Ash Wednesday, March 5, 2003
This sermon is first in series
of six mid-week sermons under the title
"They Responded to Jesus"
They Responded to Jesus
The Scandalized
"Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" - Matthew 9:11
When he shared table fellowship with outcasts and sinners the
Pharisees were scandalized.
If there was any one group of people who were scandalized by
Jesus it was most certainly the Pharisees. The best word I can think of to
describe their attitude and reaction to Jesus is scandalized.
On one really busy day Jesus healed an old woman, raised an
official's daughter from death, restored the sight of two blind men, and cast a
demon out of a man who couldn't speak. Instead of being awestruck and
overwhelmed by such incredible deeds of power, the watching Pharisee's accused
Jesus of being in cahoots with the devil. (Matthew 9)
When Jesus and his disciples violated sacred Sabbath day laws
by plucking heads of grain in order to eat the Pharisees were scandalized.
Another time when healed a man who had been crippled for 38 years, the Pharisees
once again were scandalized because he did it on the Sabbath. It reminds me of
the time many years ago when I got a tongue lashing from a woman at my home
church because I admitted to working in my garden on Sunday (Matthew 12)
It was the Pharisees who on repeated occasions tried to trap Jesus in theological Catch-22s to discredit him. The Pharisees were the perpetrators of a most disgusting scene when they snooped around and caught a couple in the act of adultery, and then dragged the woman before Jesus. Thinking they had him in one of those Catch-22s, they posed their calculated question, "We caught this woman in adultery, and the law of Moses clearly states that she should be stoned to death. What do you say Jesus?"
If Jesus said stone her they could accuse him of ignoring the love and forgiveness he talked so much about. If he said let her go they could accuse him of watering down and trivializing the sacred law of Moses. Either way they would have ammunition to discredit him in front of the people.
Of course, it was just here that Jesus unnerved the Pharisees more than ever when he stooped down, doodled in the sand with his finger, and then cut through all the baloney when he said, "OK, the one who of you who has never sinned can cast the first stone."
Jesus' impatience with the Pharisees reached a crescendo in
the 23rd chapter of Matthew in a thunderous verbal attack. Jesus
said,
"..do not do as the Pharisees do, for they do not practice what they teach."
"They lay heavy burdens on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to help them"
"They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues."
"Woe to you ... Pharisees for you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven."
"Woe to you .. Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe... but you have neglected the weightier matters of... justice and mercy and faith..."
"Woe to you... Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are
like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside are full
of the bones of the dead and of all filth."
The Pharisees were so threatened and scandalized by Jesus
that Matthew tells us they reached the point where they "went out
and conspired against him, on how to destroy him." (Matthew 12:14)
So who were these Pharisees? They were a religious sect within Israel that developed around the 2nd century B.C. a time when Israel had fallen under the influence of the Greeks and then finally the Romans, both of whom they came to dislike and finally even came to despise.
In the face of an outside culture that wished to water them
down, "heathenize" them, if you will, and absorb them into their culture, a kind
of strict "national education" system was organized by the Jews where all Jewish
boys were strictly schooled in the Torah. The roots of the Pharisees can be
traced all the way back to this educational movement.
The history of their development as a sect was complicated
and convoluted to say the least, and there may have been as many as 6 or 7 types
of Pharisees, but over time what emerged was a strict religious sect who was
trying to preserve the purity and integrity of Israel. In defense of the
Pharisees, it was largely due to their influence that Judaism even survived
after the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem along with it in 70 A.D.
Without their tenacity Talmudic Judaism and the more modern
Orthodox Judaism may never have emerged.
Nevertheless, Jesus took issue with some of the Pharisees,
but its important to note, not all. There are Pharisees
reported in the New Testament who cared about and respected Jesus, Pharisees who
lived up to the ideals that they taught and proclaimed. In Luke 13:31 we read
that a certain group of Pharisees came to Jesus to warn him that Herod was out
to kill him. There are Pharisees named who admired Jesus, like Nicodemus and
Joseph of Arimathea who became followers of Jesus.
What I want to say to you this evening is that there were a number of attitudes that Jesus did intensely react to, in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets, in some of the Pharisees whom he encountered. The point is that these are attitudes that you and I can and do also easily fall victim to in our relationships with people. When we employ these attitudes, I believe we radically depart from the course that Jesus desires for his disciples to take. The Pharisaic attitude has numerous aspects, but I will only hi-light three tonight.its
The first aspect is the attitude of taking
pleasure in judging others. You may be saying, "I
don't judge others. That doesn't apply to me at all." However, I
really do think many of us, and I include myself at the head of the line,
participate in an activity that I call menial sentencing.
The act of menial sentencing is the mind-set that is not willing or prepared to
bring their own actions, thoughts and motivations out into the open.
It goes something like this. I get up in the morning and go looking for the newspaper only to find it in the bushes next to the porch lying in the mud in which I have to step in my slippers to fetch it. Inconsiderate paper carrier. When I finally get to it I open it and find it full of people who are sinful, ignorant, arrogant or immature. Lumping whole groups of people together and dispatching the whole lot of them at once is especially effective. The thing about it is that the world always seems to cooperate with our assessments as long as we remain distant from any personal knowledge of any of these individuals.
Driving to work it is easy to find a host of inept vehicle
operators who all should have their driver's licenses revoked.
