Julio Hernandez
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August 29, 2021

Texts:
     Mark 7:1-23
     James 1:17-27

Mark 7:8 “Having no regard for the command of God, you hold fast to human tradition.” New English Translation

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  1. Glimpse into the Early Church
    1. Conflicts:
      1. Jewish/Gentile Divide
        1. v. 1-8 Purity and Piety: Where do I belong?
        2. v. 9-13 Property: What belongs to me?
  2. Heart
    1. Inheritance from Greek Philosophy
      1. Divide between the heart and the mind
      2. Distrust of the Heart (Jeremiah 17:9)
        The heart is deceitful above all things
            and beyond cure.
            Who can understand it?
    2. Hebrew Tradition
      1. Entire Interiority
        1. Heart
        2. Soul
        3. Mind
      2. Sound Familiar?
        1. Matthew 22:36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
          37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

  3. Heart Abandoned
    1. Weary Heart
      1. Matthew 11:28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
    2. Sometimes the heart is so broken and damaged.
      1. Psalm 51 My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
            a broken and contrite heart
            you, God, will not despise.
      2. Pharrell
        1. Pharrell taking about Something in the Water Festival You have heard: You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. You are skipping a step here. How about, it sees itself for the first time and it sees its strengths.
    3. Definition:
      1. Abandoned: to give up with the intent of never again claiming a right or interest in
      2. to give (oneself) over unrestrainedly
    4. Let us return to the Creator
      1. The one who loves us entirely, you are called the first fruits of creation
      2. The one who calls us out of evil into abundant life
        1. This interior life includes:
          1. James writing:
            1. Listening ear
            2. Slow tongue
        2. Outward movement (inward movement is intimately tied to the outward)
          1. Mirror to the Church Resurrecting Faith after Genocide in Rwanda by Emmanuel Katongole with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
            1. In 1994, in the nation of Rwanda, some 800,000 people were killed. It is a challenge–heartbreaking because it was a country formed by Christianity. When [Cardinal Roger Etchegaray] visited Rwanda on behalf of the Pope in 1994, he asked the assembled church leaders, "Are you saying that the blood of tribalism is deeper than the waters of baptism?" One leader answered, "Yes, it is.” (p. 22)

              “A book about the Rwandan genocide must be a book about bodies,” Katongole

              Human Bodies and the body politic were deeply broken. The “prophetic posture,” will be discovered only by immersion in the “deep brokenness of our world.” At the point of crying, “How long, O God?”,  the church can be resurrected into a living hope. Mark R. Gornik

      3. To care for the excluded ones, those who lack power and money
        1. Care of Orphans
        2. And distressed widows
    5. Let the heart be abandoned to Christ, we will be engulfed in the life for which Jesus lived and died and rose again.