Big Love and Sacred Tradition

I don’t know about you, but I have always worked at a place that had a dishwasher. Even though this was the case, there was always that guy (and yes it usually was a guy) who thought he was doing us a favor when he swished his pate and fork in the sink with the proverbial three-week-old smelly kitchen sponge and tossed them into the drying rack.

I am not really a germaphobe, but I freely confess that I would immediately put those dishes straight into the dishwasher one second after my colleague left the room!

At first glance our Gospel seems to be about the poor hygiene habits of Jesus disciples. But that is not what our passage is about. In the ancient Jewish world in addition to venerating we now call the Old Testament the Jews also venerated the traditions of the elders who formed a succession of rabbis going back for centuries.

Initially this was a purely oral tradition passed on with great care. Around the year 200 AD these traditions were written down in a work called the Mishna.

The longest section of the Mishnah, is called Keilim (or "Vessels") and it contains 30 chapters of rules for the ceremonial washing of pots and pans. Jesus conflict with the Pharisees was not about hygienebut about ritual cleansing.

At first glance Jesus response appears to be rejecting the idea of Tradition. Jesus calls the scribes and Pharisees hypocrites and says, quoting Isaiah that they are “teachingas doctrines the precepts of men.” Jesus say to them, “Youleave the commandment of God, and hold fast the tradition of men.” (7:8).

Many Protestants would use these words as a proof text for the idea that we should follow the Bible alone and reject all human traditions as the mere “precepts of men.” Jesus may have rejected these Jewish traditions, but his disciples regarded apostolic Tradition quite differently.

St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, “I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I have delivered them to you” (1 Corinthians 11:2).

And to the Thessalonians, “So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter. (2 Thessalonians 2:15). In his later writings St. Paul says that apostolic tradition was to be kept (1 Tim 6:14; 2 Tim 4:7), clung to (Titus 1:9), guarded (1 Tim 6:20; 2 Tim 1:12, 14), protected (1 Tim 6:1) and passed on faithfully from one generation to the next (2 Tim 2:2)."

The faith which was entrusted to the Apostles and passed down to the Church throughout all ages is revealed by God in both Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition which “make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God” (DV 10, CCC 97).

I think we all have an idea what the Sacred Scripture might be, but what might be a contemporary example of Sacred Tradition. Beginning in 2006 HBO ran a five session television series called Big Love which portrayed a fundamentalist Mormon who has three wives.

With all the civil changes to our modern definition of marriage, can those who claim to follow the Bible alone prove that polygamy is contrary to God’s plan?

The idea of Big Love, --polygamy (multiple wives) or polyandry (multiple husbands), is not likely to trigger anyone here. As yet no one in our culture has advocated to make Big Love a human right. Hollywood has not begun to insert token Big Love characters in every movie and TV series. And thankfully we don’t have a shameful Big Love lobby among Catholics. But what do we make of Big Love?

What does the Bible say? The reality is that the Old Testament assumes the possibility to polygamy, and the New Testament assumes that this is wrong, but it never explicitly says so.

The main reason that we know that Big Love is contrary to God’s intentions is that the unbroken tradition of Jesus passed down through the apostles has been to believe that marriage is a sacrament for the baptized exclusively between one man and one woman.

As important as this teaching is, it comes to us primarily from Sacred Tradition. Our understanding of marriage comes from the discipleship of Jesus to his Apostles which was then passed on by them to bishops.


Sacred Tradition is actually a safeguard that prevents us from reinterpreting Scripture to agree with our own personal ideas about what it means to be human. Jesus counters a false understanding of being human not with rules but with an authentic understanding of the human person. What he calls the human heart.

The human heart or the center of our being was created by God for happiness. I haven’t actually watched the HBO series Big Love but if it were portrayed truthfully the characters in this drama would experience a great deal of unhappiness living this way.

Often when we think about morality we think about just following the rules or “catholic guilt” as some call it. The moral section of the Catechism counters this idea by beginning with the topic of happiness.

In fact, the Catechism has 360 paragraphs before it even introduces the ten commandments. The moral life is about living in the Spirit, being authentically human and seeking God’s happiness. The Ten Commandments just help us when we are lost at sea and need a moral compass.

Unfortunately, left to our own devices it is very easy to rationalize. Someone might say, “I have a cousin and he is into Big Love and he appears happy.” Jesus is merciful, and a friend of sinners, and we are always only one confession away from returning to Jesus, but Jesus doesn’t let us make up our own definition of being human

In today’s gospel Jesus says, “evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man.” (Mk 7:21–23).

These are not mere rules, but an authentic God given assessment of what it means to be human and a call to a counter cultural way of life that leads to our happiness.

We should also point out that Jesus called the Jewish leaders who rationalize and lead people to contradict this way of life based on their own human traditions, hypocrites. Sadly, in the history of the Church hypocrisy in leadership is not a thing of the past.

I will let St. James in our second reading have the final word, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” (Jas 1:27).

Jesus is calling each one of us today both to love the world and to live a life of holiness. Jesus is calling you today. Will you accept the call?

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A Empty Row of Faith

This gospel passage made me think of planting vegetable gardens on a farm. We would turn the soil, pick all the weeds out, then rake the soil before planting rows of vegetables. I was always surprised though that sometimes nothing came up. The seed simply wouldn’t germinate and there would be an empty row. To be fair it was usually something a bit exotic like fennel or parsnip.

This Sunday’s Gospel is again about faith but instead of the positive examples of faith we saw last week, this week it is primarily about the failure of faith to take hold in our hearts. This week’s Gospel passage is an empty row with no germination of faith.

The passage ends with this amazing summary that Jesus “was not able to perform any mighty deed there, apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them” Think how strongly this is worded-- Jesus was not able to perform any mighty deed there.

Why would this be? The passage concludes. . . that Jesus “was amazed at their lack of faith.” The implication seems to be that Jesus allowed himself to be limited by their lack of faith. In this sense, he required their faith to perform the might deeds. Clearly our faith matters to Jesus.

Jesus desires more than anything else to see faith grow in our hearts. In light of this passage I would like to point out three things that are barriers to our faith that are revealed in this passage.

The first of the three barriers to our faith is not giving up our control. Remember a seed must actually die before it grows.

When Jesus returns for the first time in this Gospel to the village of Nazareth, the people aren’t willing to accept him in his new role as prophet. In this tiny village of a few hundred people they don’t want to allow things to change. If we are not careful, our petty human traditions can also become a serious barrier to our faith.

The second barrier to faith is the problem of thinking we know better. My mind is already made up, don’t confuse me with the evidence. The people in the tiny village of Nazareth, were unwilling to learn from Jesus. They thought they had it all figured out.

Are we completely self-reliant? Are we wise in our own eyes? As St Peter reminds us, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (I Peter 5:5). Is it possible that even very religious people are guilty of this kind of thinking?

I would like to use a modern example of this problem. In today’s Gospel the villagers reply concerning Jesus, “Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?”

The Catholic Church believes that The Virgin Mary remained perpetually a virgin, before, during and after the birth of Jesus. Jesus, therefore, has no biological brothers or sisters. This is a dogma of the faith at the highest level of belief.

I have met modern Catholics, however, who have read about Jesus’ brothers and sisters in their English Bible and immediately assumed that they know better than the Church. I fact they assert that only a dummy would believe otherwise since it is clear and obvious in their Bibles. Let’s be fair at first glance this does seem to be a problem.

The words brother and sister are in the Bible of the ancient Church as well, but our forefathers didn’t think this was an obvious problem. In the ancient Church, no one even dared to suggest that Mary had other children until the 4th Century and that person, named Helvidius, was immediately condemned as a heretic.

If the New Testament so clearly highlights Jesus ‘brothers’ how did the Church interpret this?

In the Eastern church there is a tradition, in the Protoevangelium of James, that Joseph, the foster father of Jesus, married as young man to a woman that was not the Virgin Mary and he raised a family. Then after his first wife died he entered a second marriage, as an older man, to the young Virgin Mary of Scripture.

If this is the case no one who knew Joseph would assume that Joseph’s children were actual brothers of Jesus bythe Virgin Mary, but rather would realize they came from his previous wife.

In the Western Church we answered this question differently. We have always assumed the persons named as “brothers and sisters” were in fact cousins of Jesus. Semitic languages did not make a clear distinction between bothers and cousins.

I am reminded of a time when I was employed as an English as second language teacher in a public school. I was doing a language exercise with group of Punjabi boys and I asked each of them how many brothers and sisters they had.

Young Harpinder Singh* answered me with an absurdly high number like twenty and the other boys began to laugh.

The other boys said something to him in Punjabi and he immediately changed his answer and said “Oh, three brothers.” Punjabi apparently doesn’t distinguish clearly between cousin and brother.

Perhaps the writers of the New Testament were thinking in Aramaic but writing in Greek and mixed up the notion of cousin and brother as did Harpinder.

What seemed obvious at first is less clear after examination. Either one of these answers is a reasonable explanation.

A final barrier is simple prejudice. I mean this is a very general sense. In many cases we assume that our way is better, or more correct than everyone else. But we don’t stop there we also look down on anyone acts or who thinks differently than we do.

Perhaps we should say that acts differently than our friends or family do, because prejudice is a social vice which is shared with others. This is especially true if there is a click or a group of people who have built their identity around a certain view.

Today’s Gospel presents us with a challenge. We each need to examine ourselves and ask: Do I have these barriers to faith? Are we reluctant togive up our control and to allow God to have his way? Are we overly self-reliant and wise in our own eyes? Are we open to learn new things? Do we take time to study and learn about our faith? Finally, are we part of click or a group of people who have built their identity around a certain view? Do we look down on others? Could this be prejudice?

Once again, the antidote remains the same as last week. Have we spent time getting to know Jesus in the Scriptures and in prayer? Have we examined who our friends are and the influence they are having on our spiritual life? As I asked last week: Is Jesus in your boat? And Who is in the boat with you?


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*a realistic but fictitious name