Yet More on the Pharisees...

My pastor, in her sermon on Sunday, read the passage from Luke about the Pharisees. The same one I spoke about in a recent post on Pharisees ("More on Pharisees. And Harsh Insults"). Interesting timing. Here are some excerpts from that sermon...

Because we’ve been focusing on “table graces” during this season of Ordinary Time, we’ve been looking at those scriptures through which we can see God’s grace revealed at the table. It’s been good to hear stories of how that has happened in some of our lives, and we look forward to hearing more along the way.

While this morning’s scripture reading is a story about Jesus at the table, though, it’s a little more difficult than usual to see the grace there. But let’s look for it! 

...I’ve mentioned before that Karen, our pastor-friend in Morocco, told me once that she is convinced that Jesus grew up in a Pharisaic home, and that that's why he was always attacking them. It was what she calls 'insider critique.' It's like me feeling free to criticize Southern Baptists at will. You don't often find me criticizing Presbyterians or United Methodists or Episcopalians or Roman Catholics or Muslims or Jews, but I feel like Southern Baptists, of which I was one for so many years, are fair game.

It certainly is true that Jesus had much in common with the Pharisees, and I find her theory, which she says is also shared by some French theologians, compelling.

When I hear Jesus railing at Pharisees, she said in an email about this, I cannot help but think that he knows he is justified in his critique because they are his own people. It’s clear from scripture that he still hangs out with Pharisees and gets invited into their homes – likely because they were his friends and family. Jesus may well have been inducted into the party of the Pharisees himself. (Their deep concern was righteousness, after all.) Yet as God worked in his life, and as he came to understand more fully who he was and what his calling was as Son of Man and Son of God, he had to reject the religious tradition of his beloved family and friends.

So, if that is the case, it might shine a different kind of light on this morning’s passage than the one we saw at first...

...in today’s reading, we don’t really see Jesus do any of that [being calm, kind, gracious ~dt] at all. What we see is Jesus just going at them. And when one of the teachers of the law tries to calm him down, pointing out that he’s not just being negative toward the Pharisees, but is pushing up against him and his peers as well, instead of saying, “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” Jesus confronts, and if we weren’t talking about Jesus, we might be more comfortable saying “attacks” the teachers of the Law as well. Makes them and the Pharisees so angry that they begin to “oppose him fiercely.” And I will remind us again that some scholars believe that the main reason that Jesus was executed had to do with his table conversations.

So okay, then, where is the “grace” in this table story? Well, actually it’s right in front of our eyes, big time. Because here’s the thing…Jesus’ message to the Pharisees and teachers of the Law had to do with grace for those who are vulnerable…Be generous to the poor, he says, and everything in you will be clean. Do justice, don’t load people down with burdens, and then not even lift a finger, to help them out. He is speaking on behalf of those who are being oppressed and beaten down by those to whom is speaking.

And so while at first glance, this might not sound like a table grace story, it definitely is. It’s Jesus’ voice pushing and arguing and fighting for grace for those who don’t have it to those who can give it...

...I think that this morning’s story, while it doesn’t really show Jesus being contemplative during the confrontation, it does show that he has been contemplative and that he is being intentional. Because he comes to the meal and he doesn’t wash his hands. That wasn’t just something that was gross, that was something that was seen as a sin. You had to wash your hands. And yet, given that that’s how he grew up, it seems to me that this was something that Jesus planned. He intentionally did not wash his hands. And then when the Pharisee shows surprise, as Jesus knew he would, Jesus makes his point:

“Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also?  But now as for what is inside you—be generous to the poor, and everything will be clean for you.”

He set them up for that, or so it seems to me. He was contemplative and then intentional with his actions and his words...

...You see, grace doesn’t have to be sweet and nice.

The poet Rashani writes:

There is a brokenness

out of which comes the unbroken,

a shatteredness

out of which blooms the unshatterable.

Jesus caused a sense of brokenness at the table that day as he stood up for the vulnerable ones. He cut at the very hearts of those who were there with him. Our hope is, of course, that some of them though cut to the heart, were then able to enter into a new place, a place of true grace. May we have the courage to be like Jesus. May we have the courage to be like Jesus. 

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~Pastor Cindy