Miraculously, I arrive at the bank, a quick stop on my way to work, and I find
myself in line behind another group of people who obviously cannot add or
subtract or they wouldn't take so long to conduct their business making me wait.
Later in the day, at the grocery store, I might complain to myself about lack of organization that makes it impossible to find the few items I want; or complain about the inane Muzak that is coming out of the speakers; or what's taking the person ahead of me at the ATM so blooming long! I get to the check-out and the bagger asks me if I want paper or plastic. She smiles and reveals a wad of gum that is obviously way too big for her mouth or her pierced tongue. Getting the idea?
You see, this first attitude has eyes that only look
outward and never look inward, and if our eyes are looking for what is wrong
there will always much to focus upon. We might say it is our "outlook" that
predominates-an "outlook" that takes great pleasure in scrutinizing every detail
of someone else's life while over-looking huge chunks of its own life. What did
Jesus once say, "Why do you see the speck in your brothers eye and
miss the log in your own?"
The second aspect is the attitude of elevating
self by lowering others. Jesus told the parable about the two
men who went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisees the other a tax
collector. Standing off by himself, the Pharisee prayed proudly in this manner,
"God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues,
adulterers, or like this tax collector. I fast twice a week . I give a tenth of
my income." But the other man, the tax collector, would not even
look to heaven, but was beating his breast saying, 'God be merciful
to me a sinner.' Jesus concluded the parable by saying,
"I tell it was this second man who went down to his home justified..."
(Luke 18:9-14)
No matter where we find ourselves standing in life: socially,
racially, ethically, economically, sexually, we can always find someone below
us. It's sinful human nature. This kind of attitude coupled with group
superiority can foster prejudice and bigotry and can ultimately lead to ethnic
cleansing and holocaust. This scenario has repeated itself in history over and
over again. The shortest route to ascendancy is the degradation of someone or
some group. It's a dangerous and deadly journey to self-esteem that
never arrives at its destination.
The third aspect is the attitude of detesting
mercy given to those who haven't earned it or deserved it.
One of the most radical parables Jesus ever told was the one
about the workers in the vineyard. (Matthew 20:1-16) A vineyard owner hired
workers to work in his vineyard at different times of the day. When the day
ended and they lined up for their pay, he paid everybody the same wage. Those
who worked all day got the same amount as those who worked one hour. Those who
worked all day where obviously bent out of shape.
On the surface their gripe is legitimate. It does seem
unfair. But, it would never fly with the Better Business Bureau, because in each
case the employer fulfilled his contract he made with the worker. This parable
was told primary for the benefit of the Pharisees. They would have recognized
themselves right off as the workers who worked the longest. They had been
working all their lives to receive their reward and they prided themselves in
being deeply rooted in their faith going back to Moses and the law. They were
the ones in charge of the holy things.
Those who worked the shortest were the poor and the lame, the
blind and the lepers, the prostitutes and the tax collectors - in short the
riffraff that seemed to gather around Jesus wherever he went like a cloud of
dirt around Charles Shultz's Pig Pen of Peanut's fame.
The last point Jesus makes in the parable is perhaps the most
difficult thing of all for the Pharisaic mind to understand and Pharisaic heart
to accept. Jesus refers to the vast, glorious and reckless generosity of God's
grace. God's grace levels the playing field. God's grace knows no bounds. If
your whole system is built on respecting some persons over others, then the
grace of God will not be a welcome thing to you because it flows unequivocally
to everybody. God's grace can never be earned, only received.
Jesus was announcing that the kingdom of God had come, and it
was primarily a small group of fishermen and common folks; poor, blind and lame;
publicans, sinners and anyone else fool enough to believe it who were open to it
- all of them completely uninitiated in the necessary traditions and religious
practices - scoundrels and other undesirables getting initiated into the kingdom
of God. It is positively a scandal! Mercy is out of control and the Pharisees
decided the scandal must be stopped.
They and others who conspired with them did their very best
to stop this horrific scandal of grace and mercy. They finally manipulated
things so that he was publicly humiliated and executed most brutally by death on
a cross. They thought that would do it. They finally shut him up so they
wouldn't have to deal with him and his fool ideas anymore. For a couple of days
they didn't. Jesus was sealed in a tomb and his disciples ended up hiding out
for fear of their lives.
But the joke was ultimately on them, in the sense that they
had played right into God's hands. They took pleasure and delight in judging
Jesus. They elevated themselves over Jesus by nailing him a cross and stuffing
him in a tomb. They decided that Jesus deserved no mercy and they showed him
none.
But God turned the tables and in three days he was right back
spreading the same crazy message of God's grace, forgiveness and love that he
was before. Only now he instilled it into the hearts of a few others, who by
God's power, instilled it into the hearts of others; and they others; and they
others; and they others; and they others; down through the eons of time until
someone became the vehicle by which God instilled it in you.
The saddest part of the whole thing is that the same lavish, freeing, affirming, transforming grace Jesus extended to the outcasts and the lowly was also available to the Pharisees. The tragedy is that many of them simply never recognized that they needed it or wanted it. I pray that as you and I begin this most sacred season of the church year we will in-look long enough, hard enough and honestly enough that we see the Pharisaic places and attitudes that can flourish inside of us, and then simply lay it at the cross, recognizing our need for the forgiveness and grace that God so graciously and freely gives.