An anonymously given pearl of wisdom says: "Observance without reason is not worship, but idolatry." Sometimes the practice of our religion can become so convoluted that we lose sight of what is truly important. All our rules, laws and commandments are important! They are necessary guideposts to help us make good choices and decisions so we may truly live as children of the light. But they are a help, a means, and not our goal or the endpoint. Like the Pharisees in today's Gospel passage we can sometimes be more concerned that all the proper forms are correctly completed than we are with feeding the hungry!

Jesus came among us so that whatever might have separated us from God could be eliminated. As his disciples, we are called to be ministers of reconciliation and not busy ourselves in erecting barriers between God and us or between one another. Some say that William Tyndale fabricated the word "atonement" while he struggled to translate the New Testament into English. He could not adequately find a word to express the reconciliation wrought for us by Christ's life, death and resurrection and so created "atonement" from "at" and "onement." All of our faith practices, all of our words and deeds should seek to increase our onement or oneness with God. When they do not, perhaps we, like so many others, so often, have fallen into idolatry.