them, encompass one universal command to love God and neighbor (Mark 12:33, Matthew 22:36-40, Luke 10:27). The universal law of love became flesh in Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd of Israel and the whole human race. 

Christ is truly God’s “perfect gift…from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no alteration or shadow caused by change” (James 1:17).

Traditional Chinese Translation

《上頭賜下的完美禮物》
從西乃的石版到道成肉身的話語、
愛的律法取了生命的様式出現在大牧人身上。