For Sunday
Proper 17B
Collect
Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.
Amen.
Reading
Reflection
There is something delicious in listening to a clapback. When somebody responds to another person’s criticism with a bit of turn-about; a sort of Well, why don’t you do this thing, Mr. High and Mighty! We might read this week’s gospel with that same level of sass. Or we might find ourselves reminded of the Russian psyops technique known as whataboutism: which is when one wiggles out of their problem by suggesting their opponents are hypocrites who are guilty of that same problem. Is this really what Jesus is up to this week?
I wouldn’t say so. At least, not in the ways we think.
Both of the persuasion techniques I’ve describes are combative and intentionally undermine the authority of others, generally for some short-term gain. Jesus, however, is facing the same interlocutors he’s been facing for five chapters—and they aren’t being terribly honest. Nor are they likely to consider his teachings as valid.
More important than the honesty of Jesus’s interlocutors is how Jesus turns the teaching around, using them as an example of his teaching itself. This the same thing he did all the way back in chapters two and three when his critics confronted him about the Sabbath. He used their restrictive, punitive, physical interpretation (often sited as the source of the tradition) to highlight the limitation of that interpretive strategy. Jesus is arguing that purity isn’t about the act of hand-washing itself, for instance, but about being a person of purity. Which is why we are to worry less about being corrupted than about being a source of corruption.
The challenge for anyone in Jesus’s shoes is not about getting the strategy “right”. It is about keeping one’s focus on what is good. And what provides a good experience for others.