For a minute or two, will you consider what is at the heart of your relationship with God? What do you do daily to nurture God’s presence in you?

Today’s story from Mark comes on the heels of Jesus being questioned in the temple. In this passage, Jesus and his disciples are eating a meal when they are criticized by the Scribes and Pharisees who noticed that the disciples had not ceremonially washed before the meal. The religious rulers asked why the disciples would omit something so basic to Jewish life? Ritual hand washing was considered an integral part of Jewish faith and identity.

So, the Scribes and Pharisees remind them of the rules. You don’t eat without ritual washing, you don’t eat what you don’t wash from the market, and you don’t use pots or pans or cups that haven’t been washed without ceremony.

As usual, Jesus changes the trajectory when he challenges them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘this people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” Suddenly, this isn’t about rules, this is about something more basic, something inside of us. He uses the example, “there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come.”

In other words, Jesus is changing the formula here—it’s not what is outside you that is unclean. The things we eat don’t enter our hearts, they enter our stomachs to be used as needed and discarded. The Scribes and Pharisees were focused on calling out external rules. Their intentions were to embarrass Jesus in front of those who respected him and a public show of their outward religious behavior rather than a sincere devotion to God.

Jesus doesn’t criticise them personally, but challenges how the Scribes and Pharisees’ attitudes affect them personally. It’s like a child touching a hot stove, you don’t say they have “bad behaviour” but you teach them the consequences of that behaviour. Jesus never says, yes, you are right, we didn’t follow the rules. It is a much deeper and broader conversation.

So, what is at the heart of our own relationship with God? Jesus challenges us to explore the habits and practices of our spiritual lives.

What Jesus was saying to the Scribes and Pharisees is that often we mistakenly think that if we know facts about God and do good deeds, we are on the right track spiritually. How have you grown spiritually in the last year? We have to be reminded and re-reminded what is important to God and why. The Scribes and Pharisees’ criticism was based on the broken rule, not the intent behind the rule that was to show purity of body and heart in service to God.

Perseverating on the rules leads to moral rigidity, superiority over others who are different from ourselves, or our own spiritual satisfaction, instead of choosing to live out right relationships, kindness over insisting you’re right, compassion over condemnation.

James’ letter was written to assist churches to work out their faith in good deeds and spiritual habits. Verse 17 in chapter one begins, “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above.”

This theological claim is the most important starting point for thinking about building compassionate relationships with God and one another because it grounds human responsibility within God’s purpose. God nurtures us and provides direction for our lives through scripture, in the everyday occurrences in our lives and through other people. Verse 17 affirms that what we get from God is what we give to others. When we intentionally cultivate our relationship with Christ, the natural result is a loving heart.

James instructs Christians about daily life. He names the things he is most concerned about. For example, James is keenly aware of the power of human speech both to build up and to destroy. In other words he says, Be slow to use the tongue, or bad-mouth others, or go on the warpath, or cause trouble.

James was a keen observer of human nature, and he paid close attention to the details of everyday living. He also noticed the generous acts, the gestures and the words we use that build community and hold people together. Why was James especially concerned with the way we use words? Because they do make a big difference in the way we relate to one another.

James knew that our words reveal something about our motivation, our intention, our belief, and our emotional response. Our emotional life grows from our earliest relationships with others and with God. It also reflects our relationship with ourselves. James points out anger, for example, is an emotion that can be destructive. Anger can also be an emotion that alerts us to wrongdoing. Think of a time recently when you were angry. Did you lash out at someone and double down on your own rightness? Or did it lead you to a compassionate conversation to discover another’s perspective rather than what you perceived to be true?

Hear a series of imperatives that punctuate James’ letter, “You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.” This is the doing. Are you quick to listen and slow to speak? Or, are you more often deciding how you will respond with your own response or forming a judgement about the other person?

That is really the bottom line, our spiritual habits begin in the heart and influence our behaviour toward others. What we develop from God working in us determines how we respond to others. Rules are external markers. The central habits of our heart are how we live out what is important to God.

But the scripture doesn’t tell us exactly how to develop a spiritual center. But, there is a progression. Jesus and James are teaching that we don’t just hear and follow external rules without a conscious choice to cultivate the habits that come from the heart. How do our daily habits, religious or otherwise, encourage our awareness of God and impact our relationships with others? How do we evaluate the implications of what we do?

Instead of focusing on the “rules” or noticing when others are not living up to our expectations, scripture calls us to pay attention to our own holy habits. We choose daily to mold those habits and choose behaviours that are more in line with a heart that is right and pure and peace filled.