Deacon Tom writes
“Pick a Number From One to Ten”
Have you ever seen the Mel Brooks skit about the Fifteen Commandments? It seems that when Moses came down from
Mt. Sinai, he originally had three tablets each containing five commandments
inscribed by God. But when Moses got to the bottom of the mountain, he dropped
one of the tablets. Moses looked over his shoulder at the Lord who was still in
the cloud at the top and asked Him, “What
should I do, Lord?” God
replied, “Let’s go with ten!”
How many commandments do we need to live wholesome,
peaceful, and humble lives? Jesus
takes the Ten Commandments and reduces them to a single one with two equal
parts… “Love God with all your heart,
mind, and strength; and, love your neighbor as yourself”. So when Jesus is
challenged by some Pharisees about washing his hands before eating, he calls
them what they are…hypocrites. Jesus
knows that this notion of ritualistic purity is a diversion from doing the real
work that God calls us to do. In fact, a lot of the work God calls us to do is
pretty dirty if not totally ritualistically unclean. Working with the homeless
or in AIDS clinics or Soup Kitchens may get your hands dirty but such activity
is sure to open your eyes to a level of poverty and how deprived of personal
hygiene many poor and indigent men, women, and children experience day to day. There
is a large contingency of our brothers and sisters today for whom eating off of
dirty plates is the least of their problems. Newsflash… Jesus is not worried about us eating from dirty
dishes! The filth Jesus wants to alert and cleans us from is that which comes
from within – our hardheartedness, our deafness to the needs and concerns of
others, our self-centeredness, our out of control desires, our lusting for
what’s not ours. So again, how many commandments do we need to save us from
ourselves? Ten? Seventeen? Do we decide which number is right for us – just like the
Serta sleep bed, or are we going to listen to what the teacher has to say…and
take up our cross and follow him by loving God and placing ourselves in the
service of one another?
God didn’t bring us into creation to get caught up in the
minutia. We do need rules to guide
and govern our lives. And so Jesus gave us some simple ones to live by. If we
want to live happy and fulfilling lives, we must see in ourselves and in each
other the dignity that God has given to us. We must come to recognize that God
dwells in each and every one of us. And, we must realize that we come to know,
love, and serve him by knowing, loving, and serving one another. We don’t need
a lot of rules to live a[i] good life. Rather
we must, in the words of St. Paul, “Be doers of the word and not hearers only”
following Jesus’ example by Loving
God and each other.
Enjoy the day!
Deacon Tom
